An investigation in the white house launching a new more aggressive Counter Campaign after a week of explanations, team trump is punching back hard to keep the president out of the story. Take a listen. No, i dont represent donald trump jr. , and i dont know for sure who was at that meeting. I dont think the denials are suspect. And i dont think the denial by the president of the United States is suspect at all. Im not involved with the discussions with the lawyers about wo paid what entity and i certainly dont represent donald trump jr. I dont represent donald trump jr. , i represent the president and the president was not aware of that meeting. Im obviously e the president has been very clear on that. He had no meetings, and was aware of no meetings with russians. Jay hit all five morning news shows and he wasnt the only member of team trump who came out swinging this morning. The donald himself got back on twitter and released a storm of messages voicing strong support for his son and being looking at last years election for another shot at mrs. Clinton. Thats not the only axe being waged. Team trump pushing hard on the claim of mrs. Clinton is guilty of everything they say. The president is not. The Opposition Research in campaigns happens all of the time. You have the situation with the ukrainians doing the same thing with the Democratic National committee and the Clinton Campaign. And a raging bipartisan excuse me, a raging partisan dispute over the white house claim that the Clinton Campaign did the same thing in ukraine as trump denies doing with russia. The Washington Post asked a legal expert about the ukrainian claim, and he said there are troubling questions about ukraine involvement in our elections. The difference is that there is not clear evidence of the Clinton Campaign coordinating with a Foreign National or encouraging or accepting their help. So if the white house is pulling no punches this morning, then perhaps its because of some new polling out today and shows a strong majority, 55 say trump is not making a significant progress on his agenda. More even more to discover about who was in the june 9th meeting with the russians. So far we know at least six people who were at trump tower that day. One of those in attendance, renat akhmetshin. Jared kushner was also at that meeting and that has democrats taking a hard look at the president s soninlaw. We know that Jared Kushner who said he had no meetings with russians has now had three meetings and we want to know the contents of all those meetings. We want to talk to donald trump jr. , and we also want to talk to mr. Manafort who had a history of dealing with prorussian forces. The thing about this investigation is it feels like almost every week, we find another thread that we have to pull on. Lets get into these threads, shall we . Kelly odonnell in piscataway, new jersey. Good to see you this sunday early evening. We heard senator warner say theres a new thread to pull out of this investigation every single day. Whats the mood at the white house over the weekend . Reporter well, there has been concern about the fact that this now clearly puts donald trump jr. In the room with the then chairman of the Campaign Paul manafort, the president s soninlaw and current Senior Adviser in the white house Jared Kushner all meeting with a couple of individuals with ties to the kremlin. That is a troubling situation and the white house is not talking about it in terms of the official white house statement. Certainly, the president is talking about it on his twitter feed and his personal lawyer, part of his outside legal team made his round on the sunday show asks there is concern because for about a year or so the white house and allies of President Trump and the Trump Campaign have said there was nothing to any of this, and now, of course, there is a specific email chain, conversations and statements statements that have evolved and the Senate Intelligence committee wants to know more. They want to interview donald trump jr. , Paul Manafort and others. They hope to be able to get more about what happened inside the meeting to know exactly who was there. Were other meetings taking place that perhaps there is not yet documentation for, other emails and that kind of thing. Theres suspicion there could be more because of the rolling disclosure where Jared Kushner on his security filing did not initially list his meetings with Foreign Nationals. He had to do supplemental filings to put all of that out there and thats, in fact, how this meeting with donald trump jr. Became publicly known because kushner had to disclose it, and then, of course, the differing statements. When donald trump jr. First acknowledge this, he said this is everything and then later we learned there were additional individuals in the meeting and there was a direct attempt at offering something about the Clinton Campaign that enticed them into the meeting and at the same time donald trump jr. Saying it was really a conversation that dealt with a russian Adoption Program that was popular for americans and canceled by president putin when he was upset about an american law putting sanctions on certain russian businessmen who were committing human rights violations. So theres a lot to look at here, and of course, its very politically charged, and when you have the president also defending his son saying that hes being mistreated by the, quote, fake news media, that just amps it up. Its personal. Its professional. There is a lot happening here and so the white house is trying to keep moving forward on its own agenda, but this is obviously something that affects the president very directly. Certainly, a