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Interview will avert pending fbi investigation. cynthia mcfadden, nbc news. joining me now, national security analyst clint wats, a former fbi special agent. clint, it's great to have you, and you point out that this story really speaks to how muddy the waters are in the trump campaign, and sort of extended business empire because he never divested. is what we're seeing here, is it an attempt to influence him? is it straight up espionage? is it both of those things? >> yeah, this is one of the lines we just don't know. if you look at cohen's search warrant materials with central consultants ...

One simple question, how many times since the trump administration started have we seen espionage targets that we believe are trying to penetrate the u.s. government show up at the white house, or mar-a-lago, with trump campaign people. you don't need to be specific on those but it will tell you the severity of the problem. that's a better question to ask to get a sense of what the problem is this. is this influence from afar or is this really deep espionage that we need to be concerned about. >> i might clip that and start asking my sources that very question, clint. one thing, another thing ...

Actions. the second is activists. we -- you mentioned vul ny and if we pursue like we used to during the cold war, bring about a democratic system and bring people -- work for the russian people, to help push this regime away, that will put pressure such that we can then negotiate with putin on a one-on-one basis and say we need you to push back on your information warfare and if return we'll be more measured in terms of how we handle your financial constraints and also with activists. so i think there are measures but our president doesn't want to pursue them. >> because the pursuing would be...

Teaming up with new york attorney general eric snierd man on its investigation of former trump campaign chair paul manafort. the story says the collaboration could potentially provide mueller with additional leverage to get manafort to koomt in the larger investigation into trump's campaign. as trump does not, repeat not have pardon power overstate crimes. a senior law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the matter tells nbc news we shouldn't be surprised that two prosecution teams are working together to make sure their investigations are coordinate. in addition, multiple sources te...

Security council officials. but then you have it hit the troll world. there's a troll tracking service that essentially said and it's called security democracy and it shows that today's top messaging priority from the kremlin is fire nsa hr mcmaster. >> yeah. that's clint wats's too many by the way that's now tracking -- >> former fbi agent. >> mr. awesome guy. but most importantly is that what you see now is there is this unspoken alliance between russian intelligence, because that's who runs these trolls. this is what they call the boys from oh linka. they are russian bots that are put out t...