John Siefer News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

>> mud is saying they only needed dirt. yeah. i'm halfway there with john. regardless whether you think they orchestrated this as an intelligence operation. he said nothing illegal happened here. that's not the point. even if they heard about the meeting afterwards, that a political player, the potential president is willing to accept dirt from hostile foreign intelligence power. if you got that message in moscow, the lesson might be let me direct my intelligence resources to collect information so that i can feed that into a campaign. i don't care if that's legal or not, that's not what we wa...

You wouldn't want them to be that aggressive for fear they back off or say no. it's not so much what happened in the meeting or that it took place, it's that it took place and don jr. and manafort did not bring the fbi. that sent a powerful signal to moscow. you had a chance to tell the fbi that's why you would send people who were access agents in case there's the fbi there. the fact they didn't tell the fbi, you've sent a powerful signal you're willing to compromise yourself and the russians would think about how to move forward from there. >> is it the hallmarks of trying to see if you're s...

Economy in the world. texas alone, california alone, each of those states has a larger economy than russia and maybe it's innocent. there's no clear evidence of collusion. it's strange he spends so much time on putin. >> if the conversation should be about anything, it's about terrorism and medaling in the election. that's what it should be about. >> look, the war on syria should stop. we have arab allies that will help us stop with terrorism. why so much focus on russia by this white house? >> john, the white house says when president trump spoke to president putin, they used a russian transl...

Comes to russia, how much credibility does the administration have? let's get right to cnn global affairs analysts, a former counterterrorism official, and john siefer who served in moscow in the 1990s and later ran the cia's russia program for three years. good to have you all on. i can't wait to hear your expertise on this. we're now learning about the priviously undisclosed meeting at the end of the social dinner on the same day they had their two-hour meeting. you say this is totally bazar. why do you say that? >> i don't understand the incredible amount of time and focus he spends on russ...