And good evening once again from our nbc news headquarters here in new york. Date 424 of the trump administration, and the president s response to the Mueller Investigation moves into a new phase. The Washington Post reporting that the president is shaking up his legal team, adding a former federal prosecutor, former u. S. Attorney as well, who is well known to viewers of fox news who says mr. Trump is the target of an fbi conspiracy. More on that in just a moment. We are also learning from the post about how the president s lawyers are trying to curtail the scope of the special counsels potential interview with the president. Two attorneys provided the special counsels office with written descriptions that chronicle key momentsnd investigation in an effort to limit any session between the president and special counsel robert s. Mueller iii to a few select topics. Trump has told aides he is chomp at the bit to sit down with him. Kristen welker reports a source tells her theres ongoing communication between the president s legal team and the special counsel, which includes turning over some documents. Our senior White House CorrespondentHallie Jackson tonight said the two teams met recently and regularly, in other words, theyve been talking and continue to talk. As we mentioned, donald trump has hired another lawyer for the Team Handling the Russian Investigation he is joseph digenova. He made public his allegation of a fbi Justice Department plot against the president. Make no mistake about it, a group of fbi and d. O. J. People were trying to frame donald trump of a falsely created crime. They were going to exonerate hillary and they were going to frame donald trump. What they have done to the department and the fbi is undermine the confidence of the American People in federal Law Enforcement. It is disgraceful and it all stems from their animus towards President Trump. Joe digenova has been around a long time. This quote from a wall street journal oped during the investigation in 1997 of bill clinton is getting a wide circulation tonight, quote, nobody should underestimate the upheal that a progress of the president would cause, but we went through it once before and watergate and survived. The nation, in fact, could conceivably benefit from the indictment of a president. It would teach the valuable civics lesson that no one is above the law. President trump spent the weekend criticizing the investigation and for the first time he went after the special counsel by name. The Mueller Probe should never have been started in that there was no collusion and there was no crime. It was based on fraudulent activities and a fake dossier paid for by crooked hillary and the dnc and improperly used in fisa court for surveillance of my campaign. Witch hunt. Trumps lawyer john dowd also called for an end of the investigation fueling new concerns about the special counsels future. Ty cobb, another member of the legal team tried to allay those fears with a statement saying the president was not considering firing robert mueller. Republican congressman trey gowdy warned of the consequences of moving against the special counsel. I would just counsel the president its going to be a very, very long, bad 2018 and its going to be distracting from other things that he wants to do and was elected to do. There is also more fallout from the firing of former fbi Deputy DirectorAndrew Mccabe, whom the president targeted before he was dismissed. The Associated Press reporting that mccabe septembkept persona about his interactions with the president , which are now in the hands of the special counsel and are similar to the file made by jo james comey about his own conversations with President Trump. This led to this tweet from the president spent very little time with Andrew Mccabe but he never took notes when he was with me. Can we call them fake memos . We have a terrific starting panel as we start our week here. Philip rucker, sam stein and well call this byline, we begin, trump is not consulting with top advisers, including chief of staff john f. Kelly and chief white house lawyer don mcgahn on his russia Legal Choices or his comments about the probe, according to one person with knowledge of his actions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive conversations. The president continues to complain his lawyers are not protecting him and that Deputy Attorney general rod j. Rosenstein who is supervising the probe is up to mischief, said the person who spoke to trump in recent days. Can you shed any information on what mischief rosenstein is up to and fill in the blanks here . I think its twofold. The white house staff, the people working in the government, john kelly, don mcgahn and others would frankly not want to be a part with the russian discussions. But the president feels increasingly emboldened to make his own decisions, to act as his own lawyer, his own strategist, his own p. R. Specialist, if he will. He wants to call his shots and handle this Mueller Probe as he sees fit, which is by these tweets hes had over the weekend. I know from my reporting hes been spending a lot of time talking about it on the phone with his friends, less so with his political advisers in the white house but more so with the people that he communicates with, you know, old pals from new york, even some of the hosts over at Fox News Channel and watches a lot of tv commentary