robert mueller might ask mr. trump in an interview. i'll ask the top democrats in the house and senate intelligence committees what they're learning. >>> not going home. stormy daniels' lawyers says the porn star is not backing down from her fight with the president. why is the president all but admitting his part in trying to buy her silence. >>> and texas terror. after a fourth explosion in austin, authorities now say a serial bomber is on the loose. tonight, local residents have more reason to fear that anyone in the city could be targeted next. we want to welcome our viewers in the united states and around the world. i'm wolf blitzer. you're in "the situation room." >> announcer: this is cnn breaking news. >> we're following breaking news on president trump's legal battle with special counsel robert mueller. "the washington post" reporting tonight that mr. trump's lawyers have provided mueller's office with descriptions of key moments under investigation in the russia probe. their goal, to limit the scope of a presidential interview. this as we're told mr. trump is hiring a veteran

finally rally around robert mueller. >>> secrets and under covering an investigation tied to the trump campaign. reveals executives boasting that they were responsible for the president's election win. the firm's ceo has been suspended. was there a violation of election law? >>> texas explosion. a package explodes in texas. this time at a texas sorting zpalt another suspicious parcel is being examined. are they linked to the deadly series of bombing that's have terrified austin? plus, the porn star. could a lawsuit and the polygraph test keep the press occupied? and what about litigation by a reality show contestant? i'm wolf blitzer and you're in "the situation room." >> breaking news. president trump is taking heat for his call, congratulating russia's president putin on his re-election win and with republican leaders now openly defending special counsel robert mueller. the white house insists it is now planning to fire mueller. the president is also facing risks relating to legal action by a former playmate, a former reality star and a porn star, stormy daniels, who has now re

. robert mueller assembling a case for criminal charges for those who hacked and leaked e-mails during the 2016 campaign. meanwhile, an elaborate show in moscow as they unveil new nuclear weapons, and putin warns the world, you listen to us now. >>> at the white house, another day of turbulence, confusion, and we have the very latest on the chaos tonight, along with the rarely heard sound of robert mueller's voice. "the 11th hour" on a thursday night begins now. good evening once again from our msnbc news headquarters here in new york. day 406 of the trump administration and special counsel robert mueller is apparently looking at a fresh round of criminal charges in the russia investigation. our own nbc news reporting tonight says mueller is building a case against russians who carried out the hacking and leaking of private information meant to hurt democrats during the 2016 election. this according to government officials familiar with the matter. our colleagues ken dilanian and julian ansley say it will delve into the details of and the people behind the russian intelligence o

. president trump being cautioned by democrats and republicans to layoff robert mueller, the special counsel. that is after the second straight day of the president mentioning the special counsel's name twice. during a defensive and accusation filled weekend of tweets from the white house, these are the messages just today from the president. denying collusion with the russians and attacking james comey and andrew mccabe, calling them liars saying mueller team has zero republicans even though robert mueller himself is a republican. the weekend tweet storm and mention of robert mueller by name have some dedeucing that the president is ready to shut mueller down. two republicans in the senate say that would be a disaster. >> well, as i said before, if he tried to do that, that would be the beginning of the end of this presidency because we're rule of law nation. >> talking to my colleagues all along, it was once it goes after mueller, then we'll take action. i think that people see that as a massive red line that can't be crossed. so i hope that that's the case and i would just hope th

on the role of a key witness who's now cooperating with robert mueller's team. that would be the former trump campaign deputy, rick yates. i'll get reaction from the house judiciary member, congressman ted liu. our correspondents and analysts are standing by. let's go to every an perez and murray. what are you learning? >> this came between discussions of rick yates and robert mueller. this is months before rick gates pleaded guilty to charges in the special counsel's investigation. according to sources who talked to the court writer, mueller told gates that he had plenty of evidence against paul manafort, the former campaign chairman of the trump campaign, as well as gates' former business partner. he said he had plenty of evidence against manafort. what he needed gates' help with was the core mission of the special counsel which is the ties between the trump campaign -- alleged ties between the trump campaign and the russians. what this means is that the special counsel is looking specifically at making the case of russian collusion, that it has not gone away, despite what you

on special counsel robert mueller on twitter, while lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are sending a clear message to the president, do not fire special counsel robert mueller. >> do you think that the president is laying the groundwork to fire mueller? >> i just hope it doesn't go there, because it can't. we can't in congress accept that. >> if he tried to do that, that would be the beginning of the end of his presidency, because we're rule of law nation. >> this would undoubtedly result in a constitutional crisis, and i think democrats and republicans need to speak out about this right now. >> the president also taking aim at deputy director andrew mccabe and his claim that he kept memos of his conversations with the president. mccabe's lawyer firing back with a tweet, we will not be responding to each childish defamatory disgusting and false tweet by the president. the whole truth will come out in due course, but the tweets confirm that he has corrupted the entire process that led to mr. mccabe's termination and has rendered it illegitimate. that coming from mccabe's att

few weeks. "the times" reporting sometime in the past few weeks, robert mueller's special counsel office issued a subpoena to the trump's business. it had previously been reported the trump organization was voluntarily handing over documents to mueller's team. they had responded to requests from mueller for information from the trump organization that reportedly spanned the length of trump's presidential campaign from the time he announced he was running until the time he was sworn in as president. "the times" reports mueller's team is no longer just asking the trump organization for information, they are legally demanding that they hand over information with the subpoena and the time they want information now from -- this time they want information from before the time that trump was running for president. they have subpoenaed documents from the trump organization from before the time that trump announced he was running in 2015. the "wall street journal" is reporting that subpoena is for documents and e-mails that reference a set of russia related keywords and the subpoena is req

president trump not to fire robert mueller. the white house cannot hide his frustration. does the call to fire amueller have merits or is it pure politics? we are going to debate that next. alright, i brought in high protein to help get us moving. ...and help you feel more strength and energy in just two weeks! i'll take that. -yeeeeeah! ensure high protein. with 16 grams of protein and 4 grams of sugar. ensure. always be you. >> harris: foxnews alert. the last little while. >> we know the name and what he looks like. the man suspected in a string of bombings that killed three people in texas in the past three weeks is identifieded as 23year-old mark anthony conditt. he died after he blew himself up as a s.w.a.t team approached his vehicle but not without leaving behind so much heartbreak. jonathan? >> reporter: it has been a night of drama. it continues to be a day of drama. right now in the austin suburb of pflugerville, there is a heavy police presence as investigators move in to search the home that mark anthony conditt shared there with, we understand, at least two roommates. investi

robert mueller wants to focus in on in an interview with president trump. they include the trump tower meeting between the russians and donald trump jr. and the firing of the fbi director, james comey. how close is the president to actually sitting down with mueller? >>> my pal putin. president trump takes to twitter, defending his congratulatory phone call to vladimir putin and praising russia as a potential partner in peace. why is mr. trump also taking a dig at previous presidents? >>> infuriating. cnn has learned that president trump is fuming over the leak about his call to putin and he's said to be seeking the source of the information. but why did he ignore his national security team and congratulate putin in the first place? >>> and tweet stormy. porn star stormy daniels launches a tweet storm, firing back at critics questioning her motives and insulting her career. daniels says she never claimed to be a victim. what about the other women whose cases against president trump have working their way through the courts? >>> we want to welcome our viewers in the united states

. donald trump broke a year-long silence about robert mueller. saturday after former act fbi director andrew mccabe was fired, the same andrew mccabe that can corroborate all of condominium condominium's claims, trump let out pent of frustration loose. there was no collusion and no crime, he said. it was based on fraudulent activities and a fake dossier paid for by crooked hillary and the dnc and improperly used in fisa court for surveillance of my campaign. witch-hunt. sunday, quote, why does the mueller team have 13 hardened democrats and zero republicans? another dem relent added does anyone think this is fair? and yet there is no collusion. and this morning, monday, quote, a total witch-hunt with massive conflicts of interest. we'll fact check those claims in a moment. but let's ask, why now? why after ten months of silence is he breaking it now? reporting across multiple outlets says this is a president who has decided what he felt was true all along that ultimately he is his own best adviser, and his best advice to himself right now is to fight. >>> it is also a president who sa

special counsel robert mueller. after launching a new tirade against the russia investigation, the president could soon find himself face-to-face with mueller or a member of his team. i'll get reaction from senator angus king. he is a member of the senate intelligence committee. and our correspondents and analysts are all standing by. first, let's go to our senior congressional correspondent manu raju up on capitol hill. first we're learning more president trump will be interviewed by the special counsel's office. >> we heard about a meeting that occurred between trump attorneys and special counsel mueller's investigators last week where they discussed a range of topics to discuss as part of any potential interview with president trump, including the firing of fbi director james comey. what the president knew about sergey kislyak, the former russian ambassador's conversations with president trump's former national security adviser michael flynn. now, we also know that the white house is eager to end this mueller investigation. and a lot of republicans are watching anxiously, even a

back off robert mueller, not go directly at robert mueller himself. obviously that changed. what led to it? >> well, they sure had. and a lot of that was to his credit, at least until recently, was ty cobb, reassuring the president saying, i agree with you, this probe is a witch hunt, but it will be over soon. it will be over. we all remember he said by thanksgiving. then by the holidays. then by the first of the year. and then when it wasn't over, the president grew increasingly frustrated, increasingly enraged and you have a legal team that is often at times sort of at war with itself in feuding. and you have a lawyer, the president's personal attorney john dowd, who it was explained to me recently, feeds the president's worst impulses. while you have ty cobb saying don't train your fire on mueller, hold steady, let it g it won't help you, you have john dowd sort of doing exactly what the president did on a different tract this weekend, going out and attacking the investigation, calling for its conclusion and in some ways people told me encouraging the president or certainly not ur

