that s different than his, perhaps, more gran yu that s different than his, perhaps, more gran ylar daily gripes on twitter where he s talking about former fbi employees, lisa page and peter strzok or bruce ohr, someone who s currently at the justice department who he s threatened w withdraw his security clearance. those are individual cases. the justice department doesn t comment on those. today it was digit becaufferent it was about the attorney general s control over the justice department and felt like it was time to push back and this, oching of courf course, i. he rarely does this. he always, as every single event, sessions goes out of his way to praise the president. to talk about furtherering his agenda. but the one time that he did push back was back in february where, again, the president questioned his integrity. he said what the attorney general had been doing at the justice department surrounding carter page, and surveillance and fisa, those issues that have become also familiar to us now, when the president attacked him calling him a disgrace, it s, again, the time when attorney general jeff sessions hit back and so i think that s what we re seeing. he s not going to react every single day to every single tweet. but when his integrity is questioned, he will have something to say, ana. laura jarrett, we know you re continuing to dig into this. thank you. joining us now to talk more about it all, kaitlyn huey burns, national political reporter for real clear politics. cnn legal analyst and former prosecutor paul callan. and robert bianci, former prosecutor in morris county, new jersey. first reaction from everyone, paul. this is cowardly back stabbing by the president of the united states against an attorney general who has shown enormous integrity and backbone in standing up to mr. trump. the president s been trying to force a resignation of jeff sessions when he, the president, has the right to fire him if he wishes to do so. but the president is too fearful of doing that because it may subject him to obstruction of justice charges. so instead, he s trying to use this backdoor effort of constant berating and attacks on the attorney general, so the attorney general will resign. and i think sessions deserves enormous credit for standing up to the president, showing backbone, and integrity by remaining in office. your reaction, robert? i agree with my colleague here. and i m surprised that i am. not that i agree with you. but he is doing what he s supposed to be doing and not letting politics influence what the justice department is supposed to be doing. now it s interesting to me, when i was appointed to head prosecutor, and you know this, by the governor, i can only be removed for cause. i can t be browbeat out of that office. i think they need to do something so this can t happen again. nevertheless, i ll say one last point, it s interesting to me that the president is so upset about what he s doing with the justice department, because i handled criminal defense cases and when they pass policies that that you have to tappeal to a defense, and the draconian plead guidelines, i wish the president would be concerned about the little guy who s going to jail for a lot less of the policies of this administration. notable to me that the president used the word, loyalty, when he was talking about why he s so upset with jeff sessions and his response, clearly, says, i am not loyal to you. right. and absolutely interesting about this, too, is the way in which the president is continuing to use justice, in quotation marks. i think what you re seeing kind of across agencies, quite frankly, when you were talking about agency heads coming out in public and defending their own agencies, i think it s really striking, considering that they have to stick up for the work of everybody in these agencies. remember, just after the helsinki conference, we saw the heads of the national security and intelligence communities come out and try to stake their own ground on here. here we see jeff sessions doing exactly that as well and the president has berated jeff sessions for months and months without taking that step of actually firing him. i think it s also notable that unlimited ways to live for the moment. all for as low as 30 bucks a line. unlimited for you. for them. for all. get unlimited for as low at 30 bucks per line for four lines at t-mobile. man 1: this is my body of proof. woman 1: proof of less joint pain. woman 2: .and clearer skin. woman 3: this is my body of proof. man 2: proof that i can fight psoriatic arthritis. woman 4: .with humira. woman 5: humira targets and blocks a specific source of inflammation that contributes to both joint and skin symptoms. it s proven to help relieve pain, stop further irreversible joint damage, and clear skin in many adults. humira is the #1 prescribed biologic for psoriatic arthritis. avo: humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened; as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. The latest news from around the world with host Brooke Baldwin. hep c can hide in the body for years without symptoms. left untreated it can lead to liver damage, even liver cancer. the only way to know if you have hep c is to ask your healthcare provider for the simple blood test. if you have hep c, it can be cured. for us, it s time to get tested. it s the only way to know for sure. and pharmacist recommended. garlique.® more breaking news this hour. this time involving the investigation of the president s former lawyer, michael cohen, pleading guilty to multiple crimes. the the wall street journal is now reporting that a longtime crony of the president, david pecker, was granted immunity in that case against cohen. now, pecker is the chief of the publishing company that owns the national enquirer and cohen told a judge he worked with pecker in paying off a former playboy playmate to silence her about her alleged affair with trump. an offense cohen said he committed at the direction and in coordination with trump in order to influence the 2016 election. now, remember, that secret audio of cohen and trump s conversation, david pecker is at the center of it. listen. i need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend, of a witness, of course, is michael cohen? right? we ve seen the president try to downplay his role in his own life, and, you know, think there is a question about his credibility. if you do have these other people corroborating what he is saying, i think that could speak to that. that s beyond my legal purview, but of course. as far as paul, do you think that we re going to now see more potential investigations here in new york given that this is where all of it s happening, but this is a federal case that was open against cohen. could there be a state prosecution or investigation at the very least moving forward? well, that s an interesting question because state attorney generals have been making noises about going after trump on charges all across the country, and, obviouf course, new york h been particularly hostile to him. so much of the media is in new york. now this david pecker thing is very, very interesting because pecker, of course, was the deal that he used to do with trump was he would have these catch and kill arrangements. where if somebody like one of the playboy playmates had a bad story about trump, that trump wanted to kill, the national enquirer would go to the person and say we re going to put you on as a columnist for x amount of money but we re going to buy your story. so that they could never tell the tale of a relationship with trump. it s called a catch and kill arrangement. but federal prosecutors have now come up with a theory that this really is kind of a campaign contribution. it s aiding and abetting a gift in kind to prevent embarrassing information from being disclosed. the same theory that they re using against cohen. so they re being they re being very thorough in this investigation. and now it s really gone to another level when they re starting to look it begs the question, too, as we learn more and more, i m recalling there were more than a dozen women who came out and had allegations against then-candidate trump, kara. could there be more hush payment we don t even know about? i think to paul s point, exactly, the enquirer is in the business of catch and kill and the relationship david pecker has with trump goes back decades. i was doing some research and david pecker, you know, attended trump s wedding, they have this long, rich relationship. and, you know, so if everything stands to reason the way that it s been, i think it makes sense that there possibly could be more payments. i mean, even after the story of stormy daniels and karen mcdougal broke, we had, you know and after the raid of michael cohen, the enquirer ran a story about michael cohen, trump s fixers, secrets and lies. at the time, everyone was saying that david pecker would never have allowed that cover story to run, which is favorable to trump. you know, that would not have happened without david pecker s signoff. that was at least as recently as may where we saw the national enquirer writing a story about michael cohen here, a negative story, so it certainly i think their loyalty extended up until this point, american media and david pecker might have been put in a situation where they were going to be forced to testify before a grand jury and forced into this up munity deimmunity . it would stand to reason to your question that there could well be other women out there because of the allegations you referred to and the catch and kill history of american media. guy, got to leave it there. thank you so much. back to our breaking news. attorney general jeff sessions sending a stinging response to fresh attacks on his department of justice from the president. what cnn just learned about why he s hitting back. and smack in the middle of a wild interview, president trump offers a frightening warning on why he shouldn t be impeached. saying the markets would crash. you ll hear it, next. so you have, your headphones, chair, new laptop, 24/7 tech support. yep, thanks guys. i think he might need some support. yes. start them off right, with the school supplies they need at low prices all summer long. like these for only $2 or less at office depot officemax. bundle and save big, but now it s time to find my dream abode. -right away, i could tell his priorities were a little unorthodox. -keep going. stop. a little bit down. stop. back up again. is this adequate sunlight for a komodo dragon? -yeah. -sure, i want that discount on car insurance just for owning a home, but i m not compromising. -you re taking a shower? -water pressure s crucial, scott! it s like they say location, location, koi pond. -they don t say that. on the new sleep number 360 smart bed. it senses your movement and automatically adjusts to keep you both comfortable. and now, all beds are on sale. save 50% on the new sleep number 360 limited edition smart bed. plus, free home delivery. ends saturday. and works twice as hard when you take it again the next day. stick with zyrtec® and muddle no more®. these are the specialists we re proud to call our own. experts from all over the world, working closely together to deliver truly personalized cancer care. expert medicine works here. learn more at cancercenter.com comcast, building america s largest gig-speed network. back to our breaking story this hour. the president has been berating attorney general jeff sessions for months about his decision to recuse himself from the special counsel robert mueller s rush is a investigation. today, sessions hit back issuing a statement that reads in part, while i am attorney general, the actions of the department of justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations. with us now, cnn political director david chalian, and david, a lot of people have said this is a long time coming. we know the president doesn t take criticism well. how is this going over with trump, do you think? i would imagine not too well. although, the president, as you know, believes very much in the philosophy that when you re punched, you punch back. so he may have some respect here that attorney general sessions is actually standing up for himself and pushing back a bit. where can the president go on this? right? either he s going to fire jeff sessions or not. john cornyn, the number two republican senator, said do not do now, we couldn t get a replacement confirmed. lindsey graham says not until after the election, if you do it before, it s a bad idea. we ll see if that has sway, what the president s thinking on this. it s amazing to watch him trapped in by himself on this because he, of course, has the full right to fire sessions at any time that he wants. the president s comments about sessions leading to the response from sessions is just one of many comments that have caught attention from that interview trump gave to fox news. we know republicans are grappling with how to handle the fallout of michael cohen s guilty plea. the president has a warning for lawmakers. listen. you know, i guess it s something like high crimes and all, i don t know how you can impeach somebody who s done a great job. i tell you what, if i ever got impeached, i think the market would crash. i think everybody would be very poor because without this thinking, you would see you would see numbers that you wouldn t believe. in reverse. this is where we are right now. the president of the united states arguing against his own impeachment, david. yeah. i ve heard lots of arguments against impeachment, actually, on both sides of the aisle. i never heard one that said the president, any president, shouldn t be impeached because the country, everybody, will be poor. that seems to be a bit grasping at straws there, to me, but what i do think you hear the president formulating there is a political argument against impeachment. his former chief strategist, steve bannon, is out there urging every republican to run on this issue, on the threat of impeachment and it s actually also why, ana, you see some democrats concerned about bringing up impeachment on the campaign trail as an issue and a message because it could backfire on them. it really could rally the republican base to come alive in an election season where they ve been a little apathetic than we ve seen in the primary season in terms of turnout. if the idea that the entire trump presidency is on the line, that could awaken some republicans which democrats fear. trump also said flipping should be outlawed. listen. he made a great deal because he was in another business totally unrelated to me where i guess there was fraud involved and loans and taxicabs and all sorts of things. nothing to do with me. he makes a better deal when he uses me. i know all about flipping. for 30, 40 years, i ve been watching flippers. everything s wonderful then they get ten years in jail and flip on whoever the next highest one is or as high as you can go. it almost ought to be outlawed. david, what does this tell you about how the president s mind works and h his view on the rule of law? yeah, well first of all, i don t know what almost ought to be outlawed is, either it s outlawed or not. i m not quite sure about his words choice there, but, yeah, it makes your ears perk up. the chief law enforcement officer of the land, the executive who oversees the execution of the laws of the land, is now saying there s this tool that law enforcement uses to get criminals behind bars that take lower-level people, get them to flip and share information, that he s saying almost should be outlawed. it just is mind-boggling and all you have to do is look at his attorney, rudy giuliani s record as a prosecutor, about the people he s flipped. the president, himself, indicates he s seen this a lot and is a commonly used tool in law enforcement and, of course, now the president thinks, perhaps, it should be outlawed because it s working to his personal disadvantage. david chalian, thank you for your take. new revelations from the deliberation room in paul manafort s trial. what a juror is saying about the single holdout who prevented a conviction on all 18 counts. hey allergy muddlers. are you one sneeze away from being voted out of the carpool? 