lot of threads there and a lot of drip, drip, drip, that has ta lot of people scratching their heads. Kelly odonnell, thank you always. I want to bring in the bureau chief for msnbc political analyst. Christina grier is a professor of Political Science at Fordham University and former aide to president george w. Bush. Welcome to all of you. David, im going to start with you. Lets take a listen to a former cia official who is giving his take on this whole potential connection between the Trump Campaign and the russians and then well talk been. Clearly, the russians have been looking at the trump people for a long time, years, perhaps and had gathered assessment on what kind of people they were, and what kind of ego they had, what kind of business ties they had. So this could be a much longer operation, and again, the goal here is theyre trying to do harm to the United States. David, trying to do harm here to the United States, also what was staggering and really interesting for me to hear in listening to that is how they may have been looking at the trump people for years there. We get focused on the drip, drip, drip, ratatattat out of the meetings. The biggest pointses and thats without knowing what came about in the meeting and we were told nothing and nothing the white house and the trump team says can be believed at this point. What we see from the email is one, the putin regime wanted to help donald trump by hurting Hillary Clinton. Thats clear and they wanted to do it secretly and they wanted to engage in a conspiracy with the Trump Campaign to do that. The Trump Campaign on the other side was eager to do that. They didnt say go away, we dont want anything to do with you. The three of the most senior trump advisers eagerly joined in to see what information they could get and secretly plotting with a kremlin official and then to take it beyond that. Starting a few days later and throughout the rest of the campaign there were many charges and allegations and they turned out to be true that russia was, indeed, meddling covertly in the u. S. Election and all those people in that room, manafort, donald trump jr. And trump senior himself kept denying that russian his anything to do with it. They kept saying thats not true. The democrats are just ginning this up. They had reason to believe from those emails onward that the russians were involved. So they were helping to cover up what the russians were doing. They had inside information and they said the opposite. This already is a big scandal regardless of any of the meetings or anything else we learned about that particular meeting. The th that email seems to be the smoking gun. Shelby, we heard President Trumps lawyer there talking about republican claims that the democrats were somehow mixed up with the ukrainians and trying to redirect there. Tell me more about this. This is something a lot of people do care about because there is evidence that a hillary Clinton Campaign associate went to ukrainians and went to the embassies and asked for information about Paul Manafort. Paul manafort was involved in ukrainian politics a while ago, and he was work other for a prorussian guy. What ended up was there was an investigation and we found out that there was a ledger with alleged payments from this prorussian guy to Paul Manafort. So this came out in the public. It put a lot of pressure Paul Manafort. Paul manafort eventually stepped down from Donald Trumps campaign. It was a big political deal if you remember around the time of the conventions, but when you talk to people who are analyzing both sides of this they say there are big differences here because it was not a top down effort from the ukrainians to interfere in the u. S. Election like we see with intelligence agencies saying it was top down with russia. We did see this come from putin himself. Also russia obtained information by hacking. This Ukrainian Information was obtained by an investigation. Look, i dont think either are great and this gives Trump Supporters a lot of ammo, frankly. Because what they point to whenever anything when trump and russia comes up, clinton was so corrupt trump had to expose it and they see this as doing the same, exact thing and you can argue the nuance that its not the same thing, but it does give fuel to trumps base. I see you shaking your head. Its absolutely not the same thing. Yeah. Whattic mas trumps interaction so dangerous is this isnt one election. We have another election coming up next year and another election in 2020 and the fact that he and his family and his ilk are still trying to cover it up, lets us know that the russians are already in our system and they will continue to be in our system to make sure that they get the outcomes that they want especially when crowe have a leader who has absolutely no idea how the government runs and hes surrounded himself with people who are shaky with understanding what the democracy means and what the constitution means and they love seeing this interplay between the democrats and republicans where there is this quid pro quo and tit for tat. Its absolutely not okay, and investigating manafort is fundamentally different than having putin and his allies come into our system. This is what people do in politics. If you listened to him from the beginning. He said politics is dirty. People play dirt ney politics. To his supporters, they see this as just trump fighting back. It doesnt make it right. What hes done is plant the seed that the media is fake. So now that we are exposing the truth of certain things that has actually happened, they can say its people like yasmin who lie all of the time. Not you specifically. Want