okay. liu breaking news. refusing to comply. former trump campaign aide vow toss de -- vows to comply with a subpoena. denies it is to protect trump. why? he probably has something on the president. influence pedaling. they're looking at possible attempts by the united arab emirates to get political influence by funneling money to the trump campaign. did that sway his stance in a recent mid east dispute. >>> porn star secrets. a new report says the president's personal lawyer complained about not being reimbursed about money paid to a porn star that claimed to have an affair with mr. trump more than a decade ago. why was the alleged transaction flagged by a bank. >>> russian sex coach jailed. a self proclaimed guru claims to have information about russian election meddling that she will reveal if the u.s. grants her asylum. tonight she's speaking out to cnn. we want to welcome our viewers in the united states and around the world. i am wolf blitzer. you're in "the situation room." >>> breaking news tonight. remarkable twist in the russian investigation. a former trump campaign official publicly defying special counsel robert mueller. in a series of interviews with cnn, sam nunberg vowed to defy a grand jury subpoena saying of mueller, i am quoting now, do you think i would ever talk to that moron? closed quote. he thinks mueller probably has something on trump and that another aide, carter page, may have clued with russians. nunberg states there were no collusions by the trump campaign. we will talk about breaking news and more with congresswoman jackie speer of the intelligence committee and correspondents and analysts standing by. jessica, sam nunberg is daring robert mueller to arrest him. >> reporter: he is. he flat out told cnn he is not planning to cooperate. nunberg was a short-lived campaign adviser being fired early on, but still took the liberty today to speculate that june 2016 trump tower meeting, but nunberg still insists there was no collusion. tonight, former trump campaign aide sam nunberg says he will refuse to comply with a grand jury subpoena that asks him to turn over documents and e-mails exchanged with several campaign officials, including steve b bannon and roger stone. >> they want me over at the grand jury. screw that. why do i have to go? why? for what? >> reporter: nunberg did spend more than five hours talking to special counsel investigators in february and says the questions then indicated mueller's team may be moving in on the president. >> the way they asked about his business dealings, the way they asked if you had heard anything, even during while i was fired, it made me suspect they suspect something about him. trump may have well done something during the election with the russians, if they find out if he did that, i don't know. if he did that, you know what, it is inexcusable, if he did that, if he had some deal. we already know michael cohen was trying to do trump tower moscow. >> reporter: racially charged facebook posts, and roger stone was also fired in august, 2015. in public interviews and tweets, stone claimed to have a relationship with wikileaks and founder julian assange, something both he and wikileaks since denied. stone also exchanged messages with the online entity that claimed responsibility for the dnc hack and was later outed as a front for russian intelligence. >> they think roger clued wiall with julian assange. >> reporter: roger stone issued this statement. i was briefly part of the trump campaign, has been the president's friend and adviser for decades, would expect that mueller's team would at some point ask for documents or e-mails sent or written by me. let me reiterate, i have no knowledge or involvement in russian collusion or any other inappropriate act. he also talked about the trump tower meeting in 2016 where donald trump jr. met with a russian lawyer. he was promised dirt on hillary clinton but maintains his father never knew about the meeting. the president said the same thing. nunberg disputes that, even though he was fired from the campaign nearly a year before the meeting. >> president trump says he knew nothing about the meeting. do you think that's true? >> no. >> you don't think that's true. >> no. >> reporter: nunberg says he won't cooperate with special counsel and questions the basis of the investigation. >> yes, mueller thinks trump is a manchurian candidate. gloria, we were a joke. everybody was laughing at us. the idea we were colluding with the russians? give me a break. >> reporter: also saying carter page is the real culprit when it comes to collusion. >> carter page was colluding with the russians? >> yes, i believe carter page was colluding with the russians. >> if that's true, sam, carter page was an adviser to the trump campaign. >> he wasn't really an adviser, jay. do you think he was an adviser? he was a name on a list. >> reporter: carter page did respond in a statement to cnn today, culling -- calling the claims laughable. nunberg did say he spent about 80 hours this weekend starting to gather e-mails and documents requested by special counsel. but of course now has decided not to comply with the subpoena, and wolf, that could lead to contempt of c punishable from j time to finals and anything like that. >> with all of the threats, he could reconsider clearly in the face of going to jail. thanks very much, jessica schneider, for that report. let's get white house reaction to this. chief white house correspondent jim acosta is joining us. the white house seemed as surprised about nunberg as anyone. >> reporter: they were blien blindsided and were baffled by what cnn was saying. i talked to a number of people that used to work for the trump campaign in 2016. mixed reactions from those folks. one source said how can sam not know anything about this. he was fired by the trump campaign in august of 2015. i talked to a former trump campaign official that said wait a minute, sam nunberg is close with roger stone and as jessica just laid out in that piece, roger stone has been an adviser to donald trump before he was president trump for a long time. but when sarah sanders was asked about it, she gave essentially the canned response, there was no collusion with russia and said sam nunberg did not work for the white house. here's more of what she had to say. >> as we've said many times before, there was no collusion with the trump campaign. anything further on what his actions are, he hasn't worked at the white house so i certainly can't speak to him or the lack of knowledge that he clearly has. >> reporter: very important question that's now come up for the justice department for the trump administration, that's whether or not it will try to enforce the subpoena with sam nunberg. sarah sanders was asked was it a good idea for sam nunberg to be defying subpoena like this. she didn't really respond to that. but i tried to ask the question at the end of that briefing, will the trump administration enforce wh enforce the subpoena, she did not answer that as she left the briefing room. >> thanks very much, jim acosta at the white house. let's dig deeper with cnn's legal analyst jeffrey toobin and josh campbell. jeffrey, what are the potential consequences of sam nunberg defying the special counsel and refusing to comply with this grand jury order? >> it is very simple, wolf. a grand jury subpoena is not an invitation to a birthday party which you can accept or reject at your pleasure. it is a legal command and he's got to show up or they can find him in contempt which can be punished by being jailed, by being fined, and that can go on indefinitely. now, i do think that the mueller office does not want to get into a freak show contest with this guy who is somewhat emotionally unstable. they'll try to reach out to his lawyer and say let's dial this back, get him in the grand jury, calm him down. but if he doesn't, and if he doesn't take the fifth, because if he takes the fifth, then he has the right not to testify, but if he simply says it is ridiculous as he said to gloria and to jake, he could be locked up. >> listen, josh, to this clip from an interview gloria borger had with sam nunberg. >> do you believe the special counsel has something on donald trump? >> i suspect that they suspect something about him. the way they asked about his business dealings, the way, if you had heard anything, even during while i was fired, it just made me suspect. these developments, we were watching for some time, is this a strategy or just something unraveling before our ey is imp the investigations work, having gotten more grand jury subpoenas than i can count, they're important cools. the reason they're used so much, end of the day, any investigation is about information. what information do you have before you that allows you to conduct investigation. as we listen to that clip and interviews that mr. nunberg did today, one thing that stands out is it is quite possible that some records that are commanded may already be in his p possession. you try to corroborate. if you go to interview, you look to see is this person truthful, it is not a trap but they compare to see is this person being honest. >> sam nunberg also believes that robert mueller may suspect that the president during the campaign was in effect a manchurian candidate. listen to this. >> i am not going in, it is ridiculous. the idea we were the manchurian candidate, gloria, we were a joke. everybody was laughing. the idea that we were colluding with the russians? give me a break. >> is that what you think the special counsel is getting at or sounds to me from some of our other answers, you think he is looking into the more financial side of donald trump's life. >> he may. i don't know what he's looking into. he may. he may. and you know what? trump may have very well done something during the election with the russians. and pointed out if he did that, i don't know. if he did that, you know what, it is inexcusable. >> jeffrey, what's your reaction to that? >> what's interesting to the extent you can get through the craziness, there were a lot of questions about russia he has been asked, that mueller was obviously focused on what he is supposed to be focused on, were there connections between the trump campaign and russia, and that appears to be most of the questioning that he went through. what happened here is fairly standard. prosecutors rarely put someone in the grand jury right away. they usually have an office interview first and narrow down subjects they want to talk about in grand jury. that's the interview he talked about with gloria there, the office interview. but it seems that mueller is very concerned about what contacts, if any, there were between the trump campaign and russia. >> he also suggests, you know, josh, that roger stone was his mentor and really doesn't want to talk about the relationship they had, doesn't want to make available all of the information and e-mails and phone conversations that he had. listen to this. >> they think roger callused wi -- colluded with julian assange. he did not. >> why do you think they want you in the grand jury? >> they want me to testify against roger. they want me to say roger was going around saying he was colluding with julian assange. >> and that did not occur according to you? >> no, it did not. >> this guy is all over the map. one thing that's interesting that stood out as we watched the great unraveling here is that up until this point, mueller's team has been tight. haven't seen the leaks. it has been difficult to determine where his investigation is headed, what he is looking for. this is key today. in an investigation like this, you have three ways to determine the direction and help telegraph where someone is going. number one, court filings. what are they filing with the courts. number two, what are the fbi asking interview witnesses. i think that's what we see here. you get a little insight. third thing, records commanded by the grand jury. it is important to see this unfold before our eyes, gives us insight into where the investigation is ultimately headed. >> in the subpoena sam nunberg received february 27th a few days ago, they said they want all of the information he has and listed ten individuals. i will quickly read them. carter page, cory lewandowski, donald trump, hope hicks, paul manafort, rick gates, roger stone, bannon. he clearly doesn't want to talk about roger stone and steve bannon. >> you know what, too bad. it is not up to witnesses to decide what they want to talk about and what they don't want to talk about. you know, this is ten people who are obviously centrally involved in this investigation. and prosecutors and fbi agents, their job is to set a wiet net, if he has no contact with steve bannon, so be it. but when you get a grand jury subpoena, you have to answer it. what he keeps saying, they want me. mueller wants me to say x. mueller wants me to say y. mueller wants him to tell the truth. that's why someone gets a grand jury subpoena. and the idea that sam nunberg gets to decide what he talks about and what questions he answers, i think everyone knows that's just absurd. >> jeff is spot on. i would say one of the most striking things i heard from mr. nunberg today is him saying he has, quote, no interest in providing these records to mr. mueller. jeff can attest, all of the subpoenas i obtained and served, never saw a line that took into consideration the interest of the person being subpoenaed. >> how do you think mueller will respond, you used to work at the fbi. how does a special prosecutor like robert mueller respond to public statements from sam nunberg? >> after he stops shaking his head, i think his team will get to work, continue what they have been doing. as this person continues to talk, they learn more. as we sit here today, and we don't know what will happen friday, whether he ultimately shows orn not, but here or new york, there are salty marshals googling his address and working up an arrest plan. >> what do you think, jeff? >> i think they'll try to dial it back, call his lawyer, say you know he has no right to do this, you know this is not in his interest. talk to your client. get him in grand jury. we don't want a spectacle. but at the end of the day, you can't defy grand jury subpoena. maybe they'll give him an extra week or a few days, but they're going to arrest him if he doesn't testify. it is simple as that. >> he will have to come to grips with that reality. guys, everybody stick around. a lot more. we are following breaking news, former trump aide says he won't talk to the grand jury, despite robert mueller's subpoena. coming up, i speak with a key member of the house intelligence committee. >>> and self proclaimed sex coach from russia jailed in thailand, offering to share secrets about moscow election meddling. liberty mutual saved us almost $800 when we switched our auto and home insurance. with liberty, we could afford a real babysitter instead of your brother. hey! oh, that's my robe. is it? 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i thought i was managing my moderate to severe ulcerative colitis. but i realized something was missing... me. the thought of my symptoms returning was keeping me from being there for the people and things i love most. so, i talked to my doctor and learned humira can help get, and keep,uc under control when other medications haven't worked well enough. and it helps people achieve control that lasts so you could experience few or no symptoms. 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. