Rachel Maddow takes a look at the days top political news stories. It is now under way. The director of National Intelligence said in a recent speech that the Warning Lights are blinking red and the Digital Infrastructure that serves this country is literally under attack. And here we see the incursions coming. Russian hackers have now already targeted at least three candidates in this years 2018 midterms. Reports one of the targets is missouri democratic senator Claire Mccaskill. So highway donald trump doubts much of this is even occurring, his pentagon chief does say there are secret actions now underway to combat it. What is the government doing to halt russian interference in the next elections . Yeah, im not at liberty to explain what were doing in that regard. Just rest assured there are actions under way to protect our elections or to exposeness
now the question is whether trump lied about the worst possible thing, not the pr afterward, but whether donald trump took actions or had intent about the meeting that could contribute to elements of a crime. Thats not a question posed by say a trump critic tonight or an investigator aggressively looking at these issues or posed by journalists digging into the story. This is now the key question facing the white house courtesy of one of trumps longest serving once most loyal aides, a man with him before most of his current political staff who documented and recorded their interactions. That may be why these new reports say this once loyal team, these two team mates are now dead to each other preparing to bury cohen is what the white house is leaking. Michael cohen used to be a loyal trump friend who gave privileged advice. But cohen is learning trumps return on than loyalty all depends on the situation. And trump certainly isnt taking
cohens counsel anymore. Its a stand i dont find captured by some words of wisdom from a famous song, jukebox joints that says it all depends with friends like you, who needs friends. Sometimes the best advice is no advice especially when its your advice. I turn now to former federal prosecutor joyce vance who has much experience here. I dont think theres any doubt that donald trump is not taking mike cohens advice and counsel anymore. How do you view the significance of this rupturen at types of leaking and back biting that were seeing tonight . This is potentially very significant, ari. You know, prosecutors are hardwired to be cautious. So its important to say that we havent heard this story in cohens own words yet. That will matter. It will also matter if he has any evidence, text pessages or emails that were sent Contemporarily Ha back him up. So far the reporting weve heard is there is no evidence of that nature. But this really is a bombshell. This idea that the president knew about this meeting before it happened and signed off on it, places him squarely inside of collusion with russia. When this kind of information goes public, obviously, prosecutors would rather they held it and no one else knew. How do you interpret that . Its interesting. We dont know the source of these leaks. And frankly, they dont make sense for mueller, certainly the leaks dont come from there. They dont make an awful lot of sense for cohen to be the leaker because as youve pointed out although it doesnt make it impossible for him to cooperate with the Southern District of new york, prosecutors dont like to have their cases being carried out in the media, but it also doesnt make a lot of sense for the president to put this forward unless he knew that this was coming inevitably and they believed it was so damaging that they had to somehow try to get
ahead of the story. Based on the idea that theres other people in the room which was in the original cnn report, what do you make of the possibility that some or even all of those people have already told this information to Special Counsel or is there potentially an effort to get peoples stories straight by talking about it in public . I think thats exactly it the right question. We know, for instance, that is mueller has already talked to hope hicks who would have likely been in the room, would be a strong candidate to be there. Trump junior has already testified up on the hill. So there has been a lot of opportunity for folks under oath to either tell the truth and perhaps already be unbeknownst to us cooperating with mueller or to have lied and subjected themselves to Criminal Charges which could possibly be used against them now to get them to finally reveal the truth. A lot of this looks very bad circumstantially for donald trump. The videos that weve played that might have had other
interpretations when people knew less. Now look more and more incriminating. But i wonder what you make of what trump allies point to that there was no speech given that donald trump may have even shown some what us lawyers would call requisite intent but if he didnt get the goods to give the speech, then was there not the finishing of the act, the over the acs thatted also be needed . What do you think of that defense . You know, at this point, we can speculate a lot of Different Directions about what happened. But the reality is, we dont know what happened in this meeting. We do know what it wasnt about. It wasnt a meeting that was exclusively about adoption. Was it a successful meeting where the russians came in and offered trump something . We dont know that. Was it a meeting where the russians came in and didnt make a full offer and it sort of ended on unfortunate terms and they all left, we dont know that either. But one of the strong
