627 of the trump administration. Toept tonight we begin with breaking news, the first of which from the New York Times. Michael schmidt is standing by with a story entitled manaforts lawyer said to brief trump attorneys on what he told mueller. Manaforts lawyer, quote, reportedly briefed President Trumps lawyers on his clients discussions with federal investigators after mr. Manafort agreed to cooperate with the special counsel, according to one of mr. Trumps lawyers and two other people familiar with the conversations. The arrangement was highly unusual and inflamed tensions with mr. Muellers office when prosecutors discovered it after mr. Manafort began cooperating two months ago, the people said. Rudolph giuliani, one of the president s personal lawyers, acknowledged the arrangement on tuesday and defended it as a source of valuable insights into the special counsels inquiry and where it was headed. This news comes just one day after we learned the special counsel has scrapped manaforts plea agreement because they say manafort has been lying to the feds. This report comes just hours after manafort vigorously denied a report from the british newspaper the guardian, that said he met with wikileaks founder Julian Assange several times, including in march 2016, right around when manafort would join the trump campaign. That brings us to tonights other major piece of new reporting, broken by nbc news. Muellers team has obtained email communications from august of 2016 between the conservative author and conspiracy theorist jerome corsi on the left, and trump adviser and longtime friend roger stone, concerning the wikileaks emails stolen from the clinton campaign. These emails showed up in a draft court filing from muellers team to Jerome Corsis lawyer. According to court papers, corsi told investigators that an associate identified by corsi as roger stone asked him in the summer of 2016 to get in touch with an organization identified by corsi about wikileaks about unrelated materials to the campaign. Corsi told mueller he denied the request, but corsis team said that wasnt true. Corsi passed it on to someone in london and apparently did to stone saying wikileaks would release it in 2016. One interesting note about that court document, it says the person assumed to be roger stone who asked corsi to contact wikileaks was someone who corsi, quote, understood to be in regular contact with senior members of the trump campaign, including with donald j. Trump. The collusion of trump by name infuriated trumps legal team, which obtained a copy of the draft the week before thanksgiving. According to giuliani, its gratuitous. Its not necessary. If you read it out of context, it creates a misimpression that we were in contact with the president at this critical time, and i believe that was done deliberately. A spoke msman for mueller did n immediately reply for comment. The word that manaforts lawyers were talking to trumps lawyers helped to explain an angry outburst from trump exactly one week before thanksgiving that we covered on this broadcast. It included this language, and we quote, the inner workings of the Mueller Investigation are a total mess. They have found no collusion and have gone absolutely nuts. They are screaming and shouting at people, horribly threatening them to come up with the answers they want. The president is also speaking out tonight about mueller in a new interview with the Washington Post. Two post reporters, josh dossey and phil rucker, sat down with the president in the oval office. Heres what he had to say when asked if hell try to stop the russia investigation. Quote, the Mueller Investigation is what it is. It just goes on and on and on, trump said. When pressed is whether he would commit to letting the probe continue until its conclusion, he stopped short of making an explicit pledge. This question has been asked about me now for almost two years, the president said, at which point counselor Kellyanne Conway chimed in, a thousand times. Trump continued, and in the meantime hes still there. I have no intention of doing anything. Well, lets bring in our leadoff panel on this tuesday night, michael schmidt, pulitzer prizewinning reporters and one of the bylines on this latest story from the New York Times. Philip rucker, bureaucrat from the Washington Post who interviewed the president the other day, and frank faluzzi, investigator for counterintelligence who am the past has worked for and with robert mueller. Robert, id like to begin with you. What information, if any, was shared by mueller to trump within the immediate yamediariec lawyers, and how did he take it and weaponize it, my word not yours . The most specific thing we learned about this is muellers investigators led by Andrew Weissman were pressuring manafort this is according to manaforts lawyers to tell them what he knew about the 2016 trump tower meeting and what specifically the president knew. Did the president know that his son was going to be meeting with russians who are offering dirt on Hillary Clinton and what did the president know about it afterwards . Giuliani says that they hammered on manafort about this. Manafort, who was in solitary confinement, was being brought out for these interviews every few days with weissman. Weissman, giuliani alleges, was pushing manafort to essentially lie and say things that manafort said were not true. Now, this is an allegation from giuliani, but this has given and sort of opened up a new front for the trump legal team, which has launched new attacks now on mueller. Giuliani saying to us tonight that mueller was not overseeing weissman properly, that weissman needs adult supervision. Now, michael, in the li nrlif federal prosecutors, when they give in, they say theyve decided to join the home team or team usa. Heres why i say that. Was there any language that barred manafort from sharing this with team trump, or was it just considered such an o outlandish thing that one would do while working for the feds they didnt have to put it in writing . Theres