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(vo) imagine a visibly healthin 28 days. purina one. natural ingredients, plus vitamins and minerals in powerful combinations. for radiant coats, sparkling eyes, and vibrant energy. purina one. 28 days. one visibly healthy pet. to look at the paper trail. we laid it out in front of her again and again. and she still said that she had a reasonable doubt, and that s the way the jury worked. we didn t want it to be hung. so we tried for an extended period of time to convince her, but in the end, she held out and that s why we have ten counts that did not get a verdict. joining us now, cnn legal analyst joey jackson, a criminal defense attorney, and ashleigh banfield, host of hln s crime and justice with ashleigh banfield. your reaction to paula duncan, a trump voter, saying she was ready to convict manafort on all counts. i think we have the same reaction, slack jaw for starters. if i had a dime for every time there was one holdout in a case, i think we d be sitting here. that s true. yeah. here s the deal, you look at that and you say, if he s headed to the district of columbia, where the jury pool is entirely different and not quite as friendly, he is in for a really rough go. a very rough ride considering many of the charges are similar. yes, there are different one ro but the same kind of fact patterns they re going to lay out. if you re paul manafort at this stage, looking at eight to ten years, there s a whole reason for eight to ten years, that s the reality the guidelines. even though it could be dozens of years. right now, honestly, you could add them all up. the way the guidelines are formulated in federal sentencing, it s really about eight to ten years for the new york problem that he just cultivated. he s only 69. so he s got a shot at life afterwards. but in d.c., if you want to add those charges, he doesn t have a shot. so knowing now what they know about the way that jury reacted, i sense that he is thinking long and hard about cutting a deal to get the heck out of d.c. so that may be what manafort is thinking. i m wondering what mueller s team is thinking during that, joey, as they re thinking, you know, we were one juror away from a slam dunk on all counts. what s their big takeaway going into the next trial? you know, i think the takeaway, first of all, is the jury system works. i m heartened by what we saw there. let me just explain why. you have this very diplomatic juror who we saw who i m sure was very frustrated having listened to all the evidence. you remember they came back out and said give us an instruction on reasonable doubt. that s why we always say you never can read when readback, if it s for everyone or one person, they re trying to convince this person. the fact she s a trump supporter and said, look, the evidence was overwhelming, establishes to me it worked. it also establishes to me it worked based upon the fact you have one holdout. to ashleigh s point, if we had a ho nickel for every we have different people evaluate things digitally. if you re on mueller s team, you re knowing we have comp compelling evidence and absent this one person we cowell have gotten really unanimous as to all 18 counts. so i think it emboldens them, establishes that they re doing what they have to do. they re put to the test in a court of law by defense attorneys who are scrutinizing that evidence and overwhelmingly presenting favorable evidence to these jurors. she talked about the evidence. it wasn t who testified. it was the paper trail. that s right. that really is what she said made it obvious to her that this charge was, in fact, a conviction. but ashleigh, the juror also said she wished manafort had testified and said she wished the defense had done more, had said beformore. remember, they didn t put a single witness before the jury. in retrospect, did manafort s team mess up. if i had a nickel for every time a defendant didn t testify, i also wouldn t be sitting here. i will say this, i don t think that would have helped. that juror gave us an indication about how she felt about the last important witness on the stand, rick gates. they tossed it all out. had no interest in hearing anything rick gates said as excruciating as the material was for manafort. you put manafort up on the seat and he s facing this ugliness and they re confronted with all of his documents showing he s not particularly honest. i don t think that would have spelled anything better for him than he got. yeah, ana, it s true, i think jurors want symmetry. if one person goes, they want to know what the other person has to say. you have to evaluate that, experienced prosecutors are going to make you look really bad. remember what this juror said, that he seemed nervous, any witness can seem nervous, he was self-interested because of the deal he cut and as a result of that, day threw it out. that s why the documentary evidence, right, the hardcore evidence that hthey have, porin over papers and documents and e-mails and text messages and bank accounts and everything else, that s why it s so compelling. it heartens me to know, we don t know the composition, republican/democrat of the juror. we about her. she said she knows who she supports. we know this lone juror, with could sum mize. i think as a person who does this, you re hearten by what they do. civic responsibility. the whole thing about the flipping because rick gates flippflip flipped, right? the president tweeted today we shouldn t allow this, this should almost be illegal. that s not part of the process. this is the process. rick gates flipping, anybody flipping, it s how the legal system works. if we don t have that, you wouldn t have any convictions anywhere. and guess what, he flipped and they still didn t care. so the justice system worked. that guy flipped. the jury didn t like that he flipped. they discounted what he said. and they still convicted partially. so this whole tweet from the president about outlawing flipping is just balderdash. let me remind our viewers that the next trial is on september 17th, when it s scheduled to start. paul manafort. in d.c. and according to the reports, the mueller team has three times the amount of evidence for this next trial that they had in this trial. so we ll see where things go between now and then. it will be very interesting to have the next something called the pardon. remember? so maybe he holds out for that. a whole other segment. yes. we re going to talk more about that as we continue. look for that. thank you for that tease for our shows. we re going to get there later today. so much to talk about, guys. good to have thyou. speaking of flipping, look at these guys. i ll talk to someone who says he knows of a time when the guy on the left, donald trump, himself, flipped. need to get all your school supplies today. school. grade. done. done. hit the snooze button and get low prices on school supplies all summer long. like these for only $2 or less at office depot officemax. when we switched our auto and home insurance. $2 or less with liberty, we could afford a real babysitter instead of your brother. hey! oh, that s my robe. is it? when you switch to liberty mutual, you could save $782 on auto and home insurance. and still get great coverage for you and your family. call for a free quote today. you could save $782. liberty mutual insurance. liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. the doctor just for a shot. with neulasta onpro patients get their day back. to be with family, or just to sleep in. strong chemo can put you at risk of serious infection. in a key study neulasta reduced the risk of infection from 17% to 1%, a 94% decrease. neulasta onpro is designed to deliver neulasta the day after chemo and is used by most patients today. neulasta is for certain cancer patients receiving strong chemotherapy. do not take neulasta if you re allergic to it or neupogen (filgrastim). an incomplete dose could increase infection risk. ruptured spleen, sometimes fatal as well as serious lung problems, allergic reactions, kidney injuries and capillary leak syndrome have occurred. report abdominal or shoulder tip pain, trouble breathing or allergic reactions to your doctor right away. in patients with sickle cell disorders, serious, sometimes fatal crises can occur. the most common side effect is bone and muscle ache. ask your doctor about neulasta onpro. pay no more than $5 per dose with copay card. for one of many, you know, they always say the lawyer then they like to add the fixer. well, i don t know if it was a fixer. i don t know where that term came from. but he s been a lawyer for me. didn t do big deals. did small deals. not somebody that was with me that much. you know, they make it sound like i didn t live without him. i upd minderstood michael cohen well. turns out he wasn t a good lawyer, frankly. during the campaign, trump enlisted cohen as one of his foot shoal joldiers. tasked with defending trump, and showering trump with praise are rallies. i want to tell you about the real donald trump, the man who i have been fortunate enough to work for and stand by shoulder to shoulder for a decade. i m not so sure that s true. i worked for mr. trump now for a long time. don t throw the punch unless you re prepared to get hit back. he s friends with everybody. everybody gets along with trump. until he isn t. until they do something wrong to him. as the son of a holocaust survivor, it s hard to sit back, actually it s morally wrong to sit back and do nothing when someone who you know, someone who you hold in great esteem and truly care about, is being so viciously attacked. in all fairness, who hasn t said something or done something that they regret, simply trying to protect somebody that they care about? investigative reporter david k. johnson joins us now. he s written a few books about trump including it s even worse than you think: what the trump administration is doing to america. david, good to see you. you know the orbit as well as anyone. fact check trump s claim that he wasn t that close with cohen. oh, for ten years, this was the guy who handled the most sensitive things donald had to hide. that s why he s the lawyer on the mcdougal and stormy daniels hush money payments because donald knew he could trust him to do his dirty work and conceal what he really is like from the public which is part of donald s job as a con artist, to fool people into thinkig he s a billionaire when he s not. to thinking he s a master businessman when he s not. david, you write that cohen s guilty plea makes trump more vulnerable, that it opens the door to state criminal charges for trump, his company, even his kids. how do you see it? well, in june, in d.c. report, the non-profit news organization that aai and other people run, we reported that the state of new york and the city the manhattan district attorney, should be conducting criminal investigations of the trump foundation because the trump foundation was being used as a personal cookie jar for donald trump. the reason it s important that we have state criminal investigations, which we now have, by the way, is because mueller could be shut down, trump could pardon people on a federal level, but the indictment of criminals done by the state of new york, their conviction and prosecution is entirely separate. and if donald trump, in fact, has committed crimes, he should be pursued just as you or i would be, ana, if we committed crimes. and, yet, he is in his tweets, in his words, suggesting the criminals are not necessarily the bad guys. in fact, he also said flipping should be outlawed, but you actually tell the story that trump, himself, has flipped? well, trump in the past when he was caught involved in sales tax cheating, he went to the authorities very quickly and turned in other people. there s reason to believe, but i don t have absolutely perfect evidence, that in two of the four federal grand juries he beat, he ratted out other people. and this is the language of a crime boss. it s not the language of someone who s a public servant. and that leads me, you teed up this tweet from preet bharara, former u.s. attorney of the southern district, when he saw trump s comments about flipping, he tweeted this. simply, mob boss. your reaction? well, donald trump donald trump is the third generation head of a white collar criminal family. he spent his entire life, which i document in my books, swindling people, cheating people, not paying people. he s been found by judges to have engaged in conspiracies to cheat people. he was tried twice civilly for income tax fraud. really egregious income tax fraud for which i think he should have been prosecuted. so overall, afa, it is, i believe, absolutely critical that the state of new york treat donald trump like any other citizen. they investigate him, and i m totally confident they will find evidence of numerous crimes and he should then be indicted and prosecuted. we ll see where the trail leads, where the evidence trail leads. david cay johnston, thank you for having us. we ll you back as the story continues to play out. moments ago protesters chanting shame on you as republican congressman duncan hunt and his wife walked out of a california courtroom accused of misusing more than a quarter million dollars in campaign funds. what they said to the judge. but first, discover the inspiring life and career of justice ruth bader ginsburg. rbg. a new cnn film airs september 3rd at 9:00 p.m. here on cnn. here s a sneak peek. my mother died when i was 17. i wish i could have had her longer. well, her mother must have been a very steely person because she had cancer a long time and lived trying to get her child through high school. she had two lessons that she repeated over and over. be a lady. and be independent. be a lady meant don t allow yourself to be overcome by useless emotions like anger and by independent, she meant it would be fine if you met prince charming and lived happily ever after, but be able to fend for yourself. it was the last song of the night. it felt like my heart was skipping beats. they said i had afib. what s afib? 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this just into the cnn newsroom, one of president trump s earliest republican supporters has plead the not guilty to federal charges of stealing a quarter million dollars in campaign funds. shame on you! shame on you! shame on you! a crowd of protesters cha chanting shame as gop congressman duncan hunter walked out of a courtroom in san diego a short time ago. hunter and his wife, margaret, indicted on charges of using campaign funds to fund their lavish lifestyle. prosecutors say, for example, they bought clothe s in a golf pro shop but claims they bought golf balls for wounded c eed wa. the indictment charges the hunters with taking vacations in italy, hawaii, going on shopping sprees at costco and walmart, even buying a plane ticket for their pet rabbit. the congressman calls the cha e charges purely political. this is the new department of justice, this is the the democrats arm of law enforcement. that s what s happening right now and happening with trump and happening with me and going to fight through it and win and the people get to vote in november, so we ll see. cnn national reporter, she was in hunter s court appearance today. what happened? reporter: so, ana, really big day for the hunters here in san diego. as you said, they both pleaded not guilty. they arrived separately which was interesting since they are charged with conspireing with one another to steal a quarter million dollars in campaign funds to furnish their lavish lifestyle. they both said very little in court today and very little interaction between them. just answering the judge, you know, with a not guilty plea. at one point, the judge asked duncan hunter to lawfully transfer his firearms to someone else. so he ll have to do that immediately. and he was given he s out on $15,000 bail. his wife got $10,000 bail. so, first it was chris collins who was the first house republican to endorse trump who also was criminally indicted who decided to suspend his re-election campaign. what does this mean for hunter s re-election bid? given he is in a republican strong hold district where veterans compose nearly lly 10 eligible voters? reporter: exactly. right near here in eastern san diego county, hunter s district, it is a staunch republican district as you said. and cnn has been talking to voters out there, a lot of them are still kind of sifting through this indictment. trying to figure out what to make of the charges and the breathtaking detail in there. but it s really going to be interesting to see whether veterans and defense contractors continue to stand behind duncan hunter who succeeded his father in that congressional seat. that s really been the pillar of his campaign support. as long as he s been in office, and these are really serious charges. he is, of course, taking a page from the trump playbook saying that this is all politically motivated as you saw in that clip right there. and he is defipt as ever. said he s going to fight the charges and excited about the trial ahead. ana? thank you. this is cnn news breaking. hello, i m ana cabrera in for brooke baldwin. thank withdrew fyou for rolling into the top of the hour as we continue our breaking news coverage involving the president and the man he chose to lead the justice department. here is attorney general jeff sessions just leaving the white house moments ago. he was scheduled to talk prison reform with the president. this face to face happened minutes after sessions fired back in war of words with the president responding to trump
for the principle purpose of influencing the election. president trump today is claiming that those campaign violations are, quote, not a crime. that s not what the justice department said and same president named as individual one in the plea deal. you can believe individual one who is implicated in the crimes. the president. who does have a long and storied history of saying thing that is aren t true. or you can believe career prosecutors at the justice department, two federal judges and a jury of paul manafort s peers but you have to pick one or the other. another falsehood of the president saying that he did not learn of the hush money payments until after they d been made. despite the fact, of course, that michael cohen recently released an audio recording of september 2016 in which donald trump can be clearly heard discussing a potential payment to playboy model karen mcdougall and president trump verified that tape tweeting at the time, what kind of a lawyer would tape The day s top stories from around the world, from politics and money, to sports and pop culture. happen in the political investigations. reporter: the president also claiming today that cohen s campaign finance violations are, quote, not a crime and falsely claiming that president obama s campaign had similar issues. if you look at president obama, he had a massive campaign violation. but he had a different attorney general. and they viewed it differently. reporter: obama s campaign paid a $375,000 fine from the federal election commission for reporting errors and never accusations that aides intentionally sought to conceal contributions that violated the law. cohen reaching a deal with prosecutors on charges related to the hush money payments to two women claiming to have affairs with trump. that s what donald trump is, he s an unindicted co-conspirator. reporter: the court documents have references to trump blind sided the president. sources told cnn as legal risk now we know because of these tapes. yes, he did know about it. he said i didn t know about it until later. whatever that means. later than what? so they have zero credibility on this story as on so many. does it matter? yes. in the grand scheme of things. but will it matter to trump supporters? no, it won t. it doesn t. because they re looking at the they think he s been under siege the entire time and believe him first and foremost. we ll see if it matters in the midterms for those that voted for trump, because they re republicans and not part of the trump train. that remains to be seen. in terms of, you know, whether the president s lying about this, i think at this point it s baked in. so, kaitlan collins, our able white house correspondent tried to push sarah sanders on this issue. take a listen. in his interview today, the president said he found out about those payments that michael cohen made later on but i heard this as a defense. i ll come back do you in a moment. jen, president trump has been paying off people, women inclouded, for years, to keep their mouths shut. might not be the most happy explanation for religious people or moral people, people who believe in the sanctity of marriage but maybe it wasn t expressly related to the presidency. thank you for bringing us donald trump. this might be a point they make and bizarre to be one of the talking points. what you saw michael cohen say in the courtroom yesterday was that this was he knowingly did it, related to the election. he was convicted of a federal crime. he is now the sitting president of the united states. and he was just implicated in a federal crime. i think there s a difference between being a sitting president and what he did as scandalous as it may have been. it s dicey to suggest it s about collusion and this doesn t prove collusion and the other stuff. on the factual basis. but the president obviously said something today that wasn t true, didn t know about it until after the fact. how the white house responds. you mean sarah sanders. not the president. he s part of the president, to. president sanders handled it and donald trump have lied about this, this instance. michael cohen said he did this on his own. the president didn t know about it. now the president directed know do it. so it s not just the president wh who s told different stories on this. it s also michael cohen. when you have a credible claim and i think you have laid out, multiple other reasons why someone would pay this money, this is a very, very hard case to prove that he s broken campaign finance laws. do you think it makes a difference, a difference in the midterm elections, a difference in the trump presidency or is everybody just in their corners and it is going to remain as it has been? two different things. midterm elections you saw democrats came out today and they really didn t want to talk about impeachment or ruffling the feathers before the midterm elections. they don t want to energize trump s voters. republicans won t move to impeachment where they want trump voters supporting them and they don t need to at this point. in the midterms, no. yesterday should be and i think could be a turning point as we look back six months from now as to when democrats may want to lay the case and after the outcome of the mueller investigation. it is true that this isn t linked to russia currently but there are a lot of links that mao michael cohen and that all of these players, paul manafort, have to russia, a lot more about that that we ll still learn. stick around. we have lanny davis saying there s potential things an links that michael cohen wants to talk about and knows something that mueller will want to hear. thousands of dollars on a flight for a pet rabbit? 