possibilities here is that there was a conversation of some form of future collaboration and then we hear this incredibly awkward moment with trump on july 27th, two years ago, where he says, russia, if youre listening, heres the favor that you can do for me. Come on and deliver hillarys emails. At the time it felt strange and awkward. Now with everything that weve learned in the past few days, perhaps thats the truth of what went on in that meeting in trump tower, that there was a conversation about some form of future cooperation with the campaign and that it came to pass that evening. Just to be clear, youre saying that theres multiple Cover Stories that cover story number one would be adoptions, number two would be oh, this Dossier Type Material on clinton that wasnt any good or usable for the speech but number three, the real action would be hey it, we can do things cyber if you flip the switch and he went on potentially under this theory of the case to flip the switch in public . And the problem here is
because there have been serial mistruths told about what happened in this meeting, we know that it has to have been something significant, something that people want to cover up but we dont know exactly what it is. We do know what it isnt. Its fascinating when you put it like that. Joyce vance, thank you so much for joining us tonight. Thanks. Nbc News National security reporter ken dilanian has been reporting on todays rather short white house meeting on Election Security. His story right now is on nbc news. Com headlines the Trump Administration has no central strategy for Election Security and no ones in charge. Ken, hanks for joining me tonight. Great to see you. Thanks for having me. Your story digs in deeper than just what is blatantly odd about this meeting and its brevity. Walk us through what former and current officials are telling you. Yeah, and this is not some great feat of investigative reporting. This is simply talking to folks
and listening to Cabinet Officials talk in public about their efforts to combat foreign election interference. What they say, for example, the department of Homeland Security secretary in an interview with our own Peter Alexander in aspen talked about the things that the dhs is doing working with the states on election secure security but said thats not enough. We node need a whole of government strategy. She didnt say there isnt one. Thats what everybody you talk to about this said. I was flabbergasted when the white house released a statement that says there has been such a strategy since donald trump took office. I havent found anyone whos seen that strategy. A lot of people say no such strategy exists. The fbi is doing things. They have created a foreign influence tack force. They are trying to focus on this problem of the russians and others interfering in our politics. The russians are on social media as we speak manipulating American Public opinion. The nsa has said they are
stepping up efforts in cyber space. Most of that is secret. We dont have anything that knits this together. We have no leadership from the oval office and this is the kind of issue that requires it because there are some really hard problems like you know, the russians playing on twitter and facebook. Those are private companies. There are first anticipate issues at play. There may be required changes in law or some Public Policy issues. When you dont have the executive Branch Leadership on this, you really lose the power of the full federal government. You dont have a strategy. You have different agencies trying to do what they can. Some of these officials testified to congress including wrist wray, fbi director, they had never been asked by the president to tackle Russian Election interference. Its hard to know what the white house is talking about a strategy from day one. Theres all different states involved. We have a system that decentralizes our elections. Something that didnt get a ton of attention was a proposal in the house to put 380 million
into the state efforts to combat this. Led by democrats. That was defeated by republicans there. How much does this effort also require upgrading what states can handle when the Mueller Investigation is revealed how these countrybacked efforts are going avid states that may not have the cyber know how right now . Yeah, i mean, every State Official you talk to says they need more money, they need upgraded technology. They need more resources. But i actually think that while the sort of vulnerabilities of State Election Systems are troubling, when you think of the three ways the russians attacks the election, they did hack into they attempted to breach 21 states and got into seven. That may have been the least effective method they used though. The most effective was they hacked the Democratic National committee. They hacked john podesta and stole emails and releases them. The second most most effective
