Trashing Rudy Giuliani and a new report from abc that almost as soon as trump won the race, a star apprentice executive producer, you may have heard of, mark burnett, was trying to link a putin affiliated american banker to Donald Trumps transition team. This attempted meeting did not go down, but congressional investigators honing in on the goal and why russia and rubles seemed to always be such a high priority. This has not been confirmed by nbc news. Then the president s criminal defense lawyer back on the dance floor doing the giuliani walk back. Hes gone from saying trump talked to cohen about a trump moscow tower to claiming that was some kind of hypothetical to now saying if they did talk about it, that wouldnt be a crime. Understanding that they went on throughout 2016, werent a lot of them, but there were conversations. Could be up to as far as october, november. Our answers cover until the election. Just to clarify, talks of trump tower moscow went as late as october or november of 2016, even in some form . Could be. Could be. Giuliani also doing a meandering interview with the new yorker that is making some waves. I want to be very Crystal Clear about it. The key to decoding this kind of giuliani interview is to ignore the talking points and focus only on the secrets giuliani seems to spill by accident. It is like the romantics famously said, i hear the secrets that you keep when youre talking in your sleep. Well, giuliani spilling some secrets here. He mentioned secret tapes and whether st. Peter will ultimately think he lied for trump at the gates of heaven. Let me take a quick look with you. On the tapes, giuliani says he listened to tapes to fact check some recent media articles and tries to take it back, saying i shouldnt have said tapes. And then, when asked about lying for trump, he says, well, im afraid it will be on my gravestone. Rudy giuliani, he lied for trump, adding somehow, i dont think that will be it, but if it is, so what. Do i care . Ill be dead. I figure i can explain it to st. Peter. Getting pretty deep there. As we say around here, giuliani gonna giuliani, but even someone inside the Trump Administration now says theyre over it. And this is a Current Trump aide talking about the giuliani dance. The Senior Administration official says basically, quote, giulianis Public Comments are not helping, and they question why he keeps going on tv if nothing good can come of it. Quote, dont do it. Im joined now by barrett burger, a former u. S. Assistant attorney with the eastern and Southern District of new york, and barbara mcquade, former federal prosecutor, and matt miller, former chief spokesman for the Justice Department in the obama administration. Greetings to all of you. Matt miller, do you think there are secrets that can be found as rudy does these interviews and what does it tell you that trump aides are starting to pipe up about it . I think its very difficult because you never know when hes telling the truth or not. I think its pretty clear at this point, Rudy Giuliani, his best days as a lawyer are behind him. But hes actually worse as a public spokesman. When you watch his interviews, its one thing to go on television and make admissions that are damaging to your client and happen to be factually true. It is another thing to go on television and make admissions about your client that may not even be true. This example of saying the discussions continued as far as november, october, november of 2016, an extremely damaging admission for donald trump, but it may not be true, it wouldnt match the Public Record we have seen in the case that seems to indicate the discussions ended in the summer of 2016. I can understand why other members of the Trump Legal Team and other members of the Trump Communications team would be upset with giuliani, because he takes moments like this weekend when buzzfeed had this story knocked down by the special counsels office should have been a win for him and he creates not just one but two, three entirely new damaging news cycles. You put your finger on it. You have done this kind of work, and it is difficult sometimes to walk the line of being accurate but also secretive about open investigations. You did it for the doj. Other folks do it on the other side of these probes. This could have been a time where the news and the headline tonight is still the fallout from mueller rebutting a public media account. We covered that story last night, but instead, you have headlines and banners across tv screens about rudy talking about his gravestone saying maybe he lied for trump. Yeah, look, i think there are a few problems. One is he doesnt have a very clear command of the underlying facts. When you go out and try to talk about an event, about events without having an understanding of the facts with something that is so important and where the facts matter so much as they do in this investigation, youre going to make mistakes. The other thing is he seems to have no concern about the fact that he might Say Something that contradicts what he said previously, what his client said previo previously, and he make these off the wall statements like this statement about what will happen when he dies and goes to heaven. You would expect an attorney in that situation to say no, im not worried about that. I never lie on behalf of the president because my client did nothing wrong. Its odd he said the opposite of that. Let me go to barrett and i say i want to get into what your argument would be to st. Peter if you ever have that situation. Before we get to that, witness a fox news anchor basically piling on rudy, and then don jr. Piling on cohen here. Were seeing some of the problems in this type of public defense. Take a look. When was the last discussion about this trump tower deal . Because rudy got everybody really confused, i have to say . I dont know. I dont talk about things i dont know about. We dont know anything about it. Ultimately, it was Michael Cohen essentially trying to get a deal done. He was there for a long time, he wasnt exactly a deal guy. I dont think anyone took it all too seriously. What do you see happening there with a witness or potexally more than a witness in don jr. Talking about cohen, who may have more to say in public. I have to say, in some small way, i agree with trump jr. In that statement that you shouldnt go and publicly talk about things that you dont know everything about. I mean, theres no need for giuliani to be giving public statements at this point. Many lawyers would agree that the best way to let the facts talk is in court, when theres actually facts, when you can do it in a controlled environment. I think hot were going to see with cohen is a very different approach when hes testifying. Youre going to see this in a controlled environment. Its going to be very prepared. Of course, going to not cover everything he knows about because theres going to be some areas that are still the subject of ongoing investigation, but youre going to see a much different type of statement than you see from giuliani. Cohen is not going to get up there and ramble on for, you know, an hour about things he doesnt know anything about. Its going to be much more carefully controlled and obviously in response to questions from the congress. And you worked in the office that rudy used to run when he was u. S. Attorney. What do you think of matts point that hes just