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you've been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you've had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don't start humira if you have an infection. be there for you, and them. ask your gastroenterologist about humira. with humira, control is possible. >>> we are following breaking news. former campaign aide sam nunberg telling cnn he will not comply with a grand jury subpoena issued in special counsel robert mueller's investigation. joining me, jackie speer of california. she's a member of theouse commi. congresswoman, thanks for joining us. you heard sam nunberg say here on cnn that president trump was right that this is a witch-hunt. what are the consequences of sam nunberg's defying the special counsel, robert mueller? >> i think he's preparing himself to go to jail. i don't think he appreciates the seriousness of this subpoena, and i think that he is basically putting special counsel mueller in the position of having to act because if he basically can snub his nose at the special counsel, then others will find it convenient to do so. you cannot evade a subpoena. >> a fair point. nunberg also says president trump actually knew about that very controversial june 2016 trump tower meeting with russians. listen to this. >> he talked about it the week before and i don't know why he did this. all he had to say was yeah, we met with the russians. the russians offered us something and we thought they had something and that was it. i don't know why he went around trying to hide. he shouldn't have. >> sam nunberg was actually fired from the trump campaign almost a year earlier in 2015, very early on in the campaign. do you believe he really can be trusted as a witness? >> well, i can't speak to that, but i have always thought that when then candidate trump on winning the indiana primary boasted about how he was going to have a very important speech the following week and provide dirt on hillary clinton, he was in fact mimicking the words in some of the e-mails that kind of generated the trump meeting, trump jr.'s meeting with the russians, so there's more here than meets the eye. i don't know if he's a good source of it, but i'm sure that the special counsel is following up on all these clues. >> i'm sure he is as well. what does all of this tell you, congresswoman, about where the mueller investigation is heading? >> you know, i think the investigation is heading to where the facts are leading him, and i think the facts are leading him to financial dealings that then trump had as head of the trump organization with russians. we don't know the full aspects of it because we've never seen for one thing his tax return, and i think that's part of the secret of unlocking the relationship that exists between the russians and donald trump who was then the president of the trump organization. there are too many of these deals he did with russian oligarchs and criminals with a past that no one would engage in business with unless you were accustomed to doing it and had kind of flown under the radar for as long as i think trump has. >> congresswoman jackie speer, thanks so much for joining us. >> thank you for the invitation. >>> we have more on breaking news coming up. how will special counsel robert mueller react to former campaign aide defying his subpoena. >>> could a self proclaimed sex coach jailed in thailand shed new light on the russian election meddling? 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>> wolf, this feels like a desperate cry for attention frod nunberg to know that president trump has been playing russian roulette, whether going to the ritz-carlton in moscow, i stayed there, it is a lion's den for russian spies. everybody knows to turn off phones, don't use communication there, everyone in the lobby probably works for the russian government. trump made every mistake when it comes to doing business with russians and meeting with russians. mueller doesn't need nunberg to make that case. maybe nunberg got up on the wrong side of the bed and needed a media hug. he shared information that may or may not be true, and the fact is mueller will have so many other ways of looking at collusion and finding out who was or wasn't at trump tower for that matter. >> david, he was fired a few months after he started working in the campaign in 2015. how reliable is he really? >> right. if you listen to gloria's interview and jake tapper's interview, clearly seems he has an angle or ax to grind. i don't think he has to be reliable to the broad case of what went on with candidate trump or anybody in his inner circle. special counsel mueller is sort of weaving this intricate, exquisite tapestry of information, and all he needs is a little here or there from all these characters, including nunberg, and that's what he's going to get from him if he ever testifies. >> but i think what nunberg was saying to me is that mueller, he believes, is going after roger stone whom he said to me mueller believes roger stone colluded with julian assange. he is very close to roger stone. called him his mentor. they're good friends. and so i think he believes that's why mueller may be going after him. i would argue that mueller probably already has his e-mails and maybe there's something here after five and a half hours of testimony before fbi investigators, maybe there's something here that mueller wants to pull him before the grand jury for because maybe there's something that they believe he has two stories on. >> go ahead, jeffrey. >> the point that well, he was fired, he doesn't know anything, that's not necessarily how the trump world works. the president is well known for continuing to consult with people whom he fired. cory lewandowski was fired. he still talks to him with some regularity. roger stone was fired. roger stone has been back in good graces at times. steve bannon for awhile before the michael wolf book was still in touch with the president after he was fired. so that the notion that just because he was fired he doesn't know anything, that's not necessarily true. >> you know sam, i went through this detailed two page grand jury subpoena dated february 27th, 2018, and if you take a look at the specifics, what mueller wants for the period november 1st, 2015 to the president, please provide all documents related to the following individuals, then names ten individuals. carter page, cory lewandowski, donald trump, hope hicks, heath schiller, paul manafort, rick gates, roger stone, steve bannon. that's almost everyone involved. what does that say to you that he wants, mueller wants all of this specific information from sam nunberg about what he knew about these individuals? >> well, i think it shows that his investigation is proceeding at pace. wolf, when you read that list, the thing strikes me the most, wow, trump really associates with a lot of sketchy people, right? people on that list are known foreign agents, carter page was asking to be recruited by the government of russia and is suspected of being a foreign agent. so when you look at who trump's inner circle is, whether nunberg until he was fired or people on that list, you have toder the p decisions about who his trusted advisers are and frankly who is left in the white house advising him, and what kind of ties they may have to foreign governments, whether through business deals or foreign contacts or the like. from a national security perspective, i think it is really important we take a step back, say he has poor decision making. mueller is investigating these people. we also know again that mueller is potentially looking at counter intelligence issues related to jared kushner and ivanka which could play into this. >> he also told you, gloria, sam nunberg, that he believes that mueller suspects that donald trump was the manchurian candidate. lot of us remember the movie "the manchurian candidate." what do you make of his behavior, nunberg, making these allegations? >> he said also, he said trump may well have done something during the election with the russians. if he did that, i don't know, if he did that, you know what, it's inexcusable. he said he didn't know, but he is no manchurian candidate which means as you know, bought and paid for by the russians, but i think nunberg, look, he is not a fan of donald trump. he got fired by donald trump. he is a fan of roger stone. very close to roger stone. and i think he was sort of lashing out here saying i am not going to participate, i gave five and a half hours of interviews to the fbi and they know everything they need to know. obviously the fbi, the special counsel will have something to say about that. there's also a question of whether, i don't know, was he looking at an e-mail, he wouldn't tell me this, was he looking at something incriminating that was in the e-mail? we don't know the answer to that. maybe, maybe the special counsel does because he has the e-mails. >> he wants to have his cake and eat it too. he came out today to say look, i am not a snitch, but at the same time distance himself from president trump. he is trying to play both sides. >> as you point out, jeffrey, he already spent five and a half hours answering questions from mueller's team. >> right. i would hesitate before assuming there was any grand strategy to what sam nunberg has been doing. i mean, he seemed like to use a technical term, a whack job for most of the day, so i don't know whether to believe what he says, i don't know what his real goals are, but all i know is when you get a grand jury subpoena, you got to show up, and he's not showing up, so he could be in a world of trouble. >> unless he changes his mind between now and friday. let's see if he does. guys, everybody stick around. there's more breaking news we are following. >>> a new twist in the case of hush money paid to a porn star who allegedly had an affair with donald trump. new breaking details. >>> and russian sex coach says she has dirt on the kremlin's efforts to meddle in the 2016 election and is willing to trade that for asylum here in the united states. hey! you know, progressive is america's number-one motorcycle insurer. yeah, she does purr! best bike i ever owned! no, you're never alone, because our claims reps are available 24/7. we even cover accessories and custom parts. we diget an early start! took the kids to soccer practice. you want me to jump that cactus? all right. aah! that lady's awesome. i don't see a possum! >>> there's new information tonight about the hush money paid by president trump's lawyer to the porn star, stormy daniels. let's go live to sara sidner. what's the latest? >> reporter: if "the wall street journal" sources are correct, this could be the first time we're seeing evidence that donald trump in fact knew about that payment to stormy daniels to keep her quiet. stordaniels, the porn star who allegedly carried on a sexual affair with donald trump ten years before he ran for the presidency, reportedly almost went public right before the election because a payment she was expecting from trump's lawyer hadn't arrived. that revelation is one of a series of new allegations from "the wall street journal" and "the washington post" suggesting trump's personal lawyer, michael cohen, held back a $130,000 payout because he couldn't get a hold of trump during the last days of the campaign. that's different than what cohen previously said. last month, admitted to paying 130,000 out of his own personal funds to daniels, but in a statement said neither the trump organization nor the trump campaign was a party to the transaction with miss clifford, and neither reimbursed me for the payment directly or indirectly. stephanie clifford is stormy daniels' real name. he kplanld after the election he was never reimbursed. >> he was not source of the funds if he was mad he was not reimbursed after the election. >> reporter: "the wall street journal" says the bank used to wire the money flagged it as suspicious and reported it to treasury department. the paper says the money was paid out 12 days before the election, leading to questions about whether it could be considered a campaign contribution. the watchdog group common cause which filed complaint earlier this year with the federal election commission says if the new allegations are true, they're a huge problem for the president. >> there are two important facts in the new "the wall street journal" reporting today on the stormy daniels payment. number one, michael cohen apparently missed his initial deadline to pay stormy daniels her hush money because he couldn't get in touch with donald trump. now, this underscores our allegation in the january complaint that this was all about the election and that mr. trump, now president trump, was involved in all this. >> reporter: as for stormy daniels, she shows up for performances and does interviews, careful to side step any questions concerning trump. but this exchange with erotic photographer and director holly randall reveals daniels still has a story to tell. >> i haven't lied about anything. i haven't mislead anyone. like there's a common misconception i leaked this, it wasn't me. and hopefully i'll be able to tell my side just for not for any sort of gain other than i want to be able to defend myself. >> reporter: we should be clear, mr. cohen, donald trump's personal attorney, and the white house deny there was any affair between donald trump and stormy daniels. we do know that the bank that this money was transferred from, mr. cohen's bank, they have said no comment. the white house said we're going to refer you to mr. cohen for comment on the new details. mr. cohen called it fake news, and as for stormy daniels, none of her representatives responded to request for comment. >> thank you. sara sidner with the latest on that. >>> a self described russian sex coach who claims to have incriminating information on the kremlin's election meddling is speaking out to cnn. what is she willing to offer in exchange for asylum here in the united states. you wouldn't accept an incomplete job from any one else. why accept it from your allergy pills? 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(laughs) yes. ellen. that's my robe. you could save $782 when liberty stands with you. liberty mutual insurance. >>> new tonight, a self-described self-coach is offering inside informationing the woman is imprisoned in thailand but says she's willing to trade what she knows for asylum in the united states. >> it's a story that the headline pretty much says ait all. this young woman who described herself as a sex coach offering u.s. investigators information she has about russian meddling in the u.s. election in exchange for her freedom from this thai jail and not be deported back to russia. it's strange story. >> reporter: she described herself as a seductress. this woman claims to have evidence of russian meddling in the u.s. election. the question, is this a desperate ploy to get out of jail or as her friend claims, is this young woman truly in danger because she knows too much. >> they are in danger. second, they have the information. third, we are afraid of their life. really afraid of their lies. we don't know what's going to happen. >> reporter: for days several russian friends have been held at this jail in the capital of thailand where visitors are not allowed to bring cameras. i came out of this detention center. it was loud and hot and chaotic and talking through the bars she says she witnessed meetings between the russian billionaire and three americans who she refused to name. he claims they discussed plans to effect the u.s. elections but she wouldn't give any further information because she fears she could be deported back to russia. her claims might not hold much water if it wasn't for this. photos published on her instagram account of russian billionaire. a one time business partner of former president trump campaign manager paul manafort. he's pleaded not guilty to charges related to money laundering and other alleged crimes discovered during the investigation into russian meddling. posts show on board the private yacht meeting russia's deputy prime minister. two powerful russian men overheard in one video discussing russian-u.s. relations. she wrote about the meeting using altered names this this book. a spokesman writing this is clearly an attempt to politicize the accusations of the thai police. here's where the story gets really weird. last month she was in thailand where a russian sex coach. running a week long sex training course that teaches among other things, tips for dating. on the last day, thai police burst into the hotel arresting them for working without a permit. >> i was there to have a good time. >> and then the police showed up? >> just showed up. >> the days that followed he says he hand delivered this let frer t er from the sex teacher to the u.s. embassy. requesting asylum in exchange for recordings she made of alleged russian government crimes. since she's not a u.s. citizen this is matter for the thai authorities. supporters deliver food to their friends in jail where offers to help u.s. investigators have gone unheard. the jailed seductress and sex teacher may be deported back to mother russia. wolf, thai authorities accused these group of russians of working without a visa and revoked their visas here. a thai police chief tell us that doing the paper work for the detoratid deportati deportation. a lawyer says this is taking unusually long. usually people are deported within matter of one to two days and it's been more than a week now. >> any way to assess the validity of the evidence she says she has? >> impossible. she hasn't offered any of that evidence. when i was skeptical about this, the man said we're trying to slow down deportation right now. we could have gone home to russia very quickly and not have to be suffering in this overheated jail. we're trying to wait for the americans to come and talk to us and that hasn't happened to us. >> thanks very much. that's it for me. erin burnett outfront starts right now. >>> good evening. breaking news. defients aant and speaking out, nunberg refusing to come ply with the sue pea thbpoena. he's challenging robert mueller to arrest him. he's going to be my guest onset in just a moment to talk about this. we have the subpoena that

