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testify about michael flynn and russian ambassador kislayak. at today s briefing, sean spicer pushed back hard on the allegation and at one point the briefing kind of went off the rails when russia came up. listen. reporter: how does this administration try to revamp its image, 2 1/2 months in, you ve got this yates story today, you ve got other things going on, you ve got russia, you ve got wiretapping. no, we don t have that. regarding the allegations of capitol hill. i have said it from the day that i got here until whenever, that there is no connection. you ve got russia. if the president puts russian salad dressing on his salad tonight, somehow that s a russian connection. but every single person no, sean i appreciate your agenda here, but the reality is, no, hold on, at some point, report the facts. let s talk about the facts tonight, the facts about this white house and those close to it and ties to russia. we want to show you a flowchart just so that ....
another seems to open. enter, the new york times front page story of a secret plan by trump associates said to be backed by kremlin about the armed conflict with russian allied forces within its own borders. in other words, while the fbi s investigating an alleged back channel during the election between russia and the trump campaign, there may be another previously undisclosed back channel between russia and known trump associates. but before we dive into the times report, a little context. throughout the entire russia controversy, the president has repeatedly denied having any russian business ties. i own nothing in russia. i have no loans in russia. i don t have any deals in russia. russia is fake news. russia is fake news. but that s a relatively recent claim. in 2008, for instance, donald trump jr. told an interviewer, russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets, say in dubai and certainly with our project in soho. we see a lot ....
i have recused myself in the matters that deal with the trump campaign. that statement by the attorney general on thursday came after the washington post revealed that sessions met twice last year with russian ambassador sergei kislyak. sessions scrambled to clarify. in retrospect i should have slowed down, but i did meet one russian official a couple of times and that would be the ambassador. sessions met with kislyak on july 18th, after speaking with a group of ambassadors in the republican convention and he met again with the russian ambassador at his office on september 8th, just three days after president obama took a hard line on russian sanctions in a g-20 meeting with vladimir putin. since the election, trump and his surrogates have repeatedly denied any contacted between the campaign and russian officials. i m telling you it s all phony, baloney garbage. all of the contact by the trump campaign and the associates was with the american people. you are not ....
reporter: certainly. that will be a challenge for some of them especially in districts where the president is very popular. if members did not side with him on this. i think the big question right now is will it get to the floor? that s a decision that doesn t reside in the white house. it s really a decision for the majority leaders of the republicans, kevin mccarthy a long with the speaker, they run the floor. if they believe it is sort of a doomed bill, they ve got to make a calculation about tip typically you could see them not put it on the floor with that political exposure for each and every member to be recorded on something that went nowhere. that s typically how this goes. we saw the president saying he wanted a vote. that was a point of leverage. in the time we ve been talking about this and when we ve been updating our own whip counts and describing the mood and the atmosphere, i can assure you, if there were people in leadership who thought we had that wrong, they ....
hackers were targeting the dnc and other democratic operations. by the way, as candidate trump was publicly calling on the russians to publicly hack hillary clinton s e-mails. we don t know the contact or motive before the conversations, but the word they happened is a big real development. we should note the kremlin and donald trump this morning are calling it fake news. cnn s jim sciutto has been working sources all day, all night on this story. jim, bring us up to speed on where we are right now at 9:01 eastern time. i should knnote calling it fe news without the president or the white house responding to the substance of the reporting which we ve asked them to do. let s get to what the reporting is. one, two things caused alarm, raised red flags in u.s. law enforcement and intelligence. first, the volume and frequency of the communications between trump advisers and the russians. communications happen during campaigns, typically at a much lower level and much less frequent t ....