30 tequila shots. hawaiian shots and hotel rooms. which member of congress is accused of spending this kind of money? stick with us. a hotel can make or break a trip. and at expedia, we don t think you should be rushed into booking one. that s why we created expedia s add-on advantage. now after booking your flight, you unlock discounts on select hotels right until the day you leave. add-on advantage. discounted hotel rates when you add on to your trip. only when you book with expedia. so you have, your headphones, chair, new laptop, 24/7 tech support. yep, thanks guys. i think he might need some support. yes. start them off right, with the school supplies they need at low prices all summer long. like these for only $2 or less at office depot officemax. mom: okay we need to get all your school supplies today. school. grade. done. done. hit the snooze button and get low prices on school supplies all summer long. like these for only $2 or less at office depot officemax. bundle and save big, but now it s time to find my dream abode. -right away, i could tell his priorities were a little unorthodox. -keep going. stop. a little bit down. stop. back up again. is this adequate sunlight for a komodo dragon? -yeah. -sure, i want that discount on car insurance just for owning a home, but i m not compromising. -you re taking a shower? -water pressure s crucial, scott! it s like they say location, location, koi pond. -they don t say that. media did the payment of sorts to karen mcdougall it s not come pain money so it s not a come pain violation. true? two. we have a federal judge as well as federal prosecutors that accepted the plea and the notion that the president can undue the bl whethwhether this is or not is silly. it has to do with disclosures. coming from the company, that s a violation. whether it came from him through cohen, nondisclosed. that s the problem. the campaign and election laws care about knowing where the money is going and people know how to vote and when s paying for these campaigns. that s the problem and the issue with whether it was knowing, the notion that it was handed over in order to affect the outcome of the campaign, that is we don t want this information coming out because it s going to hurt the candidate, that makes it a crime. michael cohen said, and pleaded to, he did this directed by president trump, coordinated by president trump then candidate trump to affect the election. but the president s defenders have argued and again this is an odd defense but this guy s been paying off women to keep their mouths shut for a listening time, not just women, other people, too. not necessarily related to the presidential election. do they have an argument to make? they have to come up with something. john edwards made a similar argument having to do with my girlfriend, not campaign. but the timing and the circumstances are so different and the edwards case, it was months if not years removed and it was a current girlfriend. this was people he had affairs with allegedly ten years ago on the very doorstep of the election so the timing s very different and the actions mr. trump took to make the payments, through the attorney, through a corporation. prosecutors argue would be to disguise the nature of the transaction, all circumstantial evidence of wrongdoing or criminal intent. cohen said in court that trump directed limb him to quie women. why wouldn t they have that in writing as to what he pleaded to? so, the statement that cohen made during the actual you know, i m not sure exactly why that itself wouldn t have been in the document. perhaps seth has a thought on that. does it even matter? i mean, he said it in open court under oath and the court accepted the plea. if it weren t an actual crime and evidence supporting the allegations that he was pleading guilty to the article 3 judge wouldn t accept this. so a president, the justice department guidelines are a president can t be indicted. does this just take it to the political realm of impeachment? only legal ramification here potentially? big ramification. i think that s right. i m of the opinion a sitting president should not be indicted. there s a process if the president goes south. to allow an individual federal prosecutor or state prosecutor to indict the president and allow 12 jurors to decide the fate of the president could run amuck and an impeachment proceeding to take police and i think that s where this can head up. i have a different view on that. sure. there s a debate. there s a debatement ken starr s office as well as another concluded that you could indict a sitting president. you could? you could. yes. it s not clear in the constitution. people talk about plain reading the constitution whether to indict a sitting president is not in there. i think the structure assumes accountability for every member of our government and to the extent of which congress right now is sort of out to lunch, not actually doing their oversight role here, the notion that there would be no accountability potentially if this political process fails i think is a problem. i do think you could in theory indict a sitting president and put it under seal. the public wouldn t know. after he finishes office then those cases could go forward on the theory that we would have to go to the statue of limitations. the issues really boil down to is it going to interfere with his ability to execute the law under article ii? if it s quiet, if the public isn t aware, i don t think it interferes. a final question, both of you, which is, president trump s defenders and president trump himself have suggested that because manafort was only found guilty of eight of the 18 charges, the other 10 were resulted in a hung jury or mistrial on the 10 and president trump wrote 10 not decided in the paul manafort case. witch hunt. i don t know what that has to do with that there. as a former prosecutor, are you lap pi with that result? as a defense lawyer, that s not a good day for me and my client. defending an individual client an they got con convicted on bank fraud, tax evasion, with sentencing guidelines that could be from 10 to 20 years. so mr. trump s statement is a wishful thinking. not reality. it was a bad day for mr. manafort clearly and for the trump organization as a whole. what do you think? yeah. politically, too, where i think the white house now stumbling. running out of ways of spinning this in a way that s not absolutely damaging and i think we re seeing the house is going to fall. the house of cards eventually. not sure how it comes down but this is not sustainable in a popsicle stand let alone the white house and the executive branch of government in the united states. thanks so much for being here. appreciate it. if michael cohen answers lawmakers questions, again, will that spell new trouble for president trump? the vice chairman of the senate intelligence committee responds to that next. to look at me now, you don t see psoriasis. you see clear skin. you see me. but if you saw me before cosentyx. i was covered. it was awful. but i didn t give up. i kept fighting. i got clear skin with cosentyx. 3 years and counting. clear skin can last. see if cosentyx 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davis also offering cohen to testify to any congressional committee regarding the 2016 trump tower meeting with russians without immunity. one reason? cohen s long-time support of the president the next president of the united states of america. reporter: as wavered. it s been a evolution to his loyalty of president trump. he has regrets about. reporter: the regrets played out in tuesday s plea agreement where it s clear just after trump announced the candidacy in 2015, cohen was already working on a plan to quash any bad press about trump. quote, the defendant and one or more members of the campaign offered to help deal with negative stories about individual one s relationships with women. individual one is trump. two of those women karen mcdougall and stormy daniels who cohen admitted to paying off in 2016 just weeks before the election. cohen told a judge he did the 2016 hush money payments for the principle purpose of influencing the election and stunned the courtroom by admitting he took part in fact payments in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office, a major contradiction to when the president told reporters he had no knowledge of any payments. did you know about the $130,000 payment to stormy daniels? no. no. reporter: davis says cohen s courtroom moment was a turning point. he s stepped up to the line and he can now speak again and he feels liberated. reporter: and trump s team saying cohen s admissions are on him and him alone and that the president didn t do anything wrong here and hasn t committed a crime. jake? thank you. joining me now is democratic senator mark warner of west virginia, vice chairman of the senate intelligence committee. thank you so much for joining us. as you know, michael cohen s lawyer lanny davis claims that michael cohen has evidence that the president knew about the hacking of the dnc e-mails before that even happened and also says that the president might michael cohen might know more about possible collusion with the russians. do you have any evidence? do you know of any evidence that might back any of that up? jake, i m not going to comment of what mr. cohen testified to our committee as the chairman and i said yesterday. we ve reconnected with mr. cohen. we had to clear up some of the earlier testimony and we hope that his plea deal would not preclude him from coming back before our committee. so i m anxious to hear if he s got information about the collusion or knowledge of the russian hacking before the leakage of that information and we have questions for him about his involvement in the proposed moscow trump tower. there are open questions on that issue, as well. so, if mr. davis is going to make him available to mr. mueller, i hope he s available to our committee, as well. how can you rely on what michael cohen says? i mean, hasn t he contradicted publicly or his lawyers have contradicted publicly things he said behind doors closed to your committee under snoet. clearly you will have to take some of mr. cohen s comments in context just as you have to take mr. trump s comments in context. i still remember that video of mr. trump saying i believe on air force one he had no knowledge of any payments to the adult porn star and clearly there s evidence not only knowledge but may have instructed now. so obviously, any of mr. cohen s comments taken in that context and what other substantiating information? remember, we and much more than we, the mueller team has literally thousands and thousands of other individual s testimony and the ability to then corroborate or deny what cohen might say. it might be a missing piece. senator, michael cohen implicated president trump in federal court yesterday telling a judge that the payments he made to karen mcdougall and stormy daniels in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office. do you think that president trump committed a crime? if so, what will or can you do about it? well, again, i think that s for court of law to figure out or another process to figure out but it does seem from at least what i have seen in the public press of the timing of these payments and the fact then candidate trump was under a great deal of scrutiny of the hollywood access tape and seems like the time line and logic follows but as i said earlier, with both mr. cohen and mr. trump, neither one of these have been exactly people that are always on the straight and narrow in terms of the truth. take a listen to your fellow senator republican orrin hatch of utah this morning. he was asked about what these charges say about the type of people the president surround himself with. take a listen. naturally, makes you very concerned but, you know, the president shouldn t be held responsible for the actions of people he trusted. the president should not be held responsible for the actions of people he trusted. your response? i have a great deal of respect for senator hatch but i can t think in my lifetime and i remember richard nixon when there s been this many people that have been indicted or guilty pleas, where you have the president s campaign manager, the president s lawyer, we have got the president s first national security adviser pleading guilty, we have potentially family members and others still under investigation. we have got mueller with over 30 other indictments now. other presidential appointees like his foreign policy adviser pleading guilty who clearly acknowledges the russians reached out to him with compromising information. i think you are judged by the company you keep. let s ask you a question, senator. based on what you know and you know more than the rest of us, did america have free and fair elections in 2016? you know, jake, i m not here to relitigate 2016. you have a you have a knowledgeable take on what happened. we are talking about stormy daniels, karen mcdougall, russian collusion, all of this is about 2016. it is simple. you know more than the rest of us. did we have free and fair elections? jake, our committee s going to finish this process. we ve already finished on election security and also confirmed that the russians intervened to help trump and hurt clinton. we have elections in 65 odd days and as we have seen in the last 24 hours, as well, from microsoft, facebook and twitter, our foreign adversaries are still using the internet to try to interfere in our political debate and in our election cycle. senator warner, vice chairman of the intelligence committee, thank you so much. thank you. a congressman on a nice european vacation? not a big deal. spending hundreds of thousands of dollars at target, tequila shots from campaign funds, that lands you in legal trouble. we ll explain why and who. there that 1 in 30 boomers has, yet most don t even know it. a virus that s been almost forgotten. it s hepatitis c. hep c can hide in the body for years without symptoms. left untreated it can lead to liver damage, even liver 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boys, please? i ve been saving a lot of money with progressive lately, so. progressive can t protect you from becoming your parents. but we can protect your home and auto when you bundle with us. another early trump supporter on capitol hill accused of living a corrupt lifestyle. this time, congressman duncan hunter of california. according to charging documents he and his wife essentially broke but they were living large off of campaign money taking trips around the world, buying gichts for friends and a plane ticket for a rabbit. the indictment alleges that hunter a marine corps veteran bought clothes for himself and tried to purchase it off as golf balls for wounded warriors. congressman hunter is dismissing the claims as a political hit job. what i am is a representative to you and a campaign finance stuff i was not watching it close enough. i have fixed it now. i have fixed it now. it is all straightened out. reporter: for nearly two years, congressman hunter maintained that any misuse of campaign funds was accidental. when i start explaining it, it sounds like excuses. the buck stops here. reporter: 60-count federal indictment against hunter and wife margaret paints a portrait of campaign of 30 shots of tequila and a steak, hawaiian shorts at a golf pro shop to falsely describe the purchase later as golf balls for wounded warriors and roughly $300 worth of goods at target including a white duck, two punky brewster items and a ring pop. i run as you could call me the right conservative wing of the republican party. reporter: in an effort to justify a family trip to italy, hunter allegedly tried to set up a tour of the naval base there. but when officials said they couldn t make the date work, hunter told his staff, tell the navy to go f themselves. when campaign staffers and the treasurer tried to raise concerns, hunter allegedly said they were trying to create a paper trail. i ll be out there campaigning for him, standing in for him. reporter: now charged with violations, wire fraud and filing false campaign reports, the hunters claim the charges are politically motivated. pointing to the fact that prosecutors on the case attended a clinton campaign event. if they can cloud his name before the election, they take his seat, a republican seat, they put it in the democrat column. that s the reason they have done the late hit. reporter: multiple sources familiar with the case tell cnn the ultimate charging decision was made by u.s. attorney adam braverman, a career prosecutor appointed by attorney general sessions. founding member of the trump caucus in the house in the 2016 campaign duncan hunter, mr. president. reporter: he marks the second early trump backer along with republican congressman chris collins facing criminal charges heading into november s election. congressman hunter s democratic opponent has already seized on these charges. in a new ad saying this just shows he was all in it for himself and he said he did nothing wrong and the doj is an arm of the democrats. making a first appearance tomorrow in court in san diego. thank you so much. let s talk about this. department of justice is an arm of the democrats? a department of justice of sessions and trump? they re so devious. even a republican administration they get their people in there. here s the good news part of this. it is the system working part of the story. this