, in all caps of course, his tweet storm targeting robert mueller and more. also tonight, the lawmakers who say firing mueller would be dangerous, dumb politically, suicidal, but are doing nothing to stop it. and later a new twist in the stormy daniels saga. >>> we begin with the breaking news and cnn's pamela brown at the white house. what have you learned about this meeting between the president's legal team and mueller's team? >> reporter: well, anderson, we've learned that lawyers on both sides, on robert mueller's side as well as lawyers for the president, met just last week in a face-to-face interview. this is the first one they've had in recent weeks after informal discussions about a possible interview. but they met face to face, and i'm told by a source familiar along with my colleague, gloria borger, that during this meeting, robert mueller's team was able to provide more specifics, more granularity on the topics they would like to discuss with the president if an interview happens. that includes anything under the umbrella of the firing of james comey and michael flynn and wh

investigation and the subpoena involving the trump organization. did robert mueller cross a red line that trump warned us about last year. you're watching msnbc. a wealth . a wealth of perspective. ♪ a wealth of opportunities. that's the clarity you get from fidelity wealth management. straightforward advice, tailored recommendations, tax-efficient investing strategies, and a dedicated advisor to help you grow and protect your wealth. fidelity wealth management. tgas, bloating,w constipation and diarrheath. can start in the colon and may be signs of an imbalance of good bacteria. only phillips' colon health has this unique combination of probiotics. it helps replenish good bacteria. get four-in-one symptom defense. where we're changing withs? contemporary make-overs. then, use the ultimate power handshake, the upper hander with a double palm grab. who has the upper hand now? start winning today. book now at lq.com. >>> now to a development that could further inflame tensions between russia and the united kingdom. there is a investigation into the death of a russian business man who

criminal community so that -- know this is a no-none nonsense person. and yet here, robert mueller comes in as f.b.i. director and he is putting in place a policy that is getting rid of the best of the best that we have in the federal bureau of investigation. and some say, well, you may not realize that he was a bush appointee. i know he was. and he took office as director of the f.b.i. shortly before 9/11. to blame robert mueller for failing to see what was coming on 9/11, because he had just simply not been in office that long. but director mueller implemented this policy and as i struggle, why would he do this? he is running thousands of years of experience. mean just in that three life 4s and 140 supervisory agents hat mueller ran off, not for unethical conduct, and not for inefficiency, no. n he ran them off because they perhaps had too much experience and anybody that has concern self-image and perhaps -- i was wrestling, why would someone run off thousands of experience within the f.b.i. d what i kept coming bang to perhaps there is some kind of insecurity that would cause a direc

were being lied to, but then he gets to a point, he's bff, robert mueller, to be the special counsel? all of this is why we need a second special counsel. these people cannot investigate themselves. as for those clinton email records, doj inspector general michael horowitz, remember, we are waiting on his report. he has gathered 1.2 million documents, some of which are all related to this corrupt email investigation and probe. by the way, guess how many of the 1.2 million documents congress has been able to see? only 3,000. that is one quarter of 1%.ne you call that stonewalling 101. that is the deep state desperately protecting the deep stage. unfortunately, there are some members of congress who believe in their role in oversight. there are a few journalists who actually care about truth and justice and equal application and equal application under the law and the constitution. p people willing to put themselves out there and follow the truth, the facts, the evidence. also brand-new tonight, house majority leader kevin mccarthy, house majority whip stevety scalise, they are joinig

robert mueller's team is focusing on. the special council wants to question president trump about four main topics so far. the president's legal team is creating a list of dozens of questions mueller could last. with trump all upset about the investigation. he was fuming last night when news leaked that national security advisers warned him not to congratulate vladimir putin. he quizzed his allies and outside advisers asking them to tell him who they thought was the leak er the latest leak contributes to an atmosphere of parano paranoia. he doesn't hesitate to throw his own people under the bus. ask rex tillerson, not to mention james comey, michael flynn and a host of other people. what's behind these leaks? >> this is from the former director of the cia telling msnbc he thinks president trump is afraid of vladimir putin going on to say, the russians could have something on him personally, that they could always roll out and make his life more difficult. there's no public evidence of that, but it's a pretty stunging statement by an intelligence official, right? >> i'm going to as

counsel robert mueller has subpoenaed documents from the trump organization. the white house just responding in the white house daily briefing. stand by. much more after a break on cnn. i'm just worried about the house and taking care of the boys. zach! talk to me. it's for the house. i got a job. it's okay. dad took care of us. wemost familiar companies,'s but we make more than our name suggests. we're an organic tea company. a premium juice company. a coconut water company. we've got drinks for long days. for birthdays. for turning over new leaves. and we make them for every moment in every corner of the country. we are the coca-cola company, and we're proud to offer so much more. liberty mutual saved us almost $800 when we switched our auto and home insurance. liberty did what? yeah, they saved us a ton, which gave us a little wiggle room in our budget. i wish our insurance did that. then we could get a real babysitter instead of your brother. hey, welcome back. this guy, right? (laughs) yes. ellen. that's my robe. you could save $782 when liberty stands with you. liberty mutua