nothing we know of in the agreement or legally that would have stopped this. But its a pretty interesting phenomenona, because there is essentially two people in the world who would control Paul Manaforts fate. One of them was mueller who, if he thought manafort had cooperated a lot, could go to a judge and ask for a more lenient sentence. The other person is donald trump who has the power to pardon him or commute his sentence. And the question is, why was it that manafort was not telling the truth to muellers investigators . Was this a simple disagreement of facts . I saw something one way, you saw it another . Or was there Something Else going on here. Michael, i have one more for you and then we have a couple ravenous journalists waiting to get in line. What did they learn visavis what they had learned about the status of the Mueller Investigation . About two months ago, trump was ready to send his responses to mueller after nearly a year trying to negotiate about an interview. What happened was three things came together. One, they learned about the language in the course of pleas. There was an unsealing of a document in virginia saying assange was part of this. This led the trump team to put on the brakes and say, hey, were not going to send in our responses just yet. The president is demanding a meeting with the Justice Department and with muellers team. They aired their concerns and muellers team said, look, were not out to get you, were not plotting getting you, and the president finally sent his most recently. Your interview was in the oval office. The transcript was fascinating. He went on his head of the Federal Reserve. He relitigated the sweeping and cleaning of the forest floors and said the campaign has particularly dirty forest floors. Then you got to mueller and whitaker, and tell our viewers what happened then . Did it tighten up . He did, brian. One of the first questions we asked in the interview, whats the president s reaction to the news i guess it was just yesterday that muellers prosecutors, any of the investiga investigate. If he knew they would violate the plea, and he spoke off the record but repeatedly said he does not want to insert himself into this discussion about man fort and mueller. That is rather uncharacteristic of him, because you know hes been the president who said what he believes when asked. He did talk a little bit about mueller, now that hes changed the leadership at the Justice Department with the new acting. That he would allow miger to continue brings, but the investigation still goes on and on and on and he has no intention right now to do anything to stop it. We asked matt whitaker, who had briefed him on the status of the Mueller Investigation, and he said, look, i dont talk regularly with matt whitaker, but he would not deny that they had ever discussed the russian probe or the state. You told producers tonight that man fort could turn out to be a triple agent. After our kids. I want to find it as quickly as a person is. Manafort, in my mind, is working for russia. Hes pretended to work for trump. What is he working on other than himself . Hes a con man. He was playing three sides against the middle, and i think ultimately he is going to be the loseer here. Imagine that the president , in drafting his written responses to mueller, was relying on manaforts assertions. So manafort saying, i think theyve got this wrong. They havent. So they need to ask him to. Manafort. That would be an intriguing scenario. Thats intriguing to trumps lawyers, is that in and of itself potentially a lack of obstruction of justice . Well, the legal here is always, it depends. It depends on what the lawyers were thinking when they shared this information, and if this is a twoway sharing, brian, then i feel very comfortable saying, were looking at an oukz. The trump keem went back and said, do this. Save this next time they question you. We dont know the answer to this. Manaforts attorney has told him. Wouldnt it be something if manafort were to say, i said, look at what my attorney decided to do with trump. Finally the story we were going to lead the New York Times on. And the meeting between corsi and stone, what do you think is happening there . If you read the emails between corsi and stone, you are reading discussions. Corsi the boxes are in london. Should we even be talking about cretico on h. Now, kim, the rest of us have to go on covering the ongoing story that is the center. Very rarely is it to have a briefing with Sarah Huckabee sanders. Im going to get her answer and get your response on the other side. We are certain the president was involved in no wrongdoing, was not part of any collusion. Kim, to our ears, that was a first. Thats different, thats a change, and that is the first start of kind of distancing from others who may be in your orbit. Are we correct about that . I think so. It was a very carefully worded statement about this given all these recent developments we were talking about which were happening in realtime to do exactly that, distance the president from anything that was going on. You know, in the past it was, there was no collusion, nobody talked to russia. Now its the president did not do any wrongdoing, sort of changing what could likely be coming which are more indictments based on all the people we have been talking about. And also this affirmance that the president has no intention of stopping this investigation and he had many chances to do that, and he hasnt done it. Its almost verbatim to what the president said to phil earlier today. So you can really tell that the white house is trying to carefully craft its reaction, carefully craft its statements aside from the president s twitter feed, of course, which has been an indication that the president is very concerned about whats happening in the mueller probe. This. His visit is ramping up, but at the same time theyre afraid of not saying anything that could be more exculpatory than the evidence the investigators really have. Things are getting interesting