is the second member of congress who endorsed donald trump at a time when that kind of legitimacy was badly needed and he is facing the law dispassionately applied so that s the good news. the bad news you mentioned before. all of the really tawdry examples of incredible selfishness on his part and indifference to the appearances. you used to work at the dccc and i remember in 2006 you all had a culture of corruption thing, after the jack abrahamoff scandal and we hear the dccc doing the same thing now. right. we back lack. last time democrats won back the house. something effective not just in washington or not really in washington but districts around the country and we would pick a crony of the week and an above the fold headline in the scranton paper. i remember one. this is something that people can identify with because corruption and people living by a different set of rules is manager that even if you re worried of food on the table matters. that s why democrats are trying to get focus on the issue this year. chris collins is not running for re-election. there s some weird way they get him out of running for the seat in new york. but duncan hunter who represents a rather republican seat, he s not stepping down it doesn t look like. looks like he goes forward. paul ryan removed him from his committee and enjoying the benefits of being a member of congress and just charges. he s not convicted of anything. yeah. look this is not a good story. it s if he did anything near what approaches in that indictment, i i m speechless. you were off camera. i just you know, you just can t believe that a person in congress today could think they could do this and get away with it. just the stupidity of doing things like this is overwhelming. having said all that, the timing of this stinks. and i say that, i know people are going to go back and check and it s true. when james comey did the hillary clinton thing before the i scream. i say he should not be doing this. it s wrong. to have these two indictments, eight weeks, nine weeks, ten weeks, whatever it is, before the election, that stinks. the idea you can t wait until after the election and then have this thing come out to do it when people are stuck on the ballot, that is that is the justice department being political and it s wrong. the counter argument might be they re bringing the charges when they have the no. you don t you don t inject yourself. it is an allegation. he has no chance to respond other than to say it s wrong. no trier of fact. nothing to defend himself in the face of these allegations. not the right thing to do. when you read through the indictment, there is quite a bit. e-mails between the congressman and treasurer. they cite this evidence and it really is quite damning. it is an accusation. but it s not like he said/she said situation right now. it is the timing stinks. so one of the most shocking charges is them the hunters, duncan and his wife, going to he needed a pair of shorts, going to a golf store to buy the shorts so that they could disguise the purchase as golf balls that they were going to say they bought for veterans. that is a shocking allegation. also cynical as you can get. he s a veteran. one would think he would no better. here s the worrisome thing. there s always been corruption and both sides of the aisle and we have this tendency since we have become so polarized for republicans to now be upping the ante every bad act so you find people like matt schlapp saying, you know, whatever they found about trump perhaps having participated in a crime, it s not treason. therefore, nothing to see here. each one of these becomes one more straw on the camel s back. also, it is not exactly draining the swamp. right. when you have all of these things happening. people who are already cynical of washington, d.c., this isn t going to help. that s very true and, you know, to paul ryan s credit, he no longer has committee positions and they could vote to expel him. i don t think they re there yet and hoping he goes away and only so much to do to get rid of this person at this point and started that process. it is not that everyone s throwing up the hands saying deep state. right now. the hypocrisy. think of the donors, people who gave $100, $50 here. they re not paying for the congressman to, you know, work for them. they re paying for his vacation. collecting campaign contributions of people that didn t have the money anyway, i mean, this was treasure to me. this was like more than my own money and to see someone do things like this is disgusting. and very upsetting to me. so but to get to jen s point, i happen to be on the ballot in 2006 when the dnc and we had mark foley, kirk welldon and the fbi raid a week before the election. it can have trust me, a cumulative affect and jen is right. nothing that cuts across party line like swarmy corruption. if this continues. i m not saying this is not bad enough, this is going to be ugly election for republicans. next, new information in court about the suspect in the murder of a college student. why he didn t raise any red flags with his employer. stay with us. i m beating this. my main focus was to find a team of doctors. it s not just picking a surgeon, it s picking the care team and feeling secure in where you are. visit cancercenter.com/breast oh! no increased risk? ozempic®! ozempic® should not be the first medicine for treating diabetes, or for people with type 1 diabetes or diabetic ketoacidosis. do not share needles or pens. don t reuse needles. do not take ozempic® 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(vo) ask your healthcare provider if ozempic® is right for you. now that you know the truth. are you in good hands? a judge just set bail at $5 million for the man accused of killing 20-year-old mollie tibetts, a talking point in the immigration debate. cristhian rivera confessed to the abduction. president trump cited the case for illegal immigration laws. diane, rivera worked at a dairy farm owned in part for a prominent iowa republican. how s he able to get through this screening process? reporter: so, jake, just in the couple of minutes here we have more clarification on this, the owner of that dairy farm coming out saying basically he gave a different name. this is not the man that we thought it was. it is not the name on the paper work and they didn t use the dhs e-verify system but an older social security verification system. now, still a lot of unanswered questions here. that isn t stopping the plittization of the death and something people in iowa wish they didn t focus on. the disappearance of mollie tibetts now a case of murder. 24-year-old cristhian rivera charged in the 20-year-old university of iowa student s death this afternoon. you have been charged with murder in the first-degree. reporter: investigators say rivera led them to a corn field tuesday where they found a body believed to be mollie tibetts. he tells us that some point in time he blacks out and then he comes to, near an intersection which we believe he then placed mollie. reporter: investigators say cristhian rivera worked farm. this afternoon, the farm said believed it was doing due diligence and using the wrong system. what we learned in the last 24 hours is that our employee was not who he said he was. and just within the last four hours we have come to learn that the social security administration employment verification service is not the same as e-verify. reporter: within hours of the arrest, politicians began using tibetts death as a rallying point for the right, iowa s republican senators released a joint statement blaming criminals that broke the immigration laws adding, quote, we cannot allow these tragedies to continue. the president wading further in at a rally in west virginia. blaming democrats for weak border security. and you saw what happened to that incredible, beautiful, young woman. the immigration laws are such a disgrace. we re getting them changed. but we have to get more republicans. reporter: in a statement, the tibetts family thanked the nation for the love and support while asking for privacy as they grieve. friends say they hope the politics now surrounding her death won t overshadow her life. do you fear that the whole illegal immigrant part of this conversation now will take over? we all came from immigrants. this isn t about being political? no, no, this is about mollie being a smart, beautiful very intelligent. intelligent young woman. reporter: people here in iowa are going to be remembering her tonight. she should have been starting the sophomore year of college at the university of iowa. they re going to hold a vigil, jake, in about two hours there on campus so fellow students and
Get a jump on the day s news with Christine Romans and Dave Briggs. many are linked to iran for card fated manipulation. it comes after microsoft took control of websiteles. republican california congressman duncan hunter and his wife will be arraigned in federal court tomorrow, fooling their indictment on $250,000 in campaign funds. the stinging indictment alleges the hunters knowingly conspired with each other, if one instance, buying clothes a at a golf course and reported the purchase as balls for wounded warriors. house speaker paul ryan has removed him from committee assignments during the case. hunter was the second member of congress to support president trump. first, chris collins was recently indicted on insider trader charges. details about this. mollie tibb etc. is somebody people wanted to find. people started weeping very loudly, very upset about the details of. this from what they know, there was a under surveillance camera in the neighborhood. they started going through hundreds of hours of that video. they saw a black car and what they were able to glean from that, there was a man following mollie along, eventually he got out of the car. they say he actually got out of the car and ran behind her or beside her. and at one point mollie said you need to leave me alone, i m going to call police. she took off running. he in turn chased her down. they say he confessed to this. in fact, he took them to the body just yesterday. so can you understand why people are so upset about this they have him in custody. christian rivera is charged with first degree murder. he lived if this area four to seven years. homeland security will tell us more about him. we are told she an illegal immigrant. in this country. a lot of people confused. he tells investigators he blacked out some time and placed her in the truck. not sure how long it was out in the location where it was found. we know it was concealed. devastating results. not how anyone want thad to ends up. ten mantz after the hour a category 5 hurricane is within 350 miles of half the hurricaw the hurricane warning has been issued. that s next. come been 350 miles of half. residents stocking up on supplies, any essentials at this store ahead of the storm. we are tracking the latest. reporter: good morning, dave, christine, yes, they are watching hurricane lane very carefully. as impressive it gets on satellite imagery, very symmetric cal. a healthy one as well. we have hurricane watches and certainly the national hurricane center is taking this seriously. one element of good news is we expect weakening as it shifts towards the north. we see gradual weakening and thursday into friday, friday would be the best possibility for landfall there. that s when we see the most drastic weakening down, potentially to a category 1 as it mirrors the island to the north amount lot of discrepancy in the models. well to the east. potentially bring it into the moll kye the european modems not a chance. that s how we get this cone. certainly a forecast worth following in the next couple of days. quick glance. scattered storms along the eastern seaboard. enjoy the milder temperatures him new york a high of 83 degrees. ohio state university taking steps to respond to sexual harassment after accusation of sexual abuse, announcing a new central office to handle all misconduct claims. it s used as a part of the overhaul of the title 9 complaints. later on today the board meets to discuss the urban meyer investigation. after telling reporters he was unaware of an allegation of sexual abuse against an assistant coach. meyer later said he filed protocol by reporting it. the food and drug administration is extending the expiration date for some epipens by four months. this is to help cover a shortage ahead of the new school year. the fda says it reviewed data showing certain batches of expired pens could be used. the medications have only be available in limited qualities, due to regional supply disruption and manufacturer issues. the fda approved and has yet to announce a release date. emotions rung high as chris watts is arraigned on nine charges including the killing of his pregnant wife and two young daughters. watts seemed largely emotionless during the proceedings in shackles and an orange jump suit. he was told of his rights and told to waive a preliminary hearing. he claims he killed his wife after she killed their daughters. autopsy results have not been released afternoon. a catholic priest in pennsylvania charged with indecent assault and corruption of a minor. prosecutors say father kevin lonigan sent messages to a 17-year-old girl on snapchat and hugged her inappropriately. the diocese of allentown says it learned of the allegation in june and immediately removed that priest from his assignment. he was not named in a recent going report that revealed 300 priests in pennsylvania abused at least 1,000 children, maybe more, over decades. in arkansas, a remarkable tale of survival. a 3-year-old boy and his 1-year-old brother on their own possibly for days following a car crash that killed the mother. the oldest of two alerted police of a toddler by himself on a state highway. police went with a description of the boy the family member contacted the sheriffs office. they said their mother had not been scenes e seen hins last week. deputies found her car overturned deep in a ravine the 1-year-old was found in the car alert and still strapped in his car seat. it s nothing short of a miracle. god s blessing that these children were able stwhiev accident. both of the little boys suffered dehydration but since have been released to their family. oh. wow, i wish them the best. unbelievable. 19 minutes past the hour, wall street about to enter the longest period of stockmarket prosperity in american ristory the bull mark will turn $3,453 days old today the longest ever. more next. i m hoping these nature sounds will help me relax a bit.. at least we don 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[parrots] i love you, pookie bear!!! get to know geico and see how easy homeowners and renters insurance can be. it s official. this has been the longest period of stockmarket prosperity in american history. the bull market today turns 34rks 53 da 34rks, 3,453 days old, in the darkest days of the financial crisis. since then the dow has gained 19,000 points the s&p 45u6789 quadrupled in value. yesterday notched an all time high. a few things fueling the record breaking run a slow but steady economic recovery. soaring corporate profits and unprecedented aid from the federal reserve. the central bank kept interest rates very low. a bull mark ends with a 20% loss, that s when it will be over, there have been several close calls leak in 2011 when america s credit was downgraded annual fear the euro could cash, analysts think the bulls still have more room to run. bull market marks don t die of old age. they face a few threats, right now the economy is very strong, people are making money. people are spending money. and the stockmarket looks like it has more. so beyond the trade war, nothing really looks like it will cool us off? we are watching the emerging marks, worried about the lira italy, in turkey, right now things look solid. a human watchdog says it has concern. a new report by the international atomic agency provides a detailed list of nuclear-related activities believed to be under way in north korea in recent months, including centrifuge enrichment and the operation of an experimental power plant discharging steam and cooling water. last night in virginia, president trump said he wants to remove sanctions quickly. but only if they d get rid of their nukes. still, no sign they are prepared to do so. in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office, michael cohen implicates the president of the united states as he pleads guilty to campaign finance violations. according to that, is the president if legal jeopardy? and implicates the president. paul manafort found guilty of financial crimes. what does it all mean for the president, who the washington post calls an alleged coy conspirator in the white house. would you buy golf clothes for yourself and quiet off as a get for wounded warriors? an indictment says california congressman duncan hunter has a quarter of a million in xash a lavish lifestyle. murder charges have been filed against a man police say killed an iowa student. suspect that worked in that community. welcome back to early start. i m christine romans. i m dave briggs, a busy news day, stunned, startled, blindsided, the reaction in the white house after a pair of top trump aides became couldnnvicte felons, michael cohen admitted he coordinated with mr. trump to keep the scandal quiet during the campaign. at nearly the same moment the jury returned guilty investigators against paul manafort on eight counts of financial crimes. a source close to the white house says his deal sounds terrible for the president. they tell cnn tough party leaders are quote trying to catch their breath. even the president s supporters see the convictions, the dredge report, calming it trump hell hour the attorney for michael cohen says the long-time fixer could still have damaging implications for the mueller probe. michael cohen has information that would be of interest to mr. mueller in his probe of a conspiracy to corrupt american democracy, very similar to the detriment i dime of the 12 russians. i believe that mr. cohen would be able to provide information useful to the special counsel. a plea deal means cohen likely faces three to five years in prison at his sanction december 12th the legal team going after what they call cohen s lives and dishonesty. we have more on cohen s plea deal. dave and christine, michael cohen, president donald trump s former personal attorney and a member of his inner circle pleaded guilty tuesday, admitted that in coordination and at the direction of the president he acted to keep information that would have been harmful to the campaign from becoming public during the 2016 election. now, of course, that information has to do with payments to porn star stormy daniels and former playboy model karen mcdougal. who have accused the president of having affairs with them. he denied having affairs with them. the investigation was referred to new york, where michael cohen pleaded guilty by