the headlines: boris johnson dismisses russian claims that the nerve agent used to target the former russian spy in salisbury could have come from the porton down research laboratory. this is not the response of a country that believes itself to be innocent, this is not the response of a country which wishes to engage in getting to the bottom of this. snow and ice continue to cause disruption to road, rail and air travel in parts of the uk, forecasters predict temperatures will feel as low as minus ten today. my god, i nearly died! so, i'm in this club, and this car comes through! a man is arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after a car was driven into a nightclub in gravesend, in kent. mps demand answers from facebook, after accusations that data from millions of users profiles is being mishandled without users‘ consent. and, in half an hour, click looks at the future of work and asks which jobs will go to the robots. good afternoon and welcome to bbc news. the foreign secretary boris johnson says the government has evidence russia has been making and stockpiling novichok, the nerve agent britain says was used to try and kill the former russian spy sergei skripal and his daughter in salisbury. mrjohnson accused the russians of "smug sarcasm" after their ambassador to the eu suggested the nerve agent could have come from britain's own porton down research centre, which is near salisbury. here's our home affairs correspondent daniel sandford. after two weeks of delicate investigation and decontamination work in salisbury, in which police officers and troops have had to take extraordinary precautions to protect themselves, the russian ambassador to the eu chose to hint that britain might have been responsible for the nerve agent attack. porton down, as we now all know, is the largest military facility in the united kingdom that has been dealing with chemical weapons research. and it's actually only eight miles from salisbury. you're not suggesting porton down is responsible for this nerve agent? i don't know. immediately afterwards on the same programme, this was the foreign secretary's riposte. this is not the response of a country that really believes itself to be innocent. their response has been a sort of mixture of smug sarcasm and denial, obfuscation and delay. and he insisted that the russians have been doing recent nerve agent research. we actually have evidence within the last ten years that russia has not only been investigating the delivery of nerve agents for the purposes of assassination, but has also been creating and stockpiling novichok. that was a direct lie that i was being given there? but you will get that. however the foreign secretary then had to concede that the wife of a former finance minister under putin had paid £160,000 in a conservative party auction to play tennis with him. did the tennis game actually happen? it did. and after signs of a gap opening up last week between labour leadership and downing street over the salisbury attack, this morning the labour position was much closer to the government's. putin has questions to answer because this is highly likely it could be a state execution, but what we don't do in this country is we don't leap to conclusions without the evidence. what we are saying to our international partners, working with the chemical weapons inspectors as well, working with porton down, we will now produce the evidence that leads us to a judgment that they can rely upon. the porton down military laboratory is where experts have spent two weeks analysing the rare nerve agent used. tomorrow, international specialists from the organisation for the prohibition of chemical weapons will arrive here to start their own independent analysis of what left yulia and sergei skripal fighting for their lives. daniel sandford, bbc news. earlier we spoke with tom burridge in salisbury. this is an international organisation, britain and russia both signatories to the organisation for the prohibition of chemical weapons and sending over a delegation, we understand, they will go to porton down, ministry of defence‘s labs, where british scientists have already done tests on samples of the nerve agent used on sergei skripal and yulia skripal. and the idea is that the international the idea is that the international organisation will take away a sample, possibly back to the hague, where the headquarters are, or another country, to independents authorities to independently verify whether the nerve agent is part of this group known as novichok, believed to have been formulated by the soviets in the late 1980s and early 1990s. the claim by the home secretary is very interesting, the british government saying they have evidence that russia has been developing of a jock nerve agents within the last decade. joining me now is tonia samsonova — the london correspondent for the echo of moscow radio station. what you think of the new accusations today, that russia has been making and stockpiling this agent. in russia, it is said that the uk has agreed to investigate alongside russia, together, presented as if we do not know who is in charge of this attack on salisbury, and together, with british friends, we will decide who is in charge of it. on the other hand, the icy that britain is being told all sorts of different things by russian diplomats and russian investigators, and we are entering into a very long period of investigation which is a long democratic procedure, so we do not know, and i think the whole story, the whole news situation, i think it is just to the whole news situation, i think it isjust to spend the whole news situation, i think it is just to spend more time and by the end of the investigation in three years, nobody would care. so you think both sides are playing for time? rushes buying for time, as with alexander litvinenko, the investigation could last three yea rs. investigation could last three years. it'll be so as it is now, who was behind the attack on salisbury. so the reaction will be muted, and thatis so the reaction will be muted, and that is what russia is doing. if i was on that side... what about what we hear from the russian ambassador to the the eu, this point that porton down research laboratory, quite close to salisbury, very strange in those circumstances that the leak would affectjust strange in those circumstances that the leak would affect just two russians and nobody else, but what do you make the allegation? we are investigating all people who comment this in public, they benefit from the fact that the british government and british secret service do not share for a reason all the details of the investigation. even if this is not true, only people not in a position to share to the general audience the fact that are contradicting what the ambassador says, they cannot do that. when we consume this information, we do not have any evidence to prove that it is wrong or right. those words are meant to be for us to understand something, that we are in doubt who is behind the attack. in order to sow is behind the attack. in order to sow confusion? yes. this is all happening at the time of the russian election going on, the presidential election, happening today. do you think these two things are related? this row over what happened in salisbury, and the presidential election? honestly i think it is not connected at all, probably, everybody very much involved in the elections, i cannot believe that people who are in charge of the presidential campaign are in a position to do something with foreign countries, or even if, we presume that somebody in russia is behind the attack, those who might have had access to this weapon, are not those in charge of the election. i would say the two stories are absolutely separate and it is just a coincidence. much of the uk has experienced it's second significant snowfall in the last few days. worst affected have been the north and east of the country and the snow is now falling in south wales and the aouthwest of england. combined with sub zero temperature and strong winds, the arctic weather has brought delays and cancellations to public transport and made driving conditions difficult for many. this is the current picture, most of the most serious warnings have now expired, but there is still an amber snow warning in place in the south west where forecasters say there is a risk to some rural upland communities. jane—frances kelly has the latest picture from across the uk. heavy snow made driving conditions treacherous on exmoor, in north devon. strong east or north—easterly winds allowed snowdrifts to build up and the met office says the snow could strand some vehicles and passengers. an amber weather warning meaning a possible risk to life is in place for much of south—west england. forecasters say there is a good chance that some rural upland communities could be cut off. around exeter, they have snowploughs to clear major routes. across the country, communities are spending the day trying to clear pavements and roads. rail companies and airports are warning people to check before travelling. bristol, east midlands and bournemouth airports were all closed during the morning, so runways could be cleared of snow. 0vernight conditions were treacherous further north, snowploughs had to be sent to clear the m62. in halifax, a car overturned. in barnsley, drivers in 4 x 4 vehicles towed motorists to safety. but a lorry proved just too much. in the north—east of england, roads remain hazardous. in consett, county durham, darren spent the morning digging his street out for his neighbours, even though he doesn't drive, but he enjoys the exercise. i haven't been to the gym for a week because of the weather, cannot be bothered to trudge through it, so i thought i would clear snow everyday! sporting fixtures, including a number of half marathons, have been called off, but it has not been doom and gloom for everyone, children have been getting out there sledges for the second time in a matter of weeks, with this weather set to improve over the next couple of days. our correspondent sarah walton is in barton—upon—humber in north lincolnshire. let's take a closer look. actually, we have seen things improve a little bit in the last couple of hours, less snowfall, what we have been left with is piles of snow standing around, very strong winds and ice. you can see the humber bridge, closed to high sided vehicles for a while, the snow has been drifting across roads in places. the a15 is open because there has been snowploughs and gritters up and down. small rural roads are not even passable by the snowploughs. they have been struggling to clear the roads. they have asked people to stay off the roads unless they need to travel. greater manchester police have said that conditions over the pennines were bleak, pictures earlier of a blizzard over there, and they are warning people to stay off the roads that go over high ground. we have had disruption today also on trains, south—western railway, great northern rail affected, so if you were thinking of getting a train later today, tonight, have a look at rail website before you set off. delay also from airports, bristol airport closed for a while, cancellations of planes out of heathrow and planes in the south, that is because planes have to be deiced before they can take off as a precaution, that adds extra time to the journey. if you are one of those people leaving for warmer climes, do check. conditions will improve in lincolnshire and yorkshire, the midlands and the north—west, things getting better as we move the afternoon. because there are large piles of snow, one foot deep in some places, they will take time to clear, so if you have to travel today, if you are out and about, take extra care, give yourself more time than you normally would. from one sarah to another, going down to devon, sarah ransome, in devon, the weather seems to be worsening. it came in at 11:30am, the met office had been forecasting it would come around then. they were not wrong, it came in a wave and a flurry, a dump of snow is how it would be described, temperatures dropped, then came the si'iow. you can see it coming in on the horizon, almost smell it coming, because there it came. when i left here early this morning about 5pm, the whole area around here was a smattering of snow, in the space of about 20 minutes, half an hour, suddenly three or four inches of snow came down, and still coming, as you can see. this morning we went up to a place called holden hill, if you look behind me you can probably see the sign that says torquay and plymouth, the right—hand turn that you need to take to get up to holden hill, and that is where some of the most treacherous driving conditions were this morning and still are, it has to be said, this afternoon. snowploughs out, firefighters clearing garage forecourts to try to help people, hgv vehicles get away from there, in fact, a number of hgv vehicles have been stacked up at junction 30, a mile or so from here, at the end of the motorway. conditions are so treacherous. look at the road now, barely any cars on it, because it is so difficult and treacherous that police are making sure they clear the roads, they have snowploughs, tractor plough is going up and down, gritters have been out relentlessly overnight, to try to clear the pathways. the headlines: the foreign office has dismissed claims that the nerve agent used to target the former russian spy in salisbury could have come from the nearby porton down research laboratory. snow and ice continue to cause disruption to road, rail and continue to cause disruption to road, railand air continue to cause disruption to road, rail and air travel in parts of the uk. some police forces are advising motorists to avoid nonessential travel. a man's been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after a car was driven into a nightclub in gravesend, in kent. thirteen people have received treatment for injuries. in sport: great britain have won their first gold in sport: great britain have won theirfirst gold medal at in sport: great britain have won their first gold medal at the winter paralympics. menna their first gold medal at the winter pa ralympics. menna fitzpatrick their first gold medal at the winter paralympics. menna fitzpatrick and her guidejen kehoe topped the podoim in the visually—impaired slalom with millie knight and brett wild taking the bronze for the paralympicsgb team too. southamton have taken the lead in their fa cup quarter final against wigan. pierre—emile hojbjerg with the goal in mark hughes' first game as the southamptn manager. they've also had a penalty saved. just a few mintues left —— southampton. just a few minutes left. 2—0, with a couple of minutes left. 2—0, with a couple of minutes to play. and the scottish prmeiership leaders, celtic are being held by motherwell — it's 0—0 with the second half about to start. motherwell are down to ten men after cedric kipre saw a straight red card for kicking out at scott brown. details on those stories and more, in around one hour's time. president trump has said the sacked deputy director of the fbi, andrew mccabe, did not taken any notes at meetings between the two men. the comments follow reports that mr mccabe delivered detailed notes of their conversations to robert mueller, the special counsel investigating russian interference in the presidential elections. us media suggest the memos could support claims that mr trump sought to obstruct justice. in a tweet president trump said he had spent very little time with the former deputy director of the fbi, andrew mccabe, and refuted claims that notes had been taken in the president's presence. explain what this is about and why these notes matter? andrew mccabe was deputy director of the fbi and also there whenever president trump fired the then director of the fbi, james comey, that was very controversial and something that is still being a contentious issue that is fought out. james comey is due to release a book next month in which he says he will reveal more about some of the stock —— some of that. andrew mccabe rarely took notes in that period, he kept notes of conversations with president trump, he has now given those to the special counsel, robert mueller, subsequent to his firing. it is fairto mueller, subsequent to his firing. it is fair to say president trump has really been pushing for the firing of andrew mccabe, andrew mccabe stepped down from his position in january, was mccabe stepped down from his position injanuary, was due to retire actually today, he would have retired on a full pension after more than 20 years in the fbi. that is now put in jeopardy by the fact he was fired some 26 hours before today, which is his 50th birthday. you have this very contentious argument between them, about what was said and what was done, and all of these details have now been passed on to robert mueller, special counsel, who is looking at allegations of russian interference in the us election back in 2016. i whole range of other matters as well which have shot off from that effectively. sounds like president trump, with his tweet, is attempting to undermine the credibility of the notes. beyond that, andrew mccabe claims that he is trying notjust to taint him and the fbi but taint law enforcement agencies more generally and specifically trying to discredit the robert mueller investigation into these claims of russian interference. now, that is a serious allegation but it's got to be remembered that yesterday, president trump's own personal lawyer gave a statement in which he said, following the firing of andrew mccabe, he wished that they would go on and they would basically end that whole investigation being taken place by the special counsel, he initially said that he was speaking on behalf of the president. he later clarified that was his own personal view and not the president's however, president trump has been tweeting about the robert mueller investigation today, he says: the probe should never have been started, there was no collusion. he uses started, there was no collusion. he uses the phrase witchhunt. there is a growing feeling in washington that the white house, after setting its sights on andrew mccabe, is now setting its sights on the mull investigation taking place and that is worrying politicians, notjust democrats but also some republicans. —— mueller. those are people within donald trump's own party, to give you an idea, the senator is not a fun of donald trump in any way but he said he believed the latest comments were aimed at the firing of robert mueller, it seems to be building to that, i hope it does not go there, because we cannot accept that. another republican senator, lindsay graham, said, the only reason robert mueller should be dismissed is for calls, if you try to do that, that would be the beginning and end of his presidency, because we are a rule of law nation. there is a building dissonances between the republican party and their president. a man has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after at least 13 people were injured when a car was driven into a busy nightclub in gravesend. it's thought the car drove into a covered smoking area at bla ke's nightclub. our correspondent simon jones at the scene sent us this update. well, the police remain at the scene, they were initially called here just before midnight, that was after clubbers heard a big bang, able trying to enjoy their night out, suddenly, a 4 x 4, ploughed into a tented area at the end of the alleyway behind me, there was panic, people screaming, one of the people inside the club said that she sent a text to her family to say she loved them because she did not know what was going to happen. security staff quickly took charge of the situation and got people out of the tented area into the main part of the club and people were allowed to leave through the back entrance. the police say at least 13 people have been injured, those are the 13 they know about but they believe their are other people who may have suffered injuries and left the club of their own accord, they are being asked to contact police. we are told the injuries are largely broken bones rather than any life—threatening injuries. the police say a 21—year—old man has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder. according to the police, they believe he had left the club earlier in the evening, after an altercation. for the people inside, a frightening situation, the owners of the club have put a statement on their facebook page saying they are very sorry people had to experience this and there are thoughts are very much with those who are affected, those who witnessed it, those who have been injured and with security staff who had to deal with the aftermath of it. the chair of the digital, culture, media and sport select committee has accused the data analysis firm hired by donald trump's presidential campaign team of deliberately misleading it. damian collins said the chief executive of the firm, cambridge analytica, had made false statements when he denied receiving secretly harvested data of millions of american facebook users. when you click "like" on facebook, when you join something using your facebook profile, most people don't know what that triggers. it triggers a whole chain of data being handed over, effectively, to strangers, what this case is doing is highlighting that. four years ago an app was developed in the university of cambridge which harvested personal information of facebook users plus all of theirfriends! almost certainly unwittingly, for all of their friends, and that information was given to cambridge analytica, no relation to the university, which in turn worked on the donald trump campaign in 2016. that company was before mps last month, as was facebook, to talk about the husbandry of personal information. and damian collins, today, wrote to the company and said it seemed clear they do literally misled the committee and parliament about giving falls statements, they also said they were very critical about facebook, social media giant, and would be inviting mark zuckerberg or a very senior official to appear before mps as well, this is what he told me earlier this morning. —— false statements. i don't think facebook was straight with us, they have known about this data breach for over two years. they did nothing to make sure that the data taken was destroyed properly, as they requested it should be done. i don't think they have notified users and the lawyers tried to stop the guardian and the observer publishing the story in the first place. looks like facebook were trying to avoid difficult questions about this, and people will rightly be concerned about other data breaches that we do not know about, how effective are facebook at stopping people taking data from their platform and using it in a way that suits them? a whistle—blower has been talking to the new york times, to the observer, to channel 4 news. chris wylie, who worked with this company, cambridge analytica, and he of course claims that 50 million facebook user profiles were acquired from this app, developed four years ago, facebook pushes back hard and said there was no breach, definitely, of its data, and says people, when theyjoined this app, they did so knowing notjust there but all of their friends personal information would be tapped into. they are not updating the statement in the light of comments from the chair of the select committee. as for cambridge analytica, have not heard from them, they say they did not use any of the information that they harvested from this infamous app, in the us presidential election of 2016 and that they only used legally acquired data, fairly, in also consensus. voting is under way across russia in the country's election, in which president putin is expected to win a fourth term in office. there are several other candidates but his main rival alexei navalny has been barred from taking part after being convicted of fraud, a charge he says was politically motivated. from moscow richard galpin reports. richard, obviously one of the key things about the presidential election is turnout, tell us about that, first. the turnout we are getting from the national election commission is 52.6% at the moment, obviously that could change. voting is continuing, still another few hours of voting to go. so, we have to wait and see if it is going to reach the number they wanted of around 70% or not. certainly, just from this pollen station, there has been a steady stream of people coming through. the expectation that vladimir putin will get his fourth term, as you say, but is that what people are saying to you, is there are a lot of enthusiasm for this fourth term for him? i think there has been quite a problem for the kremlin, they launched quite a big campaign to try to galvanise people to go out and vote, they were quite worried that there would be apathy. he has been in power since the end of 1999, there is a sense, what is the point of voting again, we know what the result will be, there is little point. a pretty dynamic campaign by the kremlin, certainly in the last few weeks, of trying to get people to go out and vote. even initially, he did not himself do much campaigning, then he went to various places in the run—up to the vote today. here, what a lot of people coming out, anecdotally. we are very focused on the russian role, alleged, at any rate, in elation to events in salt spray. what is the focus of the election campaign, what is president —— what is president putin saying he will give the russians if he gets another six hours years in russia? —— in racing to events in salt spray —— salisbury. all the problems they have from the west, blood and putin he is the tough man in command of his role, longevity, experience, all used to enhance his status here. and everything that has happened in the last couple of weeks with the poisoning in salisbury, the retaliation by moscow to the sanctions announced by theresa may last week, the russian response coming yesterday, just before the election. he is standing up as the strongman for russia. and the person who has changed russia, it has developed an enormous lot since he came to power at the end of 1999. whyatt let's catch up with some weather. darren has the latest on the snow. it will gradually turn milder but we are not yet finished with the snow. we still have some mornings from the met office, an amber warning to the south—west of england, devon and cornwall, with snow expected to continue into the early hours of the morning. quite heavy snow over the hills. snowy across the south—west, like patches now coming in a cross of