was manipulation of Public Opinion on social media. Its hard to measure how much influence that had on election. Thats still going on. They may not touch a State Election Database this time around for their own reasons. But they are every day playing on social media. Theres a website called hamilton 68 that measures some of it on twitter. Theyre trying to divide americans on race, guns, all sorts of issues. And dan coats, director of National Intelligence gab a speech the other day and said this is happening. Theyre interfering in our politics. He didnt say theres nothing were doing about it. We havent deterred, the u. S. Government has not deterred this behavior at all and the attempted hack of Claire Mccaskill suggests the russians are not deterred from trying to hack into political campaigns. You think what were learning about mccaskill, its just scratching the surface. Were just only about 100 days out from the midterms. A lot going on. Ken dilanian, thanks for being here on a friday night. I appreciate it. It has been a big news day. We have a lot to get to, including what happens when you are less than trough when you talk to the u. S. Congress . Someone quite close to this president may be about to find out. More on that in a minute. Stay with us. Mother. Nature sure smells amazing. Even in accounts receivable. Gain botanicals laundry detergent. Bring the smell of nature wherever you are. Do you ever wonder what bob mueller looks like were hes out and about . Is he imposing . Super low profile . We actually got a rare peek today because politico published this photo taken this morning at Reagan National airport in washington, d. C. At gate 35x. You can see the welcome to dca sign there. On your left is Special Counsel bob mueller. He appears to be minding his own business and reading the paper. But thats not all. Over there on the right is donald trump jr. , plus the secret Service Agent who looks kind of annoyed, i think, that someone was attempting to capture this particular moment. You are looking at a prosecutor and a witness passing each other at random. Today muellers office which is
notoriously tight lipped, they rarely respond to any question on the record. They put out this statement confirming that yes, that is him, waiting to board a flight. If it is accurate that the other person in the photo was donald trump jr. , mr. Mueller was not aware of him and had no interaction with him. Which is a bit like when a reporter asked mariah carey asked her about j. Lo and she said, i dont know her. He is very aware right now of trump jr. s role in this Trump Tower Meeting weve been covering. Which Michael Cohen is now ready to say is a thing that trump jr. Lied about how his dad approved it. Now that story first broke on cnn. And nbc news now confirming it with a source and saying that he knew about the officials that saw the a meeting with officials. They are saying that trump knew
and cohen said he will tell mueller if he can. Which raises a Concrete Question everyones been talking about it. I touched on it brieferly with joyce vance. Why leak it right now across the airwaves . No one knows the answer to that at this moment. As for the legal implication, cone is effectively accusing trump junior of a new crime because in september, he told the Senate Judiciary committee he did not alert his father to this meeting ahead of time. Ditto for his reported comments to the House Intelligence Committee that was in december. If this news about what Michael Cohen is willing to tell mueller is true, then it does obviously call donald trump jr. s testimony into serious doubt. Now, the leading democrats on the Senate JudiciaryCommittee Feinstein and leahy are already saying they want donald trump jr. Back in for questioning. Senator leahy wants to question him in public. That would be different as well as under oath. The top democrat on house intel
adam schiff says he wants trump junior back and wants to extend an invite 0 mike cohen, as well while theyre at it. Democrats do not control either of those committees. You could look at those as kind of wishes at least under the Current Organization till anything might change in a future election. Over on the house Intel Committee, republicans have closed out what they view as their russia probe months ago. Done. So can democrats get any fresh answers from trump junior now . Do they get another crack that the or is this all kind of a Fan Fiction Showing how they would use their Subpoena Power, run this investigation if something changes in the november midterms . For more, i turn to congressman eric swalwell, a member of this House Intelligence Committee. Congressman swalwell and other members of the committee met with donald trump jr. For several hours. First of all, thank you for making time for us tonight. I appreciate it. Good evening, ari. When you look at this, if
its True Trump Junior told his father about that, do you view that based on what you heard as a clear crime that he would have committed before the house or is it more copply indicated . More complicated but its clearly a crime and also a crime if Michael Cohen himself was not truthful with the house. Look what, ive learned with donald trump, his family, his soninlaw, his lawyers, none of them have been straight with us about anything weve asked them and they were inoculated by a House Republican investigation that never pressed them to testify under subpoena that never subpoenaed any of the records to check to see if any of their stories actually you know came out the way they were telling us. Youre an investigator here. You just said none of them. Is them the key figures, does that include hope hicks and other staff . Well, so hope hicks, for example, when she was pressed
she would refuse to answer questions and republicans wouldnt subpoena them. Donald trump jr. When he was asked about conversations with his father about the june 9th Trump Tower Meeting he refused to answer. And the republicans did not want to subpoena him to compel him. They didnt want to know. It was a take them at their word investigation which i think we are now seeing was so irresponsible because were learning more every day. Im an optimist. I still believe in the goodness of people and its never too late to do the right thing. If people at home tell their representatives this is wrong we should know what happened and theres still an