the special count sell, robert mueller. this deem does not include cooperation by michael cohen with federal investigators or prosecutors. the president s lawyers had this to say, there is no allegation o any wrong doing against the president in the government s charges against mr. cohen. dave, christine. thank you so much for that. now the big question is how much trouble might the president be in? a source close to the trump organization tells cnn cohen s plea deal, which does not include cooperation with the government is further proof he does not have anything damaging on the president. they say essentially cohen is worried. but legal experts say the president is not out of jeopardy. i don t even think that happened during water gate that someone pled guilty and said the sitting president was a co-conspirator. now, it is true that there are justice department guidelines that say a president cannot be indicted. but, this crime could be prosecuted after donald trump leaves office. this crime could be referred to congress as a high crime and misdemeanor. but the fact that we have an admitted felon saying that the sitting president of the united states was his co-conspirator in this felony is a pretty extraordinary piece of news. the bleed guilty is not cohen s only worry the senate intelligence committee says it wants to speak to him again after cnn reported cohen had advance knowledge of the 2016 meeting. cohen previously testified to the intel committee he was not aware of it before it happened. the other shoe dropped, paul manafort found guilty on eight tax fraud charges. they were hoping for a fresh ammo to attack the russia investigation. that s now off the table. the president reacting to the verdict by praising manafort as a quote good man, while making sure to distance himself from his former campaign chairman. i still feel you know it s a very sad thing that happened. it has nothing to do with russian collusion. this has absolutely nothing to do. it s a witch hunt. it s a disgrace. a rally in west virginia. last night the president whipped up the crowd with his attack on the special count sell. the russian win hunt. we got a whole big combination. where is the collusion? you know, they re still looking for collusion. where is the collusion? find some collusion. despite all the devastating news for the president, his reporters still revived some familiar chants. drain the swamp also echoed through the halls there, president trump spending 40 days on the road campaigning for republicans before the mid-terms, which are just 76 days away. special counsel robert mueller delayed a sentence hearing nor national security adviser michael flynn the joint court filing by the mueller team and flynn s defense indicates flynn is still cooperating with the russia investigation. flynn pleaded guilty last year to lying to the fbi about contacts with russians the special counsel s office says it will provide another update to the court in 30 days. facebook taking down hundreds of pages of finding campaigns that started if iran and russia. some posed as a group liberty front press. facebook says they had more than a million followers across facebook and instagram. twitter announcing it has identified and removed 284 counts, many linked to iran for coordinated manipulation. it comes after microsoft took control of websites it says military intelligence could have tried to use to hack american politicians. republican congressman duncan hunter and his wife will be arraigned in court after an indictment misusing $250,000 for personal items, expenses range from luxury vacations to kids school lunches. it alleges they knowingly conspired with each other n. one instance, buying clothing at a golf course and reporting the purchase as balls for wounded warriors. a spokesperson believes the indictment is politically motivated. house speaker paul ryan removed it and hunter was the second member of congress to support president trump the first, chris collins, recently indicted on insider trading charges. they could be shrinking billionaire businessman defeated foster friess, he lost to gordon the last time a candidate lost was last year when luther strange lost to roy moore in alabama s senate race. after his loshls he faces democrat mary throne in november. a dev78 ends in the search for mollie tibb etc. the 20-year-old iowa college student that disappeared last month while jogging. they say christian rivera led investigators to her body. he now faces first degree murder charges. the suspect an undocumented immigrant. one quick to pounce. kelly ward tweeting the lack of leadership and courage by open border senators like jeff flake and john mccain, republican, minds you, adding #build the wall. w.h.o. reports the suspect worked for years owned by craig lane a prominent iowa republican and had been vetted through e-verify. more now through brian young in iowa. dave, christine, this is not the ending so many people in this community wanted. in fact, it s not many times you go to a news conference and have so many people standing behind you, who start sobbing when police are giving details about this. mollie tibbets is somebody people wanted to find, from what they know, there was a under surveillance camera in the neighborhood. they started going through hundreds of hours in that video. they saw a black car, they were able glean from that there was a man following mollie along. eventually he got out of the car. he tells us he ran alongside her or behind her. then at one point he tells us mollie grabbed ahold of her phone, she said you need to leave me alone, i m calling the police. then she took off running. he, in turn, chased her down. they say he confessed to this. knack, he took them to the body just yesterday. so you can understand why people are so upset about this now we have this man in custody, christian rivera has been charged with first degree murder. we are told he lived in the community four to seven years him homeland security will give us more information in the coming days about him. we are told she an illegal immigrant. again a lot of people confused about what happened. he tells investigators he blacked out some time and placed mollie in the truck. i m not sure her body was out in the location where it was found. we do know it was concealed. such a tragedy there the state is in mourning, now the question, you are hearing from leaders, political leaders in the state saying this is about securing borders, but he was legally work illegally in the country, illegally working for a farm there. how could that happen? that s what homeland is about to get to the bottom of. a lot of questions ahead. it s only happened once before a category 5 hurricane within 350 miles of hawaii the full impact of that storm nex a book that you re ready to share with the world? get published now, call for your free publisher kit today! hawaii under a hurricane warning, a category 5 lane heads for the island the storm packing maximum sustained winds of 150 miles per hour. schools are closed now on the big island and maui the state s governor signed an emergency proclamation. thissed is second time on record a category 5 hurricane has come been 350 miles. people are stocking up on supplies and essentials ahead of the storm. reporter: good morning, yes, they re watching hurricane lane very carefully. as impressive as it gets on satellite imagery, very organized, very symmetric am, healthy kate 5 category 5 as we. the national hurricane center is taking this seriously. we will see grad waual weakenin. friday will be the pest possibly for landfall there. that s when we see the most drastic weakening down, potentially a category 1 as it nears the islands to the north the american model well to the east, can professionally bring it into molechai. certainly a forecast worth following. a quick glance across the mainland. enjoy milder temperatures. new york high around 83 degrees. thanks. the food and drug administration extending the expiration date for some epipens by four months to help cover a shortage of the life-saving treatment ahead of the new school year the fda says it reviewed data from the manufacturer showing certain batches of the expired pens could still be used. the medication to stop severe allergic reaction has been available in limited supply disruptions and manufacturer issues. the fda compared again eric competitor and is yet to announce a release stick. actress asia argento alleges she paid off a young actor. the me too leader insists she never had a sexual relationship with jimmy bennett. she claims he made an exorbitant request for money and was trying to capitalize on the perceived wealth of her late boyfriend anthony bourdain. she decided to give to him. anthony personally undertook to help benefit net economically that we would never suffer further intrusions in our life. a texas high school apologizing after creating a dress code video widely perceived as sexist. watch. okay. ladies, follow me. that video, viral, played to thousands at more cuss high school located outside dallas. it features girls set to the song bad girls. male students were not included. the principal now apologizing saying the video did not achieve the intended purpose of reminding students about a poor dress code and a poor song choice. a three-year-old boy and his one-year-old baby brother on their own possibly for days following a car crash that killed their mother the older of the two boy the 3-year-old was dpoundz aftfound after police received a call of a today u toddler alone on the highway. they say the mother had not been seen since last week. dep theys finally located her car overturned in a deep ravine. a 1-year-old found inside the car alert and still strapped rather into the car seat. it s nothing short of a miracle. god s blessing that these children were able survive this accident. both of the boys suffered dehydration but have since been released to the family. a new jersey principal coming one a fresh idea to fight bullying in his store. he installed a free inschool laundromat mat to help students being bullied or shamed on social media, because they couldn t afford to wash their clothes. he suspects bull marketlying was the reason students were missing three-to-five days a month. they were being bullied. it wasn t just on like in the building. it was on snapchat, i m i i m sitting behind you, look at this dirty guy. the school secured a $20,000 grant and do nation of laundry supplies. the facility will be up and running when the school starts in a couple of weeks. nice story. after 115 years, animal crackers are no longer behind bars. animals are roaming free on cnn money next. comcast, building america s largest gig-speed network. . 4:55 eastern time. the washington post reporting the chief adviser hosted a white nationalist at his home last week, attending larry kudlow s birthday party in connecticut. kudlow said he s known him forever but never would have invited him if he knew about his ties. brimlo said they agreed to disagree long ago. this has been the longest stockmarket prosperity. the bull mark makes it the longest ever of beating out that run from 1990 to the dot-com verse in 2000. this bull, this record bull man in march 2009 during the darkest days of the financial crisis. since then the dow has gained 19,000 points the s&p 500 quadrupled in value. yesterday the s&p notched an all time high. a few things a slow but steady economic recovery, soaring corporate profits and unprecedented aid from the federal reserve the central bank kept interest rates very low and cheap money policies boosted stocks. a bull market ends, of course, with a 20% loss. there have been several close calls. a close call in 2011 when america s credit was downgraded. remember there was fear the euro could collapse. stocks never shed 20%. analysts think the bulls still had more room to run. bull markets die of old age, expiration dates get stamped on them. u.s. stocks have stayed resillient. there are threats, trade war, reeseing inflation, overall the experts say this has more room to run. the u.s. stocks lower, politics thinking stocks with top aides to the president were convicted in federal court. that shook investor confidence. president trump does not expect anything to come of it, he told reuters. a chinese delegation heads to washington today just as the u.s. prepares its next round of tariffs. that s right the u.s. begin collect on goods tomorrow, beijing said it would strike back dollar for dollar. uber afreed to pay $1.9 million. settling claims of gender and harassment and pay. uber has been working to fix pay disparities, to ensure all are paid equally regardless of race or gender. that s important as uber goes public, helping uber prep, it fired a chief financial officer. nelson chai will fulfill that role. after 116 years, animal crackers are no longer behind bars. barnum is changing the design. they are not in cages, the companies that makes animal crackers say the redesign is an evolution of the brand, but peta is taking credit. they say the new box reflects our society no longer requires chaining exotic animals for circus shows. enjoy your freedom. peta tweeting big victories start if small packages. the tweeting begins following the latest indictments
Interviews with political figures and news updates. will he offer paul manafort a pardon? that remains to be seen when our own peter alexander asked him that question last week. he said he s not really thinking about the. but he didn t dismiss that it s on the table. i would also point out, andrea, it was striking to hear the president last night at that campaign rally in west virginia. yes, he referred to the witch hunt. yes, he took aim at the media, some of his familiar targets. but he really largely stayed on message. and you have to ask the question, if some of the wind has been taken out of his sails when to comes to attacking the special counsel, andrea. on his way to west virginia as he was arriving, he said he felt badly for both manafort and cohen, clearly he was asked about both, he said he feels badly for both. that s before the transcript from the court was released. once the transcript was released and it was very clear that michael cohen had very explicitly implicated the before there s any sit-down between michael cohen and the mueller team. yes, it really did. and by now, he and everyone who has been involved here should know better. first, it s very volatile or incendiary proffer. i mean, it means, if it s true and credible, that the president would be guilty of a whole separate criminal conspiracy. but it s just bad business, and he should know to be initiating the proffer with rachel maddow, as eminent as she is, as opposed to the sdny prosecutors or bob mueller. but i think we ll be seeing cohen play it as an open book in the coming weeks. the nonlawyer in me, the journalist, loves the fact that he did it with rachel, understanding your point, i take your point. chuck, this is also what lanny had to say to savannah guthrie on the today program about a possible pardon. let s watch. there s one person who could make michael cohen s legal problems go away in an instant. it s donald trump. is he hoping for a pardon from president trump? not only is he not hoping for it, he would not accept a pardon. he considers a pardon from somebody who has acted so corruptly as president to be something he would never accept. that is a complete switch. it just tells you a lot about the transformation of michael cohen in these many months, as he has seen the way the white house has treated him, particularly starting with the fact that he didn t get the job he wanted in the administration, although he had very high aspirations indeed. but there s clearly been a complete breakdown there. so at one point, andrea, he said he would take a bullet for the president. now he won t take a pardon from the president. it s really a rather remarkable transformation. i don t know that i ve ever seen a situation where somebody would refuse a pardon. so the well is poisoned. i imagine it will be worse and worse as the months go by. chuck, what is the next process here? because for the man aare the rt you have a d.c. jury who will perhaps not be as sympathetic to the defense as the virginia jury was. you probably won t have the d.c. federal judge being as proactive, putting his thumb on the scales, in favor of the defense. so he faces a much tougher climb, where is in this case he did get the ten hung jury counts. but he also has been convicted of eight federal counts. he s got a big financial burden here if he takes this all the way. he sure does. by the way, i don t know that the jury in virginia was all that sympathetic to him on those hung counts, the counts on which the jury could have reached no verdict. it could have been 11-1 for conviction. it may have been one holdout juror, it may have been more. but i think you re right, andrea, it may be a rougher road in d.c., i suspect there won t be a lot of sympathy. and prosecutors will have learned how to sharpen their case from what they did in virginia. it s not the same charges so it s not exactly the same evidence, but if they ve made mistakes, they ve learned, they won t make them again. they probably knew this in advance, they ve learned that rick gates is not a sympathetic witness so do not put too much reliance on that cooperator. right. you don t want to put too much reliance on any cooperator. you need e-mail, documents, taped phone calls, other evidence to help corroborate that witness. gates is probably still valuable but they have to be cautious in how they use them. but the same applies to michael cohen down the road. you don t just take him at his word, you have to corroborate what he tells you. there isn t that much time between now and september 17th, the trial date. harry litman, do they have enough time to go through a detailed examination of michael cohen s offer? they only got all of the records from the master last week. they ve only had a week to go through all this stuff. do they have enough time between now and september 17th to potentially use michael cohen against paul manafort in this next trial? i doubt it. i don t think you ll see him as a witness. it looks like his role is only oblique anyway. and there are two separate tracks here. he really hasn t even sat down, as far as we know, with the mueller folks as opposed to the sdny folks. of course he s going to have potentially some very interesting testimony. now perhaps we ll know about the encrypted blackberry message and the like. but generally i think we re proceeding on two tracks and you won t see cohen in the d.c. trial. and jeff mason, the president was out again, a little bit more subdued than in the past, he was in west virginia, with his supporters. i want to play a little bit of their response to him. even called hillary warm, compassionate, engaging, tough. can you actually believe that? [ crowd chanting ] got to go. will have to go. you heard them all shouting lock her up, lock her up. it s sort of stunning, this is a few