briefing. she was also asked about the investigation being that by special counsel robert mueller. >> here you go. >> good afternoon. happy agriculture day. today we honor the men and women who work every day to feed, fuel, and clothe the people of the united states and the world. secretary of agriculture sonny perdue hosted vice president pence at the department of agriculture to commemorate the day. as you may remember when the president spoke at the american farm bureau convention earlier this year, he said our farmer deserve a government that serves their interests and empowers them to do the hard work they love to do so much. this administration is making sure government does that by reducing burdensome regulations allowing them to be more productive by cutting their taxes and empowering them to make their own decisions about investing in their operations. and by working to make sure our trade agreements are fair and that other countries play by the rules. the president was proud to issue a proclamation declaring today the 45th annual national ag day. earlier today the president was p

>>> happening now, breaking news, mueller moves in. cnn has learned that special counsel robert mueller has subpoenaed the trump organization for business documents as part of its russia investigation. with this look now at the trump family's business empire, has mueller crossed the president's red line? >>> sanctioning russia -- the trump administration announces punishment for moscow's meddling in the 2016 election, singling out more than a dozen russians already indicted by the special counsel robert mueller. why did the administration miss congress deadline by a month and a half? >>> friend or foe -- as president trump moves closer to blaming russia for the poisoning of a former spy, the white house won't say whether the president, vladimir putin, is an ally or the enemy of the united states. why unwilling to call him out? >>> and deadly bridge collapse -- a walkway collapse, crushing cars and trapping the people inside. rescuers are working frantically to reach the victims. what caused the span to come crashing down? >>> we want to welcome our viewers in the united states a

your toin for chuck to. and robert mueller is asking direct questions about what the president knew about wikileaks and when he knew it, according to witnesses. and now one witness, sam nunberg, a former campaign aide who last week spent hours in an interview with robert mueller's team is now deciding he will not comply with a grand jury subpoena. it is a sudden and some might say suspicious reversal considering what nunberg was telling me last night. that he had every intention of complying. here, though, is what he told me on live tv this afternoon. >> i'm not going to cooperate when they want me to have -- when they want me to come in to a grand jury for them to insinuate that roger stone was colluding with julian assange. roger is my mentor and like family to me. i'm not going to do it. >> what has happened in the last 24 hours that made you change your mind on this? >> when i was going over everything today, when i look at the -- the subpoena, this is ridiculous. should i spend 50 hours gooding over all ov ov over all -- going over all of my mails with roger and steve bannon. a

was used. special counsel robert mueller's russia investigation is seeking e-mails from employees who worked with the trump campaign. president trump'sformer chief strategist steve bannan was a president. they said they comply with facebook's terms of service. we can confirm we do not hold or use any data from profiles. lawmakers expressed concern sunday. >> this is a big deal when you have that amount of data and the privacy violations are significant. >> reporter: facebook suspended their account but the company only acknowledged the breach after several recent news reports. cbs news. >> facebook maintains the information that was gathered. the man who mined the data received grants from the russian government for facebook research. >> for the first time president trump is attacking special counsel robert mueller by name. today the president lashed out at robert mueller who looks in to ties between the trump campaign and russia. on friday acting fbi director andrew mccabe was fired two days before he was set to retire. president trump calls that proof the investigation is a partisan

counsel, president trump for first time attacking robert mueller by name. details ahead. if you'd have told me three years ago... that we'd be downloading in seconds, what used to take... minutes. that guests would compliment our wifi. that we could video conference... and do it like that. (snaps) if you'd have told me that i could afford... a gig-speed. a gig-speed network. it's like 20 times faster than what most people have. i'd of said... i'd of said you're dreaming. dreaming! definitely dreaming. then again, dreaming is how i got this far. now more businesses in more places can afford to dream gig. comcast, building america's largest gig-speed network. >>> president trump is giving oxygen to concerns on capitol hill that he could fire the special counsel in charge of the russia probe. for the first time, trump called out robert mueller by name as he railed against his team of investigators and questioned the fairness of the investigation. the weekend explosion of angry tweets is fueling concerns that the president could trigger a constitutional crisis by forcing mueller's fir

paid for and knew the judges were being lied to. then he gets to a point his bff, robert mueller, special counsel? all of this is why we need a second special counsel. they cannot investigate themselves. for the clinton e-mail records, michael horowitz, we're waiting on his report. he's gathered 1.2 million documents. some of which are all related to this corrupt e-mail investigation and probe. by the way guess how many of the 1.2 documents congress has seen? 3,000. a quarter of 1%. you call that stone walling 101. that is the deep state desperately protecting the deep state. unfortunately, there's some members of congress that believe in their role in oversight. there are a few journalists that care about truth and just it's the and equal application and equal application under the law and the constitution. people willing to put themselves out there and follow the truth, the facts, the evidence. all right, also brand new tonight, kevin mccarthy, house majority whip, steve scalise, they are joining the chorus that is calling for what we've been calling for, the appointment of a second spe

escalating to a whole new level. special counsel robert mueller reportedly giving president trump's legal team a list of questions as investigators eye an interview with the commander in chief. lawyering up, fired fbi deputy director andrew mccabe hiring a powerful d.c. attorney, and there's fierce new reaction today from lawmakers. >> 48 hours to go before retirement, i would have certainly done it differently. >> we have to be very skeptical about the reasons for the mccabe firing. >> a new bombshell as the stormy daniels drama continues on just how many years the trump attorney tried to keep that story% a secret. we begin with a president who switched gears in his assault on the russia investigation by directly attacking special counsel robert mueller. this after former fbi director andrew mccabe was fired, mccabe hitting back tweeting, quote, we will not be responding to each childish defamatory, disgusting and false tweet by the president. the whole truth will come out in due course, but the tweets today confirm he has corrupted the entire process. in a tweet trump questioning the po

special counsel robert mueller with this tweet this morning. quote, a total witch hunt with massive conflicts of interest, closed quote. in his weekend tweet storm, the president also targeted andrew mccabe, the newly fired deputy director of the fbi. he also took aim at the fired fbi director james comey, the fbi itself, the justice department and the state department, and he escalated his attacks on the special counsel robert mueller, calling him out by name. let's go to our white house correspondent jeff zeleny. >> the president, of course, watching as well and he knows more of what's going on than we do. there is no question he was set off over the weekend with a whole flurry of events, the developments that have been happening here with the russia investigation. but certainly escalated the confrontation with bob mueller, the special counsel. but stopped short, of course, of saying what he would do about it. the president a short time ago left the white house flying to new hampshire to do an event there this afternoon. we asked the president several times if he still has confide

over the week, president trump talking about robert mueller by name as if he brought down the furies from on he whispered name of robert mueller. what in the world? this is america, president of united states has right to defend himself especially against an investigator who has produced nothing and almost a year. reporter: media was shameful over the weekend i watched them conflict trump for thinking about robert mueller, police are the thought police, if you dare think about firing robert mueller you are guilty of something according to media, they are dopes. lou: they are dopes. not simply because they don't know the law because i would have to be in dope list as well, but you watch echo chamber, this has becombinational left wing media ignor ignorance they brinh day to covers white house president of united states, i don't see the0 hint of shame or embarrassment. reporter: there is nou none they throw out terms like obstruction of justice they put a conclusion ahead of facts and the law. it is a live threat, bribe, destruction of evidence or concealing documents, none are

special counsel robert mueller. so to the extent the memos by andrew mccabe are similar, one can imagine they have quite a degree of high import. >> let's flov that thinking then. they turned over those memos to the special counsel robert mueller. they sort of describe what he told mccabe about his own interactions with the president too. what specifically do you think this might mean for the investigation as we move forward or learn about what's in the muller investigation? >> what we know is special counsel robert mueller is interested in trying to figure out did donald trump take any steps to thwart the ongoing investigation and to the extent they chronicle or describe or elaborate on those efforts by president trump, one can imagine may would be very significant to special counsel mueller. one of the big key moments that's taken place is the one from last february in which president trump said -- i'm sorry -- in which robber earth mueller said to end the investigation into michael flynn, the white house national security adviser, that's such a critical moment in mueller's inv