to bring joe into this conversation. I know youve been standing by patiently and we appreciate that. Glad to. Lets talk about the trump tweet storm on this whole don junior issue. Is that an effective way to respond to the story or is that a sign that the coverage is getting to him . I think a lot of people would say that theyve had enough of the tweets. I think that a very effective tool for President Trump with his base. His base certainly responds positively to the tweets. They feel like hes under siege and when he tweets, of course, theyre quick to support him. I dont know that thats so for the rest of the country. If this had been a Traditional Campaign and you had a Campaign Counsel would have advised against taking a meeting like this and this was not a Traditional Campaign and don junior took a meeting that was illadvised and sadly, was joined by Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner. Its just unfortunate. Its not going to go away any time soon. It will continue to be investigated, obviously, and it doesnt help in terms of the i dont think it becomes a prosecutable offense and with regard to how it looks with the collusions with russians in the campaign. It leaves a bad taste in everybodys mouth. Had i been don junior i would have come out and told the truth about everyone that was at the meeting. I think to have withheld some of the information only has made it worth. Well talk about whether or not this is a prosecutable offense in the upcoming segment. David, i heard you. I think you want to chime in there. Its more than just leaving a bad taste in ones month here. The Trump Campaign has said literally a million times we had nothing to do with russians. We had no collusion. That is just a big, fat lie. Donald trump said that. Theyve been proven to be totally wrong and that they covered it up. Its not just that theyre wrong. They stonewalled and lied and covered it up. Its a conspiracy. They tried to implement a conspiracy with putins regime and thats nothing compared to one democratic freelance operative trying to get information out of the ukraine which was a democratic government at the time from a corruption investigation that was public, compared to dealing with putin, a repressive regime where they killed dissidents and journalists and we were just saying donald trump jr. , was naive and this is an illadvised meeting and this is profoundly, undemocratic and a threat to National Security and shows that you cant trust anything any one of them says. Its a profound sort of Disaster Point for the republic. As you can tell from this conversation so far we have much more to talk about. Shelby holiday, christina grier. Theyre not going away. Keep it here, everybody. Up next, we continue the conversation on russia with a look into the legal issues and what they mean for trump and his team as this investigation grows. I am joined by an excellent legal Panel Straight ahead and trump at 6 months. Well have experts and a panel of 2016 voters who will tell us whether they would vote the same way now. Keep it here. Then weve got the bendy. Spendy weekenders. The tranquility awaits. Hanging with our mates weekenders and the its been quite a day. So glad we got away weekenders. Whatever kind of weekender you are, theres a hilton for you. Book your weekend break direct at hilton. Com and join the weekenders. When a fire destroyedwith us everything in our living room. We replaced it all without touching our savings. Yeah, our insurance wont do that. No. You can leave worry behind when liberty stands with you™. Liberty mutual insurance. You can use whipped topping made. But real joyful moments. Are shared over the real cream in reddiwip. Reddiwip. Share the joy. I am totally blind. And for years ive struggled with non24, a circadian rhythm disorder that can turn my sleep cycles upside down. It kept me from doing the things i truly love to do. Sometimes id show up early; sometimes i was too late. And sometimes, even though i was there. I didnt really feel. There. Talk to your doctor, and call 8442342424 to learn more. Welcome back, everybody. The president s personal attorney jays a akalou. A russian lawyer and a lobbyist suspected of having ties to russian intelligence. A translator and maybe others met at trump tower during the campaign to discuss dirt on Hillary Clinton. So was it collusion or was it illegal . Sekelow made the rounds insisting there was nothing nefarious in trump juniors meeting with the russians and the everchanging story about it. You used the trade, chuck, coverup and youve had lawyers on your broadcast and everybodys coming to the same conclusion regarding the legality and nothing illegal about the meeting and theres no covering up and that say big word to use and there was nothing illegal to cover up. Nothing came of that meeting and he took to twitter defending his son. Hillary clinton can illegally get the questions to the debate and delete 33,000 emails, but my son don is being scorned by the fake news media. The Washington Post poll out this morning think 63 think it was inappropriate. Andrew shapiro, former assistant secretary of state for mitt cal and military affairs and richard painter, chief white house ethics lawyer under george w. Bush. Welcome to you all and thank you for joining me on a sunday. Was it illegal and if so, what was the crime here . At the end of the day this is bob muellers call. He has a lot more information than we have and hell put all of the pieces together. But i think its helpful to try to give the American People some sense of what hell be looking at and how hell be operating. So this meeting has many of the hallmarks of the type of criminal c