hours after a guilty plea and a guilty verdict of two of his closest former associates. and they re still shouting lock her up against hillary clinton? yeah, i think it goes to sort of the broader look at the political implications of these pleas and these events for president trump. certainly it s a concern for him and the white house and for his attorneys. but for his supporters, not clear that it s a concern. in fact this and other major things that have happened since the president started running for election during the 2016 campaign have not chipped away at the support that his base has offered to him. in fact instead, just like you were just playing, they drill down on things that they were upset about in 2016, focused on hillary clinton who is no longer a candidate and not running against president trump. and barely in the public domain right now. kristen, finally, we know that rudy giuliani can spin almost anything, but what about the senior white house staff? well, look, andrea, we re waiting to see if they re going to add a briefing to the schedule today. and that will sort of give us our first real glimpse. i anticipate they ll echo what we heard from rudy giuliani, which is that they re going to try to attack cohen s credibility. they ll downplay paul manafort s role in the campaign. that s something that we ve seen from this president, from this white house, despite the fact that he did serve on the campaign for about five months, including three as campaign chair during that critical time of the republican national convention. so that is my anticipation. again, andrea, we hope we hear from them today. kristen welker. and jeff mason, harry litman, and chuck rosenberg, thank you to all. for the latest on whether paul manafort is talking to the mueller people, katy tur will interview michael cohen s lawyer lanny davis. coming up here, deal or no deal? will former trump campaign chairman paul manafort flip now that he faces a tough trial in d.c., potentially? you re watching andrea mitchell reports on msnbc. it was here. i couldn t catch my breath. it was the last song of the night. it felt like my heart was skipping beats. they said i had afib. what s afib? i knew that meant i was at a greater risk of stroke. i needed answers. my doctor and i chose xarelto® to help keep me protected from a stroke. once-daily xarelto®, a latest-generation blood thinner significantly lowers the risk of stroke in people with afib not caused by a heart valve problem. warfarin interferes with at least 6 of your body s natural blood-clotting factors. xarelto® is selective, targeting just one critical factor. for afib patients well managed on warfarin, there is limited information on how xarelto® compares in reducing the risk of stroke. don t stop taking xarelto® without talking to your doctor, as this may increase your 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investigation, the first trial of former trump campaign chairman paul manafort. as you know, he was found guilty of eight felony counts. on the other ten counts, the jury couldn t agree. today president trump on twitter writing a large number of counts, ten, could not even be decided in the paul manafort case. witch hunt. joining me now, daniel goldman, former u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york, who has been in that courtroom for the manafort trial throughout. and national correspondent for the atlantic, a long time manafort watcher. daniel, the president certainly seemed to be dangling a pardon for paul manafort. we ve been discussing this is the point where he now has another opportunity to decide whether he s going to cooperate and avoid that second trial which could be a lot tougher even than the first trial. that s right, andrea. i think we re at the point right now over the next few weeks where paul manafort has his last opportunity to cooperate. he decided to test the prosecution in this case. there were sufficient convictions for him to go to sentencing and look at, you know, in the high single digit years, potentially. he s facing he s in jail. he s facing jail time. but notably, he didn t testify and his defense was the government didn t meet their burden. those are both very consistent with post-conviction cooperation. but once he goes to trial again, i do not think that there s really going to be an opportunity for him to cooperate. and notably, what was interesting yesterday is his defense attorney, after the verdict came down, came out of the courtroom and unlike most defense attorneys who say we re going to appeal, we have a lot of our options and we re going to pursue them through the appellate courts, he instead said, we re going to evaluate our options, which is a very different sentiment than we re going to appeal. so in the next three weeks or so i would imagine we will know whether or not paul manafort is going to cooperate or whether, as i ve been saying for quite a while, he s really waiting out the pardon game and looking for a pardon from the president. and as you just pointed out, kevin downing, that very aggressive and ebullient defense attorney was really downcast after this verdict. let s play that tape. mr. manafort is disappointed of not getting acquittals all the way through or a complete hung jury on all counts. he is evaluating all of his options at this point. now, we should point out that on the hill just now, senator lindsey graham, who was just playing golf with the president in new jersey over the weekend, very close to the president, said that a pardon for paul manafort would not go over well. franklin fuller, this could raise questions of obstruction, a pardon at this stage for paul manafort, since the president has now been implicated in a larger issue than just the new york issue. the timing here is so awkward, manafort has this trial. he doesn t know what else mueller is pursuing that relates to him. when will trump issue the pardon? and when does manafort give up hope that trump is going to issue the pardon? and how much pain is paul manafort willing to take? i mean, he s already had to pay for a fairly expensive legal defense. everything in front of him is going to be expensive. the timing just doesn t line up in a way that means that he can have this state of telepathy with trump and read his mind and figure out when the pardon is going to come exactly and when he can breathe a sigh of relief. he s got to assume there s more. you ve been following paul manafort for a long time, we ve both seen him in politics and his role for ukraine and other foreign actors. right. how do we figure out what he would decide? cut his losses? he s got this incredible capacity for denial. on the one hand, he is the master crafter of narrative. he is he creates images for people and he lets them live this narrative that he s created for them. and he s done the same in his own life. if you look at the way he s behaved since the special prosecutor has started to pay attention to him, he s tampered with witnesses. if you look at his own personal life and his finances, even when he was out of money, he kept spending money and kept buying properties. and so he has this incredible capacity for denial. but when you re staring in prison and you can see you have years ahead of you in a jumpsuit, behind bars, eating terrible food, your calculus begins to shift. without a good haircut, look at the mug shot. thank you very much. thanks, franklin foer, thank you, dan, and for all your incredible work, we re so grateful for everything you ve been doing. thank you, andrea. and up next, senator kamala harris joining me with her reaction to the president s legal crisis. you re watching andrea mitchell reports. stay with us right here on msnbc. as the news about michael cohen and paul manafort was all breaking yesterday, within minutes of each other, the president s team was trying to carry on as though it was business as usual on capitol hill, escorting supreme court nominee judge brett kavanaugh to make the rounds, including at that very moment a courtesy visit with california democratic senator kamala harris. joining me now is senator harris. senator, you didn t have your tv on. correct. because the nominee was with you and you were trying to be polite. correct. so this was all happening. this was happening in real time. i was literally receiving the white house counsel along with this nominee to the united states supreme court, turned off the tv so i could focus on the conversation, hopefully everybody else would focus on the conversation. and, you know, about 45 minutes later, of course, i turned the tv on after they left, to learn what had happened. does this change your view about the timing, your view was that it was being speeded along too much by the white house, by the republican majority. but do you think now there is a real argument that the republican majority should not race ahead with kavanaugh s nomination because he s been nominated by a president of the united states who is essentially an unindicted co-conspirator according to a guilty plea taken under oath in a federal court in new york city? so on the subject of kavanaugh, even before this happened, there was no question that the process was horribly flawed, in that there has been a refusal to provide the united states senate and members of the united states senate judiciary committee, as representatives of the american public, with the vast majority of documents that are evidence of brett kavanaugh s background, his perspective, the work he s done. i ve only been given, andrea, about 10 to 15% of the documents that exist that are evidence of brett kavanaugh s work. so the process was extremely flawed, just on that point. and then rushed through without giving members of the judiciary committee, and again, as representatives of the united states public, an opportunity to review the background of someone who will have a lifetime appointment to the united states supreme court. and let s also remember, this is kennedy s seat. this is the seat that is the so-called swing seat. this is the person who fills this seat will be pivotal in making decisions about a variety of issues that impact americans in our everyday lives including a woman s right to choose, including the affordable care act and whether we re going to have access to health care, including issues that relate to voting rights or organized labor s ability to collectively bargain, issues that affect people every day. you and other democrats have been making that argument, unsuccessfully. now chuck schumer has been issued a call to action to republicans, saying the president is under a cloud. do you think that will make any difference? i would think that folks will understand that this has reached a point, like that point years ago during the watergate scandal. this is a situation where a court of the united states of america has accepted a guilty plea from someone who was the lawyer for president of the united states. and that person, in pleading guilty, basically made very clear that it was the then-candidate and now the president of the united states who directed him to commit a crime. this is a serious matter. lindsey graham, republican stalwart, friend of the president, has said this would not be the right time for a paul manafort pardon, because of the circumstances. would it be just a lightning rod if the president were to grant paul manafort a pardon now? i think that if the president were to grant a pardon, that would be evidence of yet another crime, which is obstruction of justice. you re a former attorney general, not just a lawyer, but you were an elected attorney general of the state of california. the situation right now with the president under a cloud, with his former chairman convicted, facing another trial, and he still is calling witch hunt, and people in west virginia last night were shouting lock her up, the mantra about hillary clinton. what does that tell you about the way the president s base is still with him and what the prospects might be in fact for him to hold the senate and do better than some may expect in the house? listen, i ve traveled around our great country. and i believe that the vast majority of americans do not want their president to be an unindicted co-conspirator to a crime. that is what i believe. that s who i believe americans to be. and they ll see through the red herrings and the smoke screens that are being spewed as a way to distract from the fans. let s be clear about something else. i am a former attorney general of the state of california. and i honor the work that happens in the courts of our country. and most recently, just in the last 12 hours, in two separate courts in our country, one person was found by a jury to be guilty of eight crimes, and another pled guilty to eight. and as it relates to mr. cohen, that is about in addition to everything he did, about being directed by the now-president of the united states to commit those crimes. it s a serious matter. i think the american public will take it seriously and see it for what it is. when you see the kinds of changes that are happening at the regulatory level, which are going underreported, some would say, because of all of this, which is major issues, but there s less focus on the epa decisions that were finalized yesterday where states will have so much more decisionmaking over pollution. california, i don t need to tell you, has been in a crisis of wildfires and other effects of climate change and other things. does it make you more seriously consider wanting to run in 2020? listen, right now i m focused on 2018. but i think that we should all be concerned about the direction of our country. and we should be thinking about it. you know, especially given what s just happened, andrea. you re thinking about about it seriously? i appreciate you asking the question but i really need to and want to speak to what s happened in the last day. i believe that the future of our republic is very much in the balance. i believe the future of our democracy is very much in balance. our republic, it s like a tabletop. it stands on four legs. and those legs are three independent co-equal branches of government and a free and independent press. and as it relates to the kavanaugh nomination and the hearings that are scheduled to happen in just two weeks, i would suggest that an unindicted co-conspirator to a crime should not be in the business of having the ability to appoint someone to a lifetime position on the highest court in our land, a court which invariably would hear the matters that are the subject of this very discussion. so that s what s happening right now. and i think it s imperative that everyone take passengepay atten moment and understand it and see it for what it is. it s going to be a question about the strength of our democracy and our republic. this is a serious matter. and is it so serious that it now makes you think impeachment is a more viable option? what i would say is that it is very critically important that we let mueller, bob mueller, complete his investigation without any interference and without any influence by way of threat of firing him, because we need to see that through the end. i feel very strongly about that. kamala harris, senator, thank you very much, thanks for being with us on a very important day. thank you. coming up, with friends like these. president trump s second earliest supporter in congress now also indicted, following chris collins example. the inside scoop next on duncan hunter. stay with us next. well, while everyone was busy looking elsewhere, house republicans now have a second congressman indicted in two weeks. california republican duncan hunter and his wife charged with using $250,000 in campaign funds for personal expenses ranging from groceries to family trips abroad, and lying about it all in federal filings. this comes after his fellow republican congressman chris collins was indicted on insider trading charges two weeks ago. they were the first two members of congress to endorse then-candidate donald trump long before mr. trump won the nomination. let s get the inside scoop from nbc s kasie hunt, sabrina siddiqui, and rick tyler, former spokesman for newt gingrich and ted cruz. cas kasie, what s the atmosphere on capitol hill? lucky for duncan hunter that there was a lot of news crowding out his own. the house of course is out of session this week, in august. the senate is back, here. but this is another situation where republican leaders are having to grapple with somebody connected to the president, with a lot of ethical questions swirling around. the house speaker paul ryan strips duncan hunter of his committee assignments while this plays out. the speaker doesn t have a lot of personal tolerance for things like this. so i m looking to see if he gets pushed further, if hunter were to make potentially an announcement along the lines of the ones chris collins made, which is that he was not going to run for reelection, because at the end of the day this just adds to the set of problems that republicans are already facing in this midterm cycle. they are not expecting this to be an easy year for them at all. and this is yet another thing where they have to explain away actions of a colleague. it seems to play into this overarching narrative that democrats are running on, which is that, you know, there s a culture of corruption in washington. and sabrina, what i ve been hearing also from republican operatives is that they are really having trouble in key swing districts where there are women candidates in particular, where suburban republican women are turning away and do not want anyone named trump to campaign for them. absolutely. this is an election year where democrats are eyeing seats that have been long held by republicans. and this does potentially put yet another one of those seats in play. first and four moremost, it bea repeating that two members of congress who were the first to endorse president trump are under indictment. there is a tendency to ignore some of the national issues that a lot of voters might deem as distractions, but this is something that is going to get a lot of coverage now at the local level. hunter s opponent is a young upstart candidate who used to work in the obama administration s labor department. he was one of the democrats who earned an endorsement from former president barack obama. so i think that you will expect to be hearing a lot more of this. and republicans, again, are seeing yet another seat become increasingly more vulnerable as we re i m going to a potential blue wave. the cook political report has now deemed it leaning republican rather than solid republican, rick. this is a stretch, though, because this is such a red district. i think it s right in the toss-up problem. this is a san diego district with a huge naval base. and apparently, allegedly, duncan hunter was in italy and had requested a tour of a navy base, and they got word back that they couldn t do it at that time. and the response to that was f the navy. oh. news to me. that doesn t go over too