robert mueller. we obtain fox news coverage on this. garrett tenney with the latest ration from capital health. let's begin first ellison barber on the north line of the white house. >> connected to both repair the president sent out a number of tweets this morning afternoon and then attacked now former fbi deputy director, andrew mccabe and the special counsel. a source confirms through fox news that mccabe kept memos of his interactions with the president. this is a source that was close to mccabe. he said he kept memos similar to the way the former fbi director, james comey kept his own notes. but the president on twitter writing quote - spend very little time with andrew mccabe but he never took notes when he was with me. i do not believe that he made memos except to help his own agenda. probably at a later date. the same with james comey, chemical faith memos? while you're sending out a tweet came out simply will not respond to each childish defamatory disgusting and false tweet by the president. the whole truth will come out in due course. but the tweets confirm that he ha

u.s. president as top republicans tell him to leave robert mueller alone. >>> and a would-be cinderella story in the most unlikely place. how a college basketball team's win shocked fans everywhere. hello and welcome to our viewers joining us here in the united states and of course from all around the world. i'm rosemary church. >> and i'm george howell from cnn world headquarters in atlanta. "newsroom" starts right now. >>> russian president vladimir putin is set to control russian politics for another six years. he is claiming victory in sunday's presidential election. that's no surprise, of course, because he was the only real contender. his main political opponent was banned from running. >> president putin, you see him there addressing his supporters. this came after it became clear he was on his way to his fourth term as president of russia. >> translator: we have to think about the future of our country, the future of our children. we are doomed to success, are we not? yes. thank you very much. together we will take up the massive job of work we have before us in the n

counsel robert mueller is drilling down on trump's russia business dealings and what he may have known in advance about the russian hacking into the democrats' e-mail, knowledge that could make him a co-conspirator. new heat on trump. with the students heading for washington, can he get away with doing nothing? nbc has confirmed the news that hope things someone who has been with donald trump since the early days of his campaigning is leaving. the timing certainly raises questions. just yesterday, hicks testified for eight hours before the house intelligence committee about russia. according to "the new york times," she made an admission, especially for a communications director for the white house. she told house investigators that her work for president trump had occasionally required her to tell white lies. to tell white lies. required her. earlier this month, there were reports hicks was involved in drafting early statements of support for rob porter. the white house aide who stepped down after reports emerged he abused his ex-wives. hicks was reportedly dating porter at the time of d

a nbc exclusive report that certainly counsel robert mueller's team is looking into whether jared kushner's foreign business ties influenced the president's policy. here is what judiciary member democratic congressman steve cohen told me in the last hour. >> just a continuation of the white house being an opportunity for the president and people in the administration to make money and enjoy a rich life. this is a white house that's running contrary to what the norms are. and it's not anything that people should go, well, we wanted to shake up and change the swamp. it's the creation of the swamp. this is the swampiest of all. >> also some new reaction from former attorney general eric holder, pushing back on accusations by president trump that a.g. sessions should protect him like holder protected president obama. >> the difference between me and jeff sessions is that i had a president i did not have to protect. this notion that somehow i was protecting obama from things that he had done inappropriately or illegally is simple not true. >> and turning now to the fallout of president

>>> one night after flames tore through a north beach building, emotions running high tonight. the structure completely lost, and nearby business owners break down about the prospect of starting over again. >> this is our business. this is a kid to me. raise it, love it, build it. >> tough evening for the owners of the liquor store in north beach. >> i'm dion lim. >> and i'm eric thomas. tonight part of union street remains closed half that four-alarm blaze. >> let's get to cornell bernard. cornell, so many unanswered questions tonight. >> reporter: dion and eric, some sad news. we have learned this building has been red tagged by the city of san francisco. it is just too unsafe to occupy tonight. take a look, the barricades were set up just a few hours ago. union street is closed because there is a concern that the building's facade could fail and fall. still no cause for the fire. it's under investigation, but one city official has a lot of criticism for the fire department. meantime, business owners salvaging what they can tonight. >> the fire went so fast and so crazy like that. >> reporter: the owner says saturday's fire was intense, engulfing the upper floors of this billing on union street and stretching a city block in north beach. six businesses below including restaurants and bars heavily damaged by smoke and water. for him it was all too real. >> you feel like you lost your kid, your business. this is a kid to me. raise it, love this. >> the building now red tagged by the city. inspectors are concerned the front of it could collapse. drone view 7 captured those images from inside the building. there's nothing left but charred rubble surrounded by brick walls. remarkably no one was hurt. firefighters stopped the fire from spreading to nearby buildings, but san francisco supervisor aaron peskin criticized the fire department's response saying it took too long to put water on the fire. >> with my own eyes they completely totally failed to address this working fire in a quick, efficient way. >> the fire chief joanne hayes white fired back. >> once we determined we had no more life safety problems, we pulled everyone out in an abundance of caution. that's what we do. we're professional firefighters. we hoe what we're doing. >> reporter: there was a fire in the same building back in 2014. business owners say upstairs apartments had been vacant since then. >> i don't want to give up. i still have hope to bring it back again. >> reporter: many are vowing to return. in san francisco. cornell bernard, abc 7 news. >> chp is investigating a road rage shooting that hurt one adult and a young girl. this the happened about 9:00 p.m. last night on eastbound interstate 80 near willow avenue. officers shut down the freeway for more than four hours to collect evidence. they say four people were in the victim's car. the adult passenger suffered minor injuries, and they described the child as major. chp is check being traffic kamgs for suspects but they are asking anyone with information to contact them. >> we didn't get a lot of sun today, but we didn't see any rain, yet. >> yet. on the left is sierra resort and on the left is santa cruz and the beach. >> let get to meteorologist drew tuma on this one. >> we got rid of the showers yesterday, but the clouds have certainly clung to much of the region for the second half of the weekend. live doppler 7 along with satellite showing you we've got overcast skies across the entire region, but there's no moisture falling from the clouds. the clouds will not be sticking around for our monday. future weather showing you tonight by 8:00 we still have cloudy skies. 40s and 50s and after midnight the clouds are going to get out of here. that's going to lead the way to a really sunny start to the week and mild temperatures by monday afternoon. you get one more dry day, and then a rain chances rapidly increase. by tuesday and wednesday, our next storm arrives. we'll detail it hour by hour and show you where it stands on the storm impact scale coming up and i'll have the full accuweather forecast. >> dozens of people protested outside a coffee shop for their refusal to serve uniformed police officers. the cafe recently posted its policy on social media which asks police to leave for the physical and emotional safety of its customers and staff. one witness to the protest posted this video you see here to your twitter account. the group who called themselves pro president donald trump supporters waved american flags while denouncing the cafe stance and the group declared this is trump country. the group showed up at the temescal farmers market to confront oakland mayor libby schaaf and condemn her for warning i.c.e. of a formal ice raid. she was there to meet community members and those who support her protested by discussing sanctuary cities and discussing protection of it undocumented images. >> president trump ramps up his attacks on special counsel robert mueller's investigation into his campaign. some leap cans are speak out. senator lindsey graham said today if the president fires mueller it, quote, it's the beginning of the end of his presidency." abc news reporter andy field has the latest of his developments. >> reporter: donald trump's motorcade on its way to a virginia golf course. the president taking time off sunday morning after questioning the impartiality of robert mueller's special counsel team, tweeting why does the mueller team have 13 hardened democrats, and some big crooked hillary protests, and zero republicans, and yet there is no collusion. the president repeatedly denying what mueller is investigating, whether there was any alleged collusion between trump's presidential election campaign and russia. the mueller probe should never have been started in that there was no collusion and there was no crime. witch-hunt. the president's tweets and his legal team seizing on the friday night firing of former deputy fbi director andrew mccabe to make the case for shutting down the russian investigation. just hours after attorney general jeff sessions fired mccabe, the president's lead attorney john dowd called on sessions's deputy rob rosenstein to follow his boss' brilliant and courageous example and shut down the robert mueller collusion investigate. some members of congress now worried the president may be telegraphing his intentions to fire mueller. >> would i hope that it would prompt all democrats and republicans in the house to pass an independent counsel law and reinstate bob muler. >> as i said before, if he tried to do that, that would be the beginning of the end of his presidency because we're a rule of law nation. >> reporter: others believe the president won't go that far. >> as to bob mueller, he is econducted this investigation so far with great integrity without leak and by showing results, and i don't think the president's going to fire someone like that. >> reporter: mueller is a registered republican and former fbi director appointed by republican president george w. bush. >> andy field, abc news washington. >> meantime, abc 7 was at a town hall in san rafael today and asked congressman jarred huffman for his take a on what mr. trump is doing when it comes to the mueller investigation. >> i think the president sends out these trial balloons by twitter to find out if republicans in congress will have his back if he fires mueller or to see if they will consider that a red line. >> reporter: huffman then add that had republicans need to make it clear to the president he's creating a constitutional crisis if he continues down his path. >>> peninsula representative jackie spear tweeted this morning the president is careening us towards what i fear will be a constitutional crisis. mr. president, here is my red line. fire mueller, and i will vote to fire you. >> a new report is casting doubt on attorney general jeff session's testimony on potential trump campaign contacts with russia. sessions said he pushed back against a proposal by former campaign advisers george pantlous at a campaign meeting. tonight reuters is reporting that three people who spoken with him have contradicted sessions' sworn statements saying he expressed no objections to objection to the idea and democrats are causing him of perjury. >> a celebration of life will take place at the veterans home in california in yountville to honor the lives of three mental health workers shot hand killed by army veteran albert wong on march 9 before he took his own knife. jennifer golic was a therapist, wife and mother and another woman was 7 months pregnant. her husband says she will always be remembered for her unconditional love and incredibly gift heart. kristine lober dedicated her life to helping veterans heal. the memorial started at 6:00 p.m. at napa valley lincoln arts center and we will be carrying it live on abc 7. >> there's much more ahead hat 5:00. somebody is $455 million richer tonight. >> also, an historic building comes tumbling down. >> and later, a couple that lost their home in the >>> just like that, it's gone. the 12-story westchester plaza building in fort worth is nothing more than a big pile of rubble. the building imploded sunday morning at 8:00 a.m. the building first opened in the 1950s as luxury apartments. over the past 20 years the westchester building was an assisted living facility. >> with another workwoke around the corner a warning for drivers in the east bay if you use the posey tube. expect delays throughout the week. abc 7 news was in alameda outside the tube this afternoon. caltrans says one lane will be closed most of the week. crews are keeping the lane closed while they fix a sinkhole from an underground storm drain this woke. drivers can save time by taking other routes from alameda to downtown observing hand. >> somebody in pennsylvania is smiling pretty big tonight because they are millions of dollars richer. other are the winning night's $450 million powerball drawing. 22, 57, 59, 60, 66. the powerball number is 7. one ticket purchased in pennsylvania matched all six numbers to win the janet which is the eighth largest in powerball history. cash value $274 million. wednesday's jackpot resets to a paltry $40 million. >> as if losing their house in the north bay firesn't enough a couple from santa rosa also lost their cat. >> but the happy reunion with the cat they love so much. >> and i'm meteorologist drew tuma. we're tracking a warm start to the upcoming week and rain will quickly return to the forecast. the timing ahead in the accuweather forecast. >> now is he setting the stage to fire robert mueller and the man who ran away with a teenager on a one-way flight t >>> the scat back. this fluffy feline went missing after his owners jack and luke van marlon stayed with their daughter in berkeley after losing their sonoma home to the north bay wildfires. a group of dedicated volunteers spent five months helping in the search, five months. last woke a craigslist add helped find the cat and get him to his rightful owners. >> we were just so happy. when we saw the pictures, you know, your heart starts beating and you just can't believe it but we knew it was him. >> such a sad and compelling story with the fire and them having had to flee with the middle of the night with nothing but the two cats and the one of the cats disappearing immediately, so we both really wanted to help. >> and when the cat is found, you feel like your cat has been found because you've been so emotionally involved in this situation with the owners. >> after dumping feet of snow in the past few days on the mountains, skiers and snowboarders got a relatively clear day to enjoy all that boweder. >> looking good out there. a live look from our tahoe camera at heavenly money than resort to the. resorts reported as much has four feet of snow. here's what it hooked like on slopes at squaw today. >> well, even more snow is on the way this week, and i happen to know on good authority that the person producing this show is out of here about ten second after it's over to go ski on those slopes. >> not me. i wish i could, and they are going to see more snow in the coming days. by friday of the upcoming week we could see an additional 2 to 4 feet of fresh powder so the series of storms will continue this week. live doppler seven right now. no issues with precipitation overhead and the picture outside, a live look from emoryville. it looks as if it could almost rain at any moment. socked in with cloud cover and will have it throughout the evening and clearing skies will give way after midnight tonight and we'll stay dry tonight as well. temperature wise, limited sunshine, hey lost cloud cover and our bound to have below average temperatures this time of year and kind of stuck in the 50s across the board entire day. 54 today in san francisco and oakland. a cool 57 in san jose and 58 the current number in concord and 57 the current temp neurosanta rosa. here's the call from accuweather. next 12 hours. we have the clouds early on and after midnight they will get out of here so clearing skies. by early monday morning. it will be a cool start for many of us. low 70s in our coldest spots and 40 the overnight low in richmond and oakland hand 43 in san francisco dropped about 39 in redwood city. a different looking day on the way for monday. your 12-hour planner, going to be a beautiful look day. sun is up at 7:14 in the morning and it's total sunshine throughout the day. by 4:00 we're talking about mild temperatures. that sunshine is going to be really effective at warming us up. 60s if not low 7 as to start off the week ahead. tomorrow tons of sunshine and 46 degrees in san francisco and a hive 65 in oakland and going for 70 in the south bay for san jose. 68 in concord and 66 in napa and 65 the high in livermore, but the rain will return to the forecast on tuesday. so the storm impact scale comes back on tuesday. a loyalty system we're tracking. light showers. light wind and rainfall generally less than about half of an inch with the next storm system moving through. let's time it out for you. tuesday morning. by 7:00 in the morning all indications right now. the tuesday morning commute will be dry with overcast skies. the rain looks to arrive late in the morning house, 10:00, 11:00 in the morning, but it's really light in nature. you see green on the screen indicating light rain. throughout the afternoon and evening. waves of scattered light showers to kind of round out the day tuesday night so total rainfall, looks closer to the coast and the better chance you have of finding the higher rainfall totals. a quarter of an inch in san francisco and less than that as you move inland. concord and san ramon and even livermore will struggle to find a tenth of an inch of moisture. see what you're watching on wednesday. more rain works into the picture and right now it locks like the heaviest will be centered in southern california. keep you updated on that. the accuweather forecast, enjoy tomorrow. sunny and mild and spring showers on tuesday and the showers will continue even into friday morning. >> all right, drew, thank you. >> lots of upsets on the ncaa. >> short on time. get the producer to the slopes. another huge upset in the ncaa that has another one of our producers in tears and tiger woods made a run at arnie's event and came up short >>> well, if you have any michigan state alums working in your office you know how committed they are to the university. i won't mention any names, producer brendan knapp, was in tears today after 11th seed syracuse knocked off seeded party issans. never count a jim boeheim team out. looked good for sparty early. matt mcquaid's shot catches is mid-air and banks the three. 25-22 michigan state at the half. under a minute left, one-point orange lead until tyus hill hits that. missed free throw and from half court for the win. too much on it. syracuse upsets sparty 55-53 the final. >>> purdue got a scare from butler. 2:00 left in the game sean mcdermott, an acrobatic layup and the bulldogs down two. 16 seconds left. dakota matthews with the catch and shoot three to make it a five-point game. 1.2 seconds left. butler down three. baldwin half-court heave hand another one for the tie. no good. purdue wins is 76-73 advancing to the sweet 16. all right. we had the best tournament of the year on the pga tour at arnie's place. tiger woods made a run at title but back-to-back bogeys ended that while remember mcilroy who hasn't won on the pga tour in 539 days was out of his mind. bay hill the place arnie built. tiger woods was within a shot on the lead, 5 under par until the tee shot on 16 finds a bush out of bounds. he would bogey the hole and 17 as well, but tiger finished a nice par on 18. 3 under on the day and 10 under on the tournament and tied for fifth. yesterday's leader heinrich stenson and rory mcilroy, a chance to share the lead. rims out and he's scolding and he hasn't won on the tour since 2016. chipping for birdie on is a. got. it takes a two-shot lead and part of four b dechambeau, eagle putt. find the bottom of the jar. rory would ice it with a 25-foot birdie putt. an 8 under 64. birdied five of his last six holes and he's the winner at 18 under par. >> something clicked in game in my long game and with moy putting as well, and this is a result, so it's -- it's just so nice to see everything come together finally. >> if you had asked me at beginning of the year that i would have had a chance to win two golf tournaments, that's -- that would have been -- i would have taken that in a heartbeat. >> raiders and patriots doing business today. silver and back sent cordarrelle patterson to new england along with a fifth round pick for the patriots fifth round pick saving the raiders $2.5 mill in cap space. fartherson had 31 catches for 309 yards. now, if you could trade patterson why not michael crabtree. they just cut michael. that's interesting. love him or like him, tiger woods moves the needle on the course and on television. masters beware. the beauty of the ncaa, we have a news director that's really happy today. syracuse. >> a producer crying still up in the newsroom. >> and we have one trying to get out of even if no one in your home smokes, secondhand smoke can be closer than you think. secondhand smoke from a neighbor's apartment can enter your home through air vents, through light fixtures and even through cracks in the walls and the floors. secondhand smoke is toxic. especially to children. protect your family. visit tobaccofreeca.com. at home.ld generate your own energy, or to save energy, unplug unused appliances. do your thing, with energy upgrade california. ♪ ♪ my husband is probably going to think i'm crazy. he thinks i'm going to see my sister! ♪ ♪ sometimes the confidence to be spontaneous starts with financial stability. once i heard it i was shocked. i just thought, i have to go get it! ♪ ♪ it's our tree! ♪ ♪ see how a personalized financial strategy and access to j.p. morgan investment expertise can help you. ♪ ♪ chase. make more of what's yours. >>> coming up on "abc 7 news at 6:00," new scrutiny for facebook after 50 million users data is harvested for mitt call purposes. >> and what went wrong at a bay area taco bell. >> finally tonight, a shocking discovery in space. astronomers just announce what had they have detected and what they are calling one of the strongest bursts of radio waves ever recorded. the three new signals were detected by a telescope in australia. they generated as much energy as 100 million suns. >> astronomers say it's not clear what causes these radio waves. it could be anything from stars colliding to and mysterious dense objects. >> dense objects. >> we'll mold that over. >> we'll see you at 6:00. have fun on the slopes. >> biojo >>> welcome to "world news tonight." president trump, his most direct attack on the special counsel yet, going after robert mueller by name, tearing into comey, and into just-fired deputy director of the fbi andrew mccabe. is the president setting the stage to fire the special counsel? >>> also tonight, data grab and the elections. the former insider speaking out. what he says about collecting personal information on facebook, claiming to use it to influence the way people vote. the company he worked for, and their ties to the trump campaign. >>> under arrest. the married father who disappeared with a teen from pennsylvania, running away to cancun on a one-way flight. now he's in police custody. >>> high-flying horror. a cirque du soleil performance takes a deadly turn. the aerialist thrown.