about all of this. Hes been using that phrase witch hunt a lot. I would just make a historical parallel, brian. A colleague of my dug up an old clip under the bilines woodward and bernstein from the water game period. Thats what Richard Nixon was doing as the watergate hearings were up under way, he was fuming this was a witch hunt out to get him. You read that story and its eerily similar to what ewoo hwe today. Tamara, lets presume trumps lawyers go back to the white house and break it to the boss that this is not going to be over last thanksgiving or news years and then we see the president go to social media and then we see the president hire the very familiar joe digenova from fox news. I think had it become increasingly clear that the timeline was slipping when it slipped from thanksgiving to new years to, well, its late march now at this point. And President Trump is bringing on this new lawyer who based on all of his Public Comments is very much in line with what President Trump sees of this investigation, which is this idea of it as a witch hunt. And President Trump, as weve well documented, really likes people who he sees on tv defending him. And often tries to find ways to bring them into his circle. Interestingly digenova is not going to be part of the outside team, not part of the inside team. When i asked white house lawyer ty cobb about this, he made it abundantly clear that digenova was not going to be part of his team. Cobb has been more has been this lawyer who has been more about trying to cooperate with muellers investigation in hopes that the cooperation will speed things up and not seeing the benefit in pushing back on it obviously the president and some of his outside lawyers have a very different view how this is going to be approached. Im told well have more reporting on that in about 60 seconds. Sam stein, i want to show an example of the president tweeting something this weekend and an instant Fact Checking of him that was kind of breath taking to read. First from the president s twitter feed, why does the mueller team have 13 hardened democrats, some big crooked hillary supporters and zero republicans . Youve got to admire the capi l capitalizati capitalizati capitalization another dem recently added does anyone think this is fair . And yet there is no kcollusion. And then from glenn kessler. The way trump tweets about how investigators cant be trusted because they donated to the democrats, its easy to forget he donated to Hillary Clinton in 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2009. Melania, ivanka and don jr. Also made donations to clinton. Sometimes you have to step back and see how loose this president is with the truth. We sometimes forget to notice the clear errors among the tweets. I will say this, i dont think this weekend was a particular great sign for the president and his legal team in terms of the strategy that theyre bringing to the Mueller Probe. First of all, lets step back and just recognize what is sort of a wellestablished truth in this city, which is he already has two lawyers who most regard a little bit long in the tooth, a little bit unable to keep up with the mueller team and a little bit in over their heads. If the reports are true tonight and bringing in this new lawyer is angering the current legal team and potentially compelling ty cobb to resign, that would be a huge setback and youd be starting at ground zero again. They are having impacts on the legal care that i trieyre tryi bring against mueller. After the tantrum of had week on social media, there was a spotlight on Congressional Republican leadership to see whether they o would do anything, whether it was in public reactions to inoculate bob mueller. What we heard is basically crickets. There is disbelief on capitol hill he would actually take the step to fire mule are. So we have no legislative attempt to inoculate him from the fire ing. As you were speaking, you made our printer go off, which ive never seen done before but as you were making the point that had been discussed throughout the day and that is how unty cobbian a guy he is. President trumps legal team was poised for a shakeup on monday as he openly discussed firing one of his lawyers, another considered resigning and a third who pushed theories on television that mr. Trump was framed by the fbi joined the roster. Mr. Trump has weighed allowed in recent days to Close Associates whether to dismiss ty cobb, who had pushed most strongly a strategy of cooperating fully with the special counsel investigation. Heres where it gets interesting. The president reassured mr. Cobb he had no plans to fire him, according to a person who spoke with the president late monday, in part to prevent a narrative that his team was in disarray after the New York Times began making inquiries. Mr. Trumps lead lawyer, john dowd, contemplated leading his post because he concluded he has no control over the behavior of the president. Mr. Trump has reverted to a more aggressive strategy and so on. Tamara, there you have it. What could possibly go wrong . As someone who has covered this white house, this is a familiar narrative applied mott just to the legal team but also to various white house aides. Its why youve had such app incredible level of turnover both in the president s cabinet and in his top aides in the white house, like offthecharts, historically unprecedented amounts