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Want to bring rungss horussians welcome a prisoner exchange and said it completely unprompted. >> makes you question whose interests he's for? his client or the russians? >> seems he's being used by the sfb as a mouthpiece and said he thinks the fsb was monitoring whelan's communications from the moment he first stepped into russia however long ago and does not seem sympathetic to his client. going through the regular process and russians said they would let that process play out. at the end of all of this what they want to see is some kind of exchange. >> katie, talk a little about a possible...

Complicating any talk of a prisoner exchange. for more on all of this i bring in molly mchugh, former adviser to the georgia's president and staff writer for the atlantic and msnbc contributor and katie phang, msnbc legal contributor a, an allstart panel. russians denied whelan was detained to set up a possible swap for a spy in custody. trying to grab him here in the united states for an exchange. what's your take? >> it's really hard to know. 99% likely he has been grabbed for potential leverage for something. no chance a guy like this is in russia without being profiled by russian intellige...

Vladimir putin and how important is the she to the united states and the mueller investigation? >> we don't flow for sure how important to vladimir putin. we don't know whether or not she was actually acting as an agent of the russian government. certainly she acted at the direction of a high level russian official and we don't know how close he was to putin himself or whether these were people just freelancing hoping to report back to putin and maybe get some kind of a reward for it. it goes without saying that the russian government would not want her, for example, to testify against certain...

And than being used by any western government as an asset for us. his background is too stinky for him to be a viable asset. it was good huntsman went and did an initial contact. because i think huntsman has a good connection to the white house and a good relationship and can communicate back what he thinks about this. but i also think contrary to what most of the commoner that been thus far that this isn't really something the president should be talking about so far. yes, we should make it clear american citizens detained in russia deserve attention and will be, that the state department wil...