To go back to school. Today, trump says they were misquoted, even though we can see and read their tosworn testimony that was nothing like their bossview of the world. All of it as the 11th hour gets under way on a thursday night. Well, good evening, once again, from our next nbc news headquarters in new york. Day 742 of the trump administration. The New York Times just published an interview with the president who sat down with reporters Maggie Haberman and peter baker. Peter standing by to talk to us in a moment. President talked about a wide range of topics many of which well cover here tonight. We begin with his comments on roger stone, his longtime political adviser, friend of 40 years who was arrested in ft. Lauderdale, florida, last friday. The times reporters write that trump, brushed off the investigations that have consumed so much of his presidency, saying that his lawyers have been reassured by the outgoing Deputy Attorney general Rod Rosenstein that the president , himself, was not a target. Mr. Trump said he never spoke with roger stone about wikileaks and the stolen democratic emails it posted during the 2016 election, nor did he direct anyone to do so. No, i didnt, i never did, he said, of speaking with mr. Stone on the subject. Did he ever direct anyone to get in touch with mr. Stone about wikileaks . Never did. He repeated, ive always liked i like roger, hes a character, mr. Trump said, insisting that the fbi agents charging a house like they did at 6 00 in the morning, i think that was a very sad thing for the country. Earlier today, we got a new picture of the full scope of the special counsels investigation into one roger stone and in plain english, they have a ton of potential evidence to sort through. Today, the mueller team argued for a delay in the federal statute that guarantees defendants a, quote, speedy trial. Muellers court filing called the f evidence the government now has involving stone, both voluminous and complex. It is composed of multiple hard drives containing several terabytes of information consistenting of, among other things, fbi case reports, search warrant applications and results, e. G. , apple icloud accounts and email accounts, bank and financial records and the contents of numerous physical devices, e. G. , cellular phones, computers and hard drives. The communications contained in the icloud accounts, email accounts and physical devices span several years. The government also intends to produce the contents of physical devices recently seized from his home, apartment, and office. Again, in other words, thats a lot. There is so much they need more time to go through it all. The fbi gathered much of the material when agents raided roger stones home. During his arrest in florida predawn last friday. Earlier today, stone was asked about what was seized and about muellers latest court filing. It says the evidence against you is voluminous and complex. Does that scare you at all . My attorneys have agreed to that. It is so voluminous and complex that a speedy trial is literally impossible. So we stipulated to that in the hearing before the magistrate and both parties agreed to that. Prosecutors have charged stone with obstruction, witness tampering, and lying to congress about his efforts to get hacked emails from wikileaks during the 2016 campaign. The white house has said that charges have nothing to do with trump and stone says hes not guilty. Since his arrest, stone has been vocal about the treatment he received at the hands of the fbi agents who took him into custody. Allegations, which as we mentioned, have drawn the attention of trump as well as republicans in congress. On top of saying he wont bear false witness for his friend of 40 years, donald trump, roger stone has also given somewhat cryptic responses when asked about potentially cooperating with Robert Mueller. He addressed both those issues earlier today. I was not read my miranda rights. I was brought out of the house. I was handcuffed. I was standing in the street wearing a roger stone did nothing wrong tshirt. Said you wont bear false witness against the president. Does that mean you are ruling out cooperating with Robert Mueller . This is a question that i will have to refer to my lawyers, ultimately. All i can tell you today is i will tell the truth. Have you talked to the president since the raids . I have not. Stone will be back in court tomorrow. Theres a lot of speculation this judge is going to issue a gag order against him, which he has said he may fight. Also, tonight, a new poll giving us a snapshot of how the public views trump allies and campaign operatives. All of them caught up in muellers dragnet. This is a new Monmouth University poll. Fin that finds that 62 ofassociated with his campaign line manafort, cohen, even stone, tried to mislead government investigators are congress. Same poll finds that just over half the public, 51 , say the Mueller Investigation should continue while 45 say its time for it to be over. With all that, lets bring in our leadoff panel for a thursday night. Clint watts, former fbi special agent and member of the joint Terrorism Task force. He also happens to be the author of messing with the enemy surviving in a social media world of hackers, terrorists, russians, and fake news. Also with us, barrett berger, veteran federal prosecutor, former assistant u. S. Attorney with both the Eastern District of new york and for good measure, the Southern District of new york. And in washington tonight, the aforementioned peter baker, chief White House Correspondent for the New York Times. Peter, you get to go first. First of all, youve conducted several interviews with this man. I heard your colleague, Maggie Haberman, who was in the oval office with you, in a telephone interview tonight say in one way this felt to her like one of the more traditional interviews hes given at president. My word, not hers. Do you concur . Yeah, think thats right, in a way. You can walk out of an