of turnover. President trump has not settled on the team that he likes and this is not the first shakeup of his legal team. And we should say we dont know that this is a shakeup just yet. It might be just an addition, but certainly, you know, there was a shakeup not too long ago that put dowd in charge of this team and brought in jay. So it is a cycle that repeats itself with some frequency. Who remains to say, mr. President , its one thing to want the people around you that you want. If there is something about making a hire that gives you the great feeling of a warm bath, thats fine, but please remember that hire may not help to achieve your goal. Well, its a good question, brian. I think President Trump is making a lot of his own decisions at this point. Ty cobb is a lawyer at the white house who is effectively doing a slot of the paperwork. Hes literally responding to document requests at the white house, arranging interviews for white house staff. John dowd is the one dealing with the president personally in his personal approach, but again, i think President Trump is making a lot of these decisions. Hes deciding when to issue these tweets, he deciding to attack bob mueller personally by name as he did over this weekend, hes deciding to call it a witch hunt and hes deciding he wants to sit down for an interview, even though his lawyers are very concerned about what and understandably so because he has a history of exaggerating the facts and sometime outright lying. There is a real genuine concern about whether he can truthfully answer questions face to face with the special counsel investigators. Sam, im reminded over the weekend of what john brennan said on social media. Friday night here we were talking about the words of Barry Mccaffrey and now john brennan on the board with this. Its a sorkinesque statement. When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude and political corruption becomes known, will you take your rightful place as a disgrazed demagogue in the dustbin of history. You may scapegoat andy mccabe but will you not destroy america, america will histotriu over you. So the former fbi director, going to his counterpart in russia, saying knock it off, something not done in the spy trade very often. I like the use of sorkinesque. You can see it in a west wing episode for show. John brennan got a lot of push back because it was hyperbolic. Maybe thats what the times call for. The firing of Andrew Mccabe is a really interesting case study of what the president has done visavis the entire robert Mueller Probe. He may have been fired for cause. He went through a process within the d. O. J. That did require political im sorry, civil servants, not political hacks, to make a judgment on the case. But because trump had weighed in so heavily and aggressively on this matter and essentially called for his firing and because he tooted his own horn so to speak after the firing was done, it created an aura about this, a bad stench of sorts about the whole firing. Why did he do it in the first place . What was the point two days before he was going to get his pension . He was trying to spoil a witness against him, trying to gas light the process. This is what john brennan was responding to, the gas lighting of the american institutions and the Americans Trust in their institutions. Well find out at some point in time whether john brennan is right or donald trump is. We have only been on the air for 18 minutes. Yet another eventful night on this shift. With our thanks to phil ruker, tamara keith and sam stein for starting us off as we begin a new week. Trump being trump, the president describeds emboldened now, more comfortable in the job as we see tonight, expect to see and hear more candor from the president. And a man who worked alongside mccabe for 20 years weighs in on his firing and the damage being done when the president attacks the fbi. The 11th hour just Getting Started on a busy monday night. Awwwww. 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Advil pm gives tossing and turning a rest and silences aches and pains. Fall asleep faster, stay asleep longer with advil pm. North korea, kim jong un, would like to meet with President Trump. This doesnt happen. You know, theyre saying, oh, well obama could have done that. Trust me, he couldnt have done that. Today im defending Americas National security by placing tariffs on foreign imports of steel and aluminum. If we dont get tough on the drug dealers, were wasting our time. Just remember that. Were wasting our time. And that toughness includes the death penalty. With remarks like those, just a small sampling over the past few weeks President Trump has gone against the advice and counsel of his staff and closest allies to push parts of his policy agenda. And we also saw the firing of secretary of state Rex Tillerson via twitter. The New York Times reports today that feeling newly emboldened, trump is saying what he really feels now. This weekend he unleashed a tirade on special counsel robert mueller. He said for months President Trumps Legal Advisers implored him to avoid so much as mentioning the name of robert mueller. Ignoring that advice over the weekend was the decision of a president who ultimately trusts only his own instincts hand now believes he has settled into the job enough to rely on them rather than the people who advise him. Were joined by two more fri