well with the navy. i know something about coronado beach and san diego, that is all about the navy. i can see all those guys working out in the morning as i was training for the marathon back in the day when the republican national committee was there in 1996. sabrina, this is not good news at all for the republicans as they look to what could have been a narrow victory. but still, to gain effective control of the house, let me ask all of you, kasie, you perhaps, being up there every day, people say you have to pick up 60 seats more than just the 23 or 24 they need to gain control, 60 seats, to ghana effective control given how bi-if you afurcated differe caucuses are. if you look at the ability to pass big legislation, you re absolutely right. but i don t think we should lose sight and they re evaluating gridlock overall in washington, and i think that s absolutely the case. but think about the investigative levers of control that are at stake. we ve spent a lot of time already talking about what i m starting to call the i world, because no democrats seem to want to say it here on the hill today, but everybody is thinking about the. they ha thinking about it. but there s so many potential avenues of inquiry, there are so many subpoenas that could be sent. that power in the house of representatives, if it democrats take it back even by just one or two seats, is incredible power. i don t think that anyone that i talk to is really thinking about it in any other set of terms. i mean, we re pretty gridlocked up here. it s been that way for a while. there are people who are long time observers, you have been covering this body for a long time, you ve seen it in periods where it s worked a lot better than it s working right now. i don t think there s any hope on either side that that s going to change at all, no matter who winds. but i think what is important are those investigative powers. and the fact that you have not devin nunes refusing to grant subpoenas for house intel, but you would have someone like adam schiff, the ranking democrat, in charge. sabrina, duncan hunter says he s not going to step down. he would have to fight to get off the ballot, given the rules. and that is what chris collins initially said too, who was indicted on insider trading but then reversed course. kasie hit the nail on the head, there is a culture of corruption in trump s washington and you can tie the candidates on the ballot to that culture itself. thank you so much, rick, sabrina. kasie, thank you. coming up, social action. facebook cracking down on a new misinformation campaign, this time from russia and iran. you re watching andrea mitchell reports. stay with us on msnbc. feel the clarity of non-drowsy claritin and relief from symptoms caused by over 200 allergens. like those from buddy. because stuffed animals are clearly no substitute for real ones. feel the clarity. and live claritin clear. an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan, insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. here s why.medicare part b doesn t pay for everything. this part is up to you. a medicare supplement plan helps pay for some of what medicare doesn t. call unitedhealthcare insurance company today to request this free decision guide. and learn about the only medicare supplement plans endorsed by aarp. selected for meeting their high standards of quality and service. this type of plan lets you say yes to any doctor or hospital that accepts medicare patients. do you accept medicare patients? i sure do! so call unitedhealthcare today and ask for your free decision guide. oh, and happy birthday. or retirement. in advance. influence campaign from russian intelligence and military intelligence and iran state media trying to mislead users here in the u.s. and around the world. the social media giant moved more than 600 accounts, pages and groups selling miss information. some of those accounts are originated in russia and some in iran. zuckerberg told us in a phone conversation that the company is committed to stopping this. we need to make sure that we continue strengthening security operations that we have to be able to defend against those better. twitter took down 300 fake accounts late yesterday. microsoft found evidence russia military intelligence was hacking u.s. think tanks. today all 100 senators are being invited to a security briefing on the hill from home security kirsten nelson and dan coats and fbi director, christopher wray. joining me now, agent on the joint terrorist task force, the author of messing with the enemy, clint watts. they did alert law enforcement this week of a fishing attempt to access voter files. this attack was detected on tuesday. we don t know how much else is out there. clint, there is a lot of noise here, the social media, google and facebook and twitter are being invited they re not being invited, they re told to come to a senate conference hearing two weeks from today in fact. congress is up in arms about the fact that the media giants have not been diligent enough of patrolling their platforms. that s right. what s fascinating here is among between capitol hill and the social media, tlhere is a tug o war over the last year and a half. we are starting to see technology companies really move forward. we have seen facebook now with two different announcements over the last month. we have seen twitter with an announcement today and microsoft taking an innovative approach by going out and seizing domain essentially which are impersonating the hudson institute and gop in the sense going after the republican party. we see the tech companies are picking up the pace. we are seeing with this effort, a state s sponsored news outlet known as press tv interacting with what we call gray zone accounts. we don t know the attribution, they re not telling you who they are behind the scenes. so we are seeing this multi platform approach used not only by russia but by iran. the last significant thing we saw is russia is still out there. facebook did a take out again but it was focused on ukraine and syrian contact. that s essentially where all of this started from at least when my colleague and i started watching it. what iran is doing is not election target. they re not doing the election meddling in this election that russia has done here and in france with brexit and elsewhere around the world, russia is far more sophisticated at targeting political action than it is with iran and north korea and china and other cyber warriors. iran is focused on their agenda and advancing around the world. it appears this context was focused on the u.s. audience and the u.k. audience. they had pages and channels and events they re trying to set up similar to the russians but a broader mandate. they were going of sepecific objectives trying to win per se. they re trying to win people s minds and positions over. what s interesting here is the senate went from being the most aggressive to be behind now. when you look at what s going on those committee hearings have drugged the social media companies there. we are seeing social media companies are really taking the lead. the one piece we don t know about is this session that s going on today. how does the u.s. government interphase with these social media companies. social media companies have a lot of signatures and we see facebook and detect a lot of different activities but they are interphasing with the u.s. government and is there good public privacy to find bad actors. certainly not going to end here, thank you so much clint for your expertise and we ll be right 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Coverage of national and international news, including breaking stories. we ll go to trial, what evidence was the government to prepare to prove each single count that michael cohen pleads guilty to. the ones that involved the president, the government says and i am holding a copy of the transcript today. we were prepared to offer hard documents. documents that was taken from michael cohen s search warrant back in april. also, prepare to offer audio recordings that were made by cohen. we heard one of those involving the president several weeks ago. then they re going to introduce additional witnesses to the to this. hey, we got hard evidence here that s going to corroborate the information that s included in the these counts. it is not just michael cohen is saying well the president is telling me to do this and this is why i wrote or sent this person a check or money. it was not just his words. they have to have evidence well, not only michael cohen say that but we can back it up in these different ways. we have ed as well as testimonies. it is not a situation of he said/she said. it is not just one piece of evidence but it sounds like a slew of evidence and again, rudy giuliani who says back in may that the president knew about these payments to michael cohen. got tom talking about these tapes and e-mails and more the prosecutors say of what they have. what kind of story does cohen need to tell to interest bob mueller? well, i think he just needs to be able to provide insider s view of what s going on in recent months and years with respect to the campaign and other business dealings that the president before he was the president was involved with. it seems to me and i would agree to tom that there there seems to be a lot there and increasingly i would suggest that it is beyond their not being a he said/she said because of the existing of corroborating evidence, i would submit that increasingly what cohen is saying fits into what i think most people outside observers just assume was going on. this was a story that i think increasingly just believable to the average person and some have assumed that this is the way trump/cohen s team operated and now we have someone talking about it and it is going to make sense and be believable to most people. we heard from the special counsel s office essentially saying they don t need cohen s testimony to corroborate whatever they have with regards to the president. what can we make of that? we well, that can be fairly directed criminal conduct. it is very different and i just don t think what about obama excuse is going to play. it is an important distincti distinction. the obama campaign was $375,000 if i remember this correctly. you were there last night in west virginia, i want to play something, this is the closest that he came to talk about either case. this is the president. fake news and the russian witch hunt, where is the collusion? they re still looking for collusion, where is the collusion? find some collusion. we want to find the collusion. supporters there in west virginia could not careless about this? people did not care. i question them specifically of whether or not they cared and i questioned them about paul manafort of the former chairman being found guilty of eight charges. people said it does not matter to me, the president has not been convicted of anything. it does not matter. one specific supporter i thought knocked me off my socks said the president was paying women off like a boss and he said the president was protecting melania trump, the first lady, by paying off these women. that s the way this one supporter put it. he was taking care of h is wife by spending this money and quieting these women and i also asked people whether or not they would be bothered if the president himself was somehow either pled guilty or convicted of campaign violations. unless he shoots somebody on fifth avenue that they re not going to change their support of this president and that unless he shoots somebody or commits treason that they re not going to see a problem with it. these are of course the people that are most strongly supported of the president. they re the people that s coming out to the rally. it is indicative of the fact that his supporters are not worried about this and don t think this will impact the midterms. manny davis, i understand you had a conversation with mr. cohen s personal attorney short time ago. any new information from him. lanny davis was telling me he think the president did break campaign f campaign finance laws. he thinks the president should be indicted for those crimes. that s a gray legal area on their right to say that the president can t be indicted. lanny davis says michael cohen is ready to talk about all sorts of things and including things that may impact the mueller probe. he did not say it specifically but there is ideas where hacking e-mails may have had some sort of involvement and michael cohen may talk about that and he does say michael cohen does not want to be pardon because he thinks the pardon would be dirty because the president is reckless and correct. gregg, quickly before i let you go. could a president be charged with a crime that was committed before he was president? could he be held responsible for committing a legal act before he occupy the office of the president of the united states? potentially. so the two office of legal counsel opinions that address this issue, the doj opinions are simi simply opinions. they take the form of doj policy. the big question that i think is looming is do those opinions when taken together mean that no president can be indicted whether of alleged crimes during his presidency or before or is it simply a matter that was simply in the past. it sort of depends on rod rosenstein and bob mueller of what they think of those opinions and what they think is the right thing to do in this case. should there be sufficient evidence to charge the president. that s a big unknown and we ll have to see how that is sorted out. thank you, tom winter and yam yamiche, is always a pleasure. pardon me? power politics, republicans control washington right now, how do they deal with blow after blow, corruption and an indictment of another republican congress. on the other side, powerless politics. the democrats control nothing in washington right now. but, we are starting to see a strategy bubble up. how they re looking to turn the cohen and manafort s news to perhaps a win on the supreme court fight. this wi-fi is fast. simple, easy, awesome. in many cultures, young men would stay with their families until their 40 s. . paul manafort woke up this morning a con vickvicted felon his future seems bleak. these charges predate his time of the trump campaign. he does face up to 80 years in prison and faces additional threat. another criminal trial in september. this one in washington, d.c. i want to bring in our former u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york, aelie, yo also cowrote a piece of the headline of manafort s choices. if you are paul manafort, which one would you do? manafort is now convicted and looking at a serious sentence, he s a 69-year-old man. i do not think he ll go off and serve that sentence and out lives it. he s got two choices, one is cooperate and he ll have to tell everything he knows. he still have to do jail time less but some, verses if he s pardoned, he we don t waon t ph walk out of that prison right now. the related question is what is the president doing? is there a chance that let s just say there is something to know, is there a chance that paul manafort does not know it? is there a chance that a lot of folks for months now have gotten this thing all wrong that maybe manafort y manafort, yes, guilty of all financial crimes may not have been emersed enough in the president s inner circle to become familiar with some illegal dealings he may or may not have. when you are sitting down with a potential cooperator, they need to understand that all i want from you is the truth. i don t want you to make up thing that things that will make me happy. i just need the truth. i have cooperators who have high hopes for. maybe he knows who did this murder and break it for us and he came in and says i know about that murder, i just don t. sometimes that exact scenario you lay out just happens where the cooperator knows something but not everything you hope. i want to play something after what the president said after the manafort s conviction and michael cohen s plea as well. i have to tell you that paul manafort was a good man, he was with ronald reagan and with a lot of people throughout the years and i feel very sad about it because it involves me but i still feel it is a sad thing that has happened. this had nothing to do with russian collusion. there is the sound byte from yesterday fast forward to today. the president is using his favorite megaphone, twitter, i feel badly for paul manafort and his wonderful family. justice took a 12-year-old tax case among other things applied tremendous pressure on him. michael cohen he refused to break such a respect for a brave man. are we reading too much into this? the president is trying to lay a foundation where he can pardon manafort and have a pretext to say why. if the president marpardons manafort, people are going to go nuts. he s trying to prevent manafort of cooperating. that tweet you just showed us and the quotes and prior tweets, i think this is an unjust prosecution. if he pardons manafort he ll say no, it was not to prevent from cooperating and as i have said many times before, i felt this is an unjust prosecution. people mercedes agree, i am the president and i get to decide that. it is giving h i im some cover. you alluded to this. manafort s second child in washington, d.c. a lot of legal insiders are suggesting that is the trial that he should be everyone more concerned about. why is that? there is more charges and more volume evidence that we are going to get into more details on his dealing as this unregistered foreign agent. we ll get into more depth of his work in the ukraine for these prorussian interests. it would be interesting to see where it goes and potentially worse for manafort. for folks who live down there, there are some distinct difference. it is all gravy for prosecutors. they already have what they need for the virginia conviction, it can omnivonly get worse for man. duncan hunter is indicted. now republicans attempt to limit his power may be more difficult than they hope. oh! oh! ozempic®! 