Oval Office Interview with the president and he has said so many things that are by normal political standards pretty sometimes provocative, wild, things other politicians wouldnt say. This interview, he was more careful. It was more sticking, you know, within the lanes of traditional politics a lot more. You know, denying hed done anything wrong in a number of instances. Talking about his record. Trying to make the best case for what hes done so far. And taking on nancy pelosi. But not in the way he has done in the past. You know, i remember going in to see him in july of 2017, for instance, the first time i interviewed him with maggie and my colleague, mike schmidt, and he went off on Jeff Sessions. It was sort of the beginning of what would become a year and a half of badgering Jeff Sessions until he finally got fired. We didnt expect that to be part of the interview, yet he just sort of introduced it. We didnt have anything quite that surprising today but a lot of the things he said were significant, are important and will be examined, i think, as part of, you know, the understanding of what these investigations are telling us, where we are with things like the border wall dispute. This president still sometimes not used to the scrutiny or everything being shared. Also seems to wear his feelings on his exterior, like his tell that hes uncomfortable is often to wrap himself up in his own arms, which your piece notes he did when the subject of russia came up. Ill read an excerpt from your writing tonight with Maggie Haberman. President dismissed the importance of the proposed trump tower. His team was seeking to build in moscow at the height of the election, but he denied his own lawyers account, Rudy Giulianis account, of how late in the campaign he was still discussing the project. He also denied that his twitter messages about former associates who are cooperating with witness prosecutors in witness tampering. The first time hes been asked some of these questions, anyway. Of course, Michael Cohen had been the one orchestrating this possible project in moscow. Hes the one who first admitted hed been lying about when that conversation had actually gone through. Rather than january 2016, it went all the way through the summer of 2016. He said. Rudy giuliani later said it actually could have gone all the way through november. The president said today, no, that wasnt the case. But youre right, these tweets about Michael Cohen have been pretty striking. Michael cohen has taken them as threatening. The president said authorities should look into Michael Cohens fatherinlaw. We asked him to explain what he meant by that. He really wouldnt. He said they did not amount to witness tampering. He wasnt trying to, you know, on instruct justice with them, but, of course, we asked him what he was trying to do, he says everybody has a right to free speech, in effect. We commended to everyones attention whos watching, but do you remember any other moment that you kind of noted to yourself, well, thats new. Or thats a change. Well, a number of things, thi i think it was interesting to hear him say that Rod Rosenstein had told him or his lawyers, said it both ways at different points, that he was not target of the investigation. We dont exactly know what that means. That could mean simply that the prosecutor isnt going to indict him because Justice Department policy is you cant indict a sitting president. If thats the case, its not that meaningful a reassurance. On the other hand, if its meant to be theyre going after people around the president but dont have any evidence the president , himself, has done anything wrong, that would be a different interpretation. Of course, it doesnt stop congress. Congress is going to be the ultimate decider here in terms of accountability for this president , if the Justice Department isnt capable of indicting a sitting president , the house of representatives certainly is capable of launching impeachment proceedings and the question would be, will Robert Mueller be referring any kind of information that could ultimately end up in the hands of the house of representatives for such a trial . We dont know for sure, obviously. And peter, the points you raise are exactly why we invited an fbi veteran and a former federal prosecutor to be with us here in new york tonight. Barrett berger, i have a couple for you. Number one, what does it mean . Do you take it on face value hes been told hes not a target . Is that possible . So these are really legal terms of art within the department of justice. So theres sort of three categories that somebody can be in if you are within the scope of an investigation. You can be the most benign level, just a witness, you can be a subject to investigation or you can be a target. Being a target really means that prosecutors have evidence or significant reason to believe you actually committed crimes in connection with this investigation and likely means youd be indicted. If youre called to testify before a grand jury and the prosecutors think that you are a target of this investigation, theyre obligated to tell you. I will say, these are very fluid categories. So just because somebody was not a target one week, you could be the subject of an investigation one week, that should give a defendant no comfort that they would not then be a target the next week. When youre a target, dont you get a letter to show your friends . You can get a target letter, i dont know if you really want to show your friends, but, again, it would give you no comfort because the minute prosecutors develop additional facts or find other witnesses, you could very easily move from a subject to a target just like that. And i have to go back because it landed with a thud, when roger stone says he wasnt mirandized, did you believe that . Do you take that on face value . What should we think of that . I do not believe that. In an investigation of this caliber and with an arrest thats this important, it