not, according to some analysts, as good at lawyering anymore. Its not heart surgery, but even in the law, precision matters. Its important to be careful with the facts, with the law. If youre not going to do that its not open heart surgery, but if you go in to operate on the heart and then you just remove the liver and you never do anything to the heart, thats the level of mistakes we appear to be seeing. Unless, and we have debated this with our folks, unless you see this as some grand strategy. I think matts point that rudy has taken everyone away from a winning argument and back into a losing one is striking, and it comes at a time that we may be in. We dont know, but we may be in the homestretch of this whole probe. Is this rudys Closing Argument . They had a win there. They had a win with the special counsels Office Coming and disputing buzzfeeds story, and giulianis statements changed the focus of the conversation and in a direction thats not really good for the Trump Legal Team at this point, which comes back to my point of there is no obligation for him to be making these kind of statements right now. Especially when they were sort of on the wave of this good news story. It seems that it would be, you know, wise counsel to limit his statements to legal papers. Barbara, your view on any of the above. I think one of the reasons that were seeing Rudy Giuliani fumble the message on this is its a real hot potato. He knows this is a real significant matter. There are clues out there that let us know this is a really important issue. Number one is Michael Cohens guilty plea. He had pleaded guilty to eight counts in the Southern District of new york, and Robert Mueller insists he plead to an additional count about lying to congress about trump tower in moscow. That tells me theyre paving the way for have him cooperate against others who may be implicated in that as well. And the other thing is if President Trump is continuing to negotiate a deal into october and november, when hes telling the public hes not, not only does it harm his credibility, but that means russia knows hes lying, which gives them leverage over him, who is about to become the president of the United States, to be used to coerce him, to comply with their demands. So i think this is a very big deal, and i think thats why giuliani is having so much trouble handling the questions. And barbara, i want to get your view on some of these witnesses. You were on this program when one witness, sam nunberg, famously was saying he might defy the request to testify. He ultimately did. Another set of witnesses that we talked to are also going back and forth. Jerome corsi is both suing the Mueller Probe to some degree, civilly. Hes also, though, now saying hes essentially cooperating and he has given testimony. Then the last time he was on the show said look, hes not going to get into a debate with roger stone. Thats also shifting in the news. Now, quote, im Done Tolerating alex jones and roger stones lies and defamation. I never held a government job. Im not fbi, cia, or mossad. I never received hush money from infowars. Im not testifying for mueller, which is to say cooperating but not going into court to implicate people. I will take appropriate steps to protect my reputation. I wonder what you think about this, because theres a lot of Different Things that happened in highprofeel cases, but this is, i think, yet and still unusual and how mueller is handling continuing to get testimony from these individuals as they feud in public and continue to circle roger, who reportedly has not gone in yet. Yeah, you know, its easy to talk tough in the public and in the press. But when you receive a grand jury subpoena and the consequences of failing to comply with that subpoena are sitting in jail, sometimes the path that you want to follow becomes very clear. I think with jerome corsi, hes the one who disclosed he received a plea offer from Robert Mueller to plead guilty to false statements relating to his conversations with roger stone regarding wikileaks. Robert mueller would not have made that plea offer unless he was prepare today back it up with criminal charges. I think when he refused that, they told him the next step then will be indictment unless you want to change your mind. It appears now maybe he has done so and changed his mind and agreed to cooperate knowing that criminal charges may be the kwau consequence if he fails to do so. Were very careful about ever discussing anything as a potential target of a probe. But we have the written documentation that barbara mentioned, that bob mueller told jerome corsi, youre a target. This is what your indictment will look like written out. Your analysis of where that heads and what the purpose of that is at this stage in the probe. I actually dont think thats so uncommon. I think prosecutors will often have a conversation with somebody that theyre trying to potentially sign up as a cooperating witness where they will lay out all the charges and say this is exactly what youre facing. They dont do it as a threat, as a scare tactic. Its really so somebody has all of the information. So that they can actually make an informed decision. In your experience, how often does that result in indictment if the people dont play ball . Almost always. Its very unlikely that a prosecutor would go through the trouble of, you know, drafting up a draft indictment or information, whatever the paper actually is that they were giving him, discuss the potential charges, have that cooperation conversation, and then just let it go. Its not really how prosecutors at least that work at this level operate. Yeah, and matt miller, in closing, i wonder, as we always try to assess what we have learned and what we could do better, with the smoke cleared a little bit from all of the friday buzzfeed excitement, what do you think is the most important thing for people who want to do this responsibly in the press or the citizenry and plenty of members of congress were tweeting big if true. Whats to you the big takeaway there . Well, a few things. First of all, if you want to really rely on something, look for whats filed in court. When people file documents in court and the it government is willing to put the fact behind it, their reputations behind them. Then when it comes to reporting, my clue is the best stories will not remain what we like to call permanent exclusives. If you see a news permanent exclusive youre saying is a warning sign. Yeah, a story thats not matched by any other outlet. When you see a major story move, wait city someone else confirm it. If you dont, thats when you might have questions. We had other big permanent exclusives to this day havent been confirmed. Matt, barbara, and barrett. Thanks to all of you. Coming up, my exclusive interview with a former trump casino exec speaking out about the cost of business with trump and what it says about the shutdown and what trumps prep for two different state of the Union Speeches may reveal about negotiations. 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Lifting the sanctions gives him a windfall estimated to mhundres of millions of dollar. This is literally the opposite of what trump said he was all about. Sanctions as soon as they very much deserve it. That is a question. There has been nobody tougher on russia than president donald trump. Not exactly. And donald trump couldnt ease these sanctions