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(vo) ask your healthcare provider if ozempic® is right for you. howdoing great dad!r does this thing got? looking good babe! are you filming. at booking.com, we can t guarantee you ll be any good at that water jet thingy. but we can guarantee the best price on a hotel, like this one. or any home, boat, treehouse, yurt, whatever. get the best price on homes, hotels and so much more. booking.com, booking.yeah tough choice leading up to the midterms of the manafort and michael cohen convictions. gop lawmakers are reacting today. well, these are serious charges and can t be ignored. i don t think he can be indicted while sitting in office. we ll have to see where this all works out. there is no good news in what s happening obviously. this is very unfortunately. it is serious. i want to see this go through our judicial system. i don t think we know all the facts. impeachment does not start in the senate anymore. it starts in the house. it is too serious of the subject for me to speculate on. i have been here for 11.5 years and this is i don t think i have witnessed anything like i have in the last year and a half. to be clear those are republican senators, jake sherman is a senior writer with politico and ana palmer, a senior washington correspondent of politico. it is wednesday s play book here on msnbc. mr. sherman, i will start with you here, what are you hearing behind the scenes from republicans about the i word or anyone is talking about impeachment? it is not about republicans but about democrats, where will democrats go if they take back the house which as we know is not a certainty but certainly a probability. there is going to be intense pressure from the progressive base especially in the house democratic caucus which is drifting to the left as we have seen the last couple of months to impeach trump and i think democratic leaders no matter who they are, we don t know who s going to be the leaders, nancy pelosi or somebody else. leadership will have to be careful in looking over and ip peaching trump is not a good look. we don t know when mueller is going to deliver his report. rudy giuliani told us this morning they re at the end of the process. it is certain that if democrats take back the house, there is going to be an intense over sight of this administration, something like we saw frankly when republicans first took over the house in 2010 of barack obama. anna palmer, there does so many to be a movement if you will. we heard from the senator from hawaii who says she s not going to be taking a meeting and he s not taking a meeting with the president s supreme court nominee of brett kavanaugh. are we starting to see more democrats there in the upper chamber sort of used this as justification for not even talking to kavanaugh? yes, i think what we saw is just the beginning of democrats trying to use this and the clips you pay before we went on and really showing a stumbling of republicans trying to find a way forward and they don t want to be talking about this and they re coming into campaign season and every pole we look at shows that voters want a check on president trump and republicans have not proven that they re going to do that and willing to take him and separate themselves from him. what you are starting too see in the coming weeks do republicans start to distance themselves? i doubt it on the kavanaugh supreme court nomination. that ll be very, very surprising. some of the other things you can see them taking action on tariffs or other things that they have not in alignment with the president on. adding to the president s troubles yesterday out in california, republican congressman thought by many to be quite the rising star, douncn hunter, he and his wife indicted on charges of misused campaign funds. chris collins was charged with insider trading two weeks ago. axios is quoting. the republican party looks like a criminal enterprise. how do republicans counter this narrative that the entire party has become corrupt, thanks to donald trump. well, two out of 235 members of the house republican conference being indicted does not exactly total up to criminal enterprise but this is the second republican this month to be indicted and if you look at the evidence laid out against hunter, it is stunning. spending $15,000 to a vacation in italy and drinking around town with other members of congress and friends and other colleagues. stunning stuff and it is definitely looks criminal. the big thing democrats are going to try to do over the next couple of weeks is try to do what they did in 2006 which is say that republicans are not fitting to serve in office and that republicans are corrupt and kind of paint the entire party with this brush. that i will say is republicans doing themselves no favors. dunn can hunter is not going to resign. he s fighting to keep his committee seat and force a vote on the house floor for him to keep his committee seat. everybody is kind of out for themselves at this point including duncan hunter who s not doing his party any favors as they face what is basically mounting evidence that they ll lose control of the house of representatives. really quickly, anna palmer, likelihood of paul ryan who again retiring after this year, paul ryan decides to use this as an opportunity to audition for profiling encourage award and decides perhaps there should be some sort of hearing in the house judiciary committee. the probability of that happening? i can t imagine republicans want to have a hearing on this. they ll want duncan hunter to step back and it is going to be an embarrassing time when they come back from their recess and they have to go from the floor to vote to remove him from committees. anna palmer and jake, it is called political play book if you have heard of it. it is worth the read. will democrats be able to use it in their fight over their supreme court nominee, we ll hit on that. we are keeping a close eye on that podium. there will be a press briefing of 45 minutes from now of sarah sanders taking to the podium for the first time since the michael cohen indictment conviction and manafort s convictions. we ll hear from sarah in just a few minutes. to most, he s phil mickelson, pro golfer. to me, he s, well, dad. so when his joint pain from psoriatic arthritis got really bad, it scared me. and what could that pain mean? joint pain could mean joint damage. enbrel helps relieve joint pain, helps stop irreversible joint damage, and helps skin get clearer. enbrel may lower your ability to fight infections. serious, sometimes fatal events including infections, tuberculosis, lymphoma, other cancers, nervous system and blood disorders, and allergic reactions have occurred. tell your doctor if you ve been someplace where fungal infections are common, or if you re prone to infections, have cuts or sores, have had hepatitis b, have been treated for heart failure, or if you have persistent fever, bruising, bleeding, or paleness. don t start enbrel if you have an infection like the flu. since enbrel, dad s back to being dad. visit enbrel.com and use the joint damage simulator to see how your joint damage could be progressing. ask about enbrel. enbrel. fda approved for over 15 years. what? 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they did not. they came from me and i tweeted about it. i don t know if you know, i tweeted about the payments. but, they did not come out from c the campaign. my first question, did they come out of the campaign because that could be a little dicey. they did not come out of the campaign. it is not even a campaign violation. if you look at president obama, he had a massive campaign violation but he had a different attorney general and they viewed it a lot different. okay, again that was the president talking there to fox. that s the first clip they put out. the tweet that the president was referring to, we got that tweet pulled up and let s read that, trying to give you some sort of con tengs he context here. the president tweets a lot and quite frankly duifficult toll keep up. mr. cohen, an attorney, received a monthly retainer, not from the campaign and having nothing to do with the campaign from which he entered into through reimbursements. this is the president avoided air force one when asked about payments and asked about michael cohen. take a listen. did you know of the $130,000 payment to stormy daniels? no. why did michael cohen make this? you have to ask michael cohen. he s my attorney, you have to ask michael. do you know where he got the money? no, i don t know. well, the president was clearly lying then. that was april 5th, air force one, president trump asked by a reporter, did you know about the payments and his response was no. i want to bring in our msnbc legal analyst, danny cevallos, am i misreading something here? the president was asked if he knew anything about it and now in this interview he says i know about it later on. that s the theme that he s been going into that he did not know about the post-gamayment a time and he found out about it later. if the question as i believe it is is did you know and his answer no can mean did you know at the time, not did you ever know. you sound like a criminal attorney. ladies and gentlemen, it depends on what your definition of did is. that s what it is going to come down to. i suspect he s going to spin it did you know at the time or not did you ever know. what about the assertion he made of the sound byte that they put out there. it did not come out of the campaign, the president is saying that s a much bigger thing that did not come out of the campaign. they came from me and i tweeted about it. what did we make of that. this is an awkward attempt to tiptoe through the laws that applies here. what the president is saying this for is because he s aware that there are different rules for campaign contributions from other folks verses the candidate himself. while it is true that there are unlimited, there are no restraints on direct contributions from the candidate, there is still reporting requirements. that still does not resolve the issue of if he paid michael cohen as a retainer and cohen use this retainer as a slush fund to pay people off without trump s knowledge. that raises a lot of other potential issues. was this a benefit to the campaign in an in kind contribution, the kind that would trigger campaign finance laws? what we don t know because we have not seen the full interview there. we don t know how the president addresses michael cohen s damming assertion yesterday that it was the president or the candidate presidency who directed him to break federal law. i think we are skipping over significant developments in some way. we are focusing on whether the president know about this specific payments but there are two payments. we are talking about one payment through mcdougal and we are talking about the stormy dani s daniels. those were separate counts. with mcdougal s payment, there is an audio tape that existed and that we heard. we are looking at he s saying in an interview today a day after a significance developments in the criminal case. there are two tracks. there are two sets of payments and one of the payments, the president absolutely knew at the time because we have him on tape talking about it. all right. let s take a breather here, with we are watching the white house briefing. what is sarah sanders going to say about what we saw going down yesterday in two courtrooms. also, a college student killed in iowa. the suspect is an undocumented immigra immigrant. our reporter just saw him walking to court for a hearing. we ll go to iowa as well in just a moment. we do whatever it takes to fight cancer. these are the specialists we re proud to call our own. experts from all over the world, working closely together to deliver truly personalized cancer care. expert medicine works here. learn more at cancercenter.com in court for his first appearance. his na president trump brought up his case last night. you saw what happened to that incredible beautiful young woman. should have never happened. illegally in our country, we had a huge impact but the laws are so back. the immigration laws are such a disgrace, we are getting them changed. ba ron, let me start with you wharwhat are we expecting to happen in that courtroom? reporter: moments ago, christian rivera was escorted in the courthouse. the camera were able to get up on him. he offered no comments when shouted questions about did he in fact killed now. earlier this morning i made a stop over at the family s house at mollie tibbetts s home and ran into her aunt in the driveway, extending condolences on behalf of our company to her family. hee says the family was not ready and will not be ready to talk to the media at this time. just a few moments ago they released a statement. i want to read that briefly. it says our hearts are broken on behalf of mollie s entire family, want to thank those around the world who sent their thoughts and prayers for our girl. we know many of you will join us as we continue to carrie mollie in our hearts forever. cristhian rivera is charged with first-degree murder, being held on a $1 million bond. authorities in laying out this case in the affidavit yesterday, chilling details they say he vieded about provided about what happened to mollie on that night. a piece of surveillance video was given to authorities where they say they saw mollie go running by. what caught their attention was a dark color sedan traced to mr. rivera they saw go back and forth around that time, and that was the big break. that s how they were able to close this case and make an arrest. we spoke to his employer, a farmer here in town near brooklyn who says they hired him four years ago, he was a model employee, in good standing with them, and they used the e-verify system to verify his eligibility to work in this country. okay. ron, thank you. i want to pick up on that point there. we heard president trump last night say at that rally in west virginia, talk about this case as he has been prone to do, talk about cases involving undocumented immigrants in this country. is it reasonable to expect this a president who is going to continue to use this particular case to advance some sort of political agenda? yes. and newt gingrich said essentially if mollie s name becomes a household name, that will help republicans in november because the president uses these racial wedge issues to excite his base and get them excited about voting for republicans. and i think that is a really sad state of affairs because what happened to mollie is tragic. certainly the court system is going to kick into gear and hopefully there will be justice in terms of trying to hold the person allegedly responsible accountable for this crime. but i would also say this. neil wilson is also an american who was killed tragically for no apparent reason in oakland, california recently. a black teenager. and there wasn t the same amount of coverage. by an undocumented immigrant? no, but allegedly by a white supremacist. so that s a different type of crime, but you didn t hear anything from the president. you didn t see anybody out talking about it in terms of it being a crisis we needed to solve immediately. but white supremacist violence is up while undocumented immigrants commit fewer crimes than united states citizens. so that s just the context for this particular story in this news cycle. it s tragic. also we need to understand that the president is using it and exploiting it for his political purposes. zerlina maxwell, thank you. ron mott, thanks to you as well in iowa. meanwhile, in the last hour the democratic national committee confirmed a phishing attempt to access their voter file. how they handled it differently than the massive breach before the 2016 election. we will talk about that. and again there is a white house press briefing for the first time since two members of the president s former inner circle found they will likely be facing prison time. we will hear from sarah sanders roughly 20 minutes from now. in the movies, a lot of times, i tend to play the tough guy. but i wasn t tough enough to quit on my own. not until i tried chantix. chantix, along with support, helps you quit smoking. it reduced my urge to smoke to the point that i could stop. when you try to quit smoking, with or without chantix, you may have nicotine withdrawal symptoms. some people had changes in behavior or thinking, aggression, hostility, agitation, depressed mood, or suicidal thoughts or actions with chantix. serious side effects may include seizures, new or worse heart or blood vessel problems, sleepwalking or allergic and skin reactions which can be life-threatening. stop chantix and get help right away if you have any of these. tell your healthcare provider if you ve had depression or other mental health problems. decrease alcohol use while taking chantix. use caution when driving or operating machinery. the most common side effect is nausea. my favorite role so far? 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for drivers with accident forgiveness, liberty mutual won t raise their rates because of their first accident. liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. this wi-fi is fast. i know! i know! i know! i know! when did brian move back in? brian s back? he doesn t get my room. he s only going to be here for like a week. like a month, tops. oh boy. wi-fi fast enough for the whole family is simple, easy, awesome. in many cultures, young men would stay with their families until their 40 s. we have got two big hacking stories that are developing right now. the democratic national committee has alerted authorities to an attempted hack of their voter file. the phishing scam is eerily similar to those democratic national committee released during the 2016 election. also, facebook has apparently removed more than 650 fake pages targeting hundreds of thousands around the world. facebook says the accounts originated in iran and russia. jo ling kent covers business and technology for msnbc. first of all, what do we know about this phishing attempt against the dnc? let s start there. what we know about that dnc attempted hack it was unsuccessful but the target really was the voter database. this is some of the most important information for any campaign headquarters. so that is what the hackers were going after. they were not able to hack into the dnc system, but the issue here, the takeaway really is this continues to be a major issue. cyber security continues to be a threat not just on the democratic party, but parties across the board, including candidates themselves as we have been reporting over the past couple of months. so it s targeted at voters. that s what the take away is here. let s turn to the facebook story. what more do we know about these new influence campaigns identified by facebook? well, facebook is now saying about 650 some groups and pages and individuals all fake accounts have been neutralized. but they were coming out of russia and iran. they weren t necessarily coordinated with each other. what we know is they are trying sow discord and push information. i asked mark zuckerberg last night on a reporter conference call about what his message is to worried users out there. he said they believe they are making more progress, this is a lot of accounts they have taken down, but they believe they are starting to get a little bit more of a handle on this. but they have been trying to fix this for the past couple of years, and going into the 2018 midterm race they still are unwilling to tell us how much of an influence or how much disruption is occurring on their platform. craig, as you know, facebook is trying to be a little bit more transparent about this, but this comes after twitter also saying they have shut down about 300 accounts, mostly originating from iran. jo ling kent there. we should expect to learn a bit more when the senate starts