is, frankly, unbelievable that he would not have been mirandized at some point. Law enforcement today, im guessing a majority of those officers might have had body cams on, so there might be some evidence. Absolutely. They may or may not have body cams on, but this is just standard operating procedure. So i can think of no good reason why, you know, the agents would deviate from what is, you know, a very Standard Practice in this kind of an arrest. Clint watts, none of us in our newsroom had any idea what a terabyte was today, but it just sounds bad. Yeah. It sounds like, in layparlance, they found a mountain of stuff on this guy. Sure. Tera if you look, if you know those towers at the apple store, thats a 2 terabyte tower that would store multiple computers, multiple hard drives if you wanted to. Its a lot of data. Multiple cell phones. Multiple files. It sounds like there was a ton of things there which just begs the question, why is there so much of that stuff . This is a guy who basically brags of being the godfather of dirty tricks. You know, he talks about, you know, what his cases are, he essentially is building cases on other people. Hes communicating or trying to communicate through surrogates with wikileaks. I mean, who knows what all is in there. This has always been the danger of these investigations is other crimes can be discovered in the course of who knows. I dont believe anything really that the president , rudy giuliani, or roger stone say at this point because theyve always backtracked back and forth against each other, so same with the miranda rights or any of these things that are going on. I think this is a show that roger stone wants. I think its a fight that roger stone pawants and going about t trial in exactly the way he was probably prepared to go about it. Berit, last night sitting where you are right now was governor Chris Christie who hopped on this line of reasoning that they want to have the fbis practices, predawn, ft. Lauderdale, looked into, that everything didnt look to be on the up and up. That it was overwhelming force. I want to play this exchange. Well talk about it on the other side. One of the first things that has made me uncomfortable about the mueller thing was the stone arrest. Why is that . Now, you have carried out arrests as a u. S. Attorney. Many times. Is you know standards and practices. Standards and practices on that, if theres not evidence of imminent destruction of evidence. Which we dont know. Well, he said that there wasnt and there were no weapons. Now, whenever i did a raid like that as u. S. Attorney, it was because of weapons. If we knew through our investigation that someone had even a weapon in their house, a firearm, then we sent the people in that way for two reasons. One, to make sure that our fbi agents were not harmed, and two, to try to make sure that the person didnt harm himself. So you try to go in with that kind of force to be able to do that. I dont see dechbs evidence of one of those things here. Berit, when you learn we have a couple terabytes, which we now learn is not a wound left behind by a dinosaur, but a whole lot of data, can you infer that maybe there was a risk of destruction of evidence . Certainly. I think theres a few points to this. First of all, roger stone knew he was under investigation. So he had known he was both a subject and a target of this investigation for quite some time. I think this actually adds to the risk factor when youre lookiloo looking into going to effect an arrest warrant. This was somebody with who was prepared for this. He had threats of violence as the basis for the charges of this. Governor christie saying well, wed only do this if we knew there was going to be a weapon. First of all, thats one factor. Its not the end of the discussion. Also, somebody who knows that stuff may be coming to a head whos been prepared for this, and who has made threats of violence in connection with your case, i dont think you can just take the risk that, like, were pretty sure theres no weapons in the house. I think they have to play it very cautiously. One of the ways you play it cautiously is by having a lot of age agents, by doing a predawn, you know, courtordered arrest. Youre nodding vigorously. Its not even just about the weapons, its also a bout the public hysteria around this case. Roger stone has prolifically gone out, been combative both in terms of the fbi, this investigation, witch hunt. You dont know what his foll followers are like. Dont know what his supporters are like. Thats as much to protect the public, to protect the scene and be able to control that situation. You would have to bring in more people to do that. Governor christie, you know, talking about, oh, Standard Practice with firearms, hey, how many Standard Practice investigations have you done where its an associate connected with the president s campaign thats been a National Case for almost two years . I mean, this is a major scene that needs to be controlled. Its as much about the public as it is about the person. Wish youd be here with us last night in the studio. I do, too. And a word about peter baker whose day included a conversation in the oval office, went back to the office, oh, by the way, posted this piece with Maggie Haberman and thought enough of our broadcast to join us at the ended of a very long day. So with that, our thanks to peter baker, to clint watts, to berit berger for being with us. Coming up for us on a thursday night, trump claims the media misquoted and distorted the testimony of his intelligence chiefs. Well play the tape. Well let you decide whats fake and whats right after this. And later, the fourletter word democrats say will not be part of any immigration deal. The 11th hour just Getting Started on yet another consequential thursday night. Nt isnt what goes into your soup. Just as important as what you get out of it . Our broccoli cheddar is made with aged melted cheddar, simmered broccoli, and no artificial flavors. Enjoy 1