about this presidency and our longterm newscast. We ask them to stick around with us after this next break. Well get a look at the senate race of 2018. The numbers coming in tonight from mississippi. Well go to Steve Kornacki at the big board. Still later this hour after yesterdays punishing news from a Great American car maker, the president threatens to punish the car maker back. The 11th hour just Getting Started on this busy tuesday night. D. Because each job in energy creates many more in this town. In them therr hills on your guarantevacation. Find gold but we can guarantee the best price on this rental cabin. Or any accomodation from hotels to yurts. Booking. Com, booking. Yeah you ok there, kurt . Were about to move. Karate helps. Relieve some of the housebuying. Stress. At least you dont have to worry about homeowners insurance. Call geico. Geico. Helps with. Homeowners insurance . Been doing it for years. Im calling geico right now. Good idea get to know geico. And see how easy homeowners and renters insurance can be. I am a techie dad. N. I believe the best technology should feel effortless. Like magic. At comcast, its my job to develop, apps and tools that simplify your experience. My name is mike, im in Product Development at comcast. Were working to make things simple, easy and awesome. Heres whats happening. We have these twin breaking stories starting us off tonight. Our panel is standing by because there is a lot more to talk about on that, but i wanted to at least get the headlines from tonights senate race, the last of 2018, in mississippi before we go to Steve Kornacki for all of the numbers later in this hour. Lets at least get the headlines from him. Cindy hydesmith versus the democrat, mike espy, our commentator covering it all tonight. Hi, steve. Cindy hydesmith the republican, still a little vote coming in. Heavy black areas along the Mississippi River still coming in late. Eight points may be a little bit less will be the final margin of this thing. From the democrats standpoint, theyll say theyve never been this close. You have to go back to 1988 to see if things were this substantial. They did better deso to county. A 10foot jump here. Look at madison county, jacksonville. I think there are just not enough suburban areas in mississippi for democrats. This is a heavily ruraled state, we particularly the northeastern side of the patient right there. Trump rallies support for as i understand i hydesmith tonight. Were coming back to you later. For now more with our panel, michael schmidt, philip rucker, michael adkins, phillip faluzi. There is a paper that comes roaring back, becomes so important, and that is that. The notion that she was credence, perhaps, to a kmu tags. Remind us what you reported then, why its so porpt right now. There was a discussion last year between toud and lawyers for ricky. He pled guilty to making false statements in this investigation, and obviously manafort. That is something mueller has been looking at himself. Mueller looking at the question of why is it that the lawyer was offering a pardon . Why was he discussing a pardon . It was among the 49 questions that mueller wanted to ask the president. He had fallen into the obstruction bucket so that was not in the responses that the president sent just a few weeks ago. Those were looming over russia. It conditions to a part in it, what would the parents thout on this. And if he used that authority. For part of it people have the. How did it center around that portion of the discussion . It was interesting, brian. As you know, has been so unwilling to really challenge. But we asked him about the. The ships and the kroous and trump said, look, i dont like that aggression at all, that it should be a call to americans. He was anticipating getting a briefing tonight tonight from his National Security team and said he was considering to said i would agree it on marcus. Trump said hell have to see what that briefing from his team is like tonight but that he is considering, he is threatening, cancelling that meeting with putin as some sort of retaliati retaliation. Since youve worked with robert mueller, why. Corsi, they lay the document. Does sh. How is mueller going to. How do you feel about that when hes still talking to his first team. Clearly the president has surrounded himself with people in a like it. There was a surprise and there might even be some strot, a no one vasz. Longtime lawyers are representing these targets and that trust is violated. This is not a healthy situation. Mueller doesnt express anger openly and in a very dramatic fashion, but you understand when hes very, very upset. His team knows that hes likely upset by this, and they have a strategy to deal with. We keep mentioning a wounded u. S. Marine combat veteran from the vietnam war. Kim, we waited almost a year for the president to compete what weve been calling the takehome test. Now we know he has submitted them on the during that process. It makes for an interesting p. What they had been told by the mueller team. A. And were hearing more information about what corsi and roger stone may have done as well. All of these are little pieces that the muellers team has been putting together for two wars now trying to. And finding out whether that is occlusion and obstruction. Judging from his twitter feed, he is. Well have to wait and see exactly what comes out of it. I appreciate you guys coming out and staying extra late to talk about all we had to talk about. Coming up, the president s National Security adviser explains why he wont be listening to a key piece of audio evidence in the murder of a Washington Post journalist. Here comes. That and more when we come back. Fidelity wealth management. Walkabout wednesdays are back get a sirloin or chicken on the barbie, fries, and a draft beer or cocacola all for just 10. 99. Hurry in wednesdays are for outback. Outback steakhouse. Aussie rules. Well, not because it was easy. I mean, the game is all i know. You think back to your draft. It felt like a fantasy.