evidence the president desperately wants the special counsel's russia meddling investigation shut down. >> also, wort that robert mueller has his hands on what could be a key piece of corroborating evidence. memos documented by the fired deputy director of the fbi, andrew mccabe. now, mccabe was just dismissed by attorney general jeff sessions for alleged lack of candor. or lying, essentially, to justice department investigators. mccabe tells cnn he was pushed out because of what he knows and how badly it could damage the president. mccabe's dismissal is also the centerpiece of the president's campaign over the past 24 hours or so to shame his own justice department. the president hitting send on multiple tweets in the past few hours, broadsiding mccabe, his former boss james comey, as the sources of leaking, lying, and corruption inside the fbi. now, before the tweets, a slip and then a correction from the president's attorney. hinting that the president's anger at the russia investigation may soon reach a tipping point. john dowd told cnn speaking for myself, not the president, i pray that acting attorney general rosenstein will follow the brilliant and courageous example of the fbi office of professional responsibility and attorney general jeff sessions and bring an end to alleged russia collusion investigation manufactured by mccabe's boss, james comey, based upon a fraudulent and corrupt dossier. just end it on the merits in light of recent revelations. now, a lawyer speaking for anyone else but his client is curious. that dowd had to clarify he was speaking just for himself after telling another news outlet he was speaking for the president, that's unusual. cnn's team of reporters and specialists have been closely tracking these developments, first to washington and cnn justice reporter laura jarrett. the special counsel now in possession of those memos from andrew mccabe. what do we know about their contents and why would they matter to the special counsel? >> we know that these memos cover two key topics. mccabe's own conversations with the president as well as what mccabe was told about former fbi director james comey's separate conversations with trump. remember that comey explained in his testimony to congress that he documented his interactions with the president and he told others that he trusted like mccabe, about them, because he feared that trump was going to lie about their conversations. so mccabe's ability to now back up comey's story officially could prove significant, as the special counsel robert mueller investigates potential obstruction of justice, ana. >> laura, stand by. i also want to bring in boris sanchez. so boris, has the white house explained why john dowd told the daily beast he was speaking for the president and then he changed his mind and said he was speaking only for himself? >> they have not, ana. john dowd provided that statement initially to the daily beast. then he kind of backtracked and cleaned it up with the first line saying he was speaking specifically for himself, not as the president's attorney. not at the president's behest, or behalf. we can tell you, though, that a source close to the president has told cnn that dowd was not authorized by the president to make these statements. that is that president trump had no input on what john dowd put out there today about the special counsel. you get the sense from speaking to people close to the president that they are a bit annoyed that john dowd went in this direction because it directly contradicts what many at the white house and the white house legal team have been saying about the russia investigation, that they would fully comply with robert mueller. they would provide anything that the special counsel asked for. it also contradicts specifically what the president himself has said, guaranteeing he wouldn't fire robert mueller and going as far as to say he was looking forward to sitting down with the special counsel so that the investigation could reach a conclusion and so that the administration could prove that there was no collusion between the trump campaign and russia. we should note, it's actually not the first time john dowd has gotten himself into trouble, in controversy. if you recall, in december, he drafted a tweet that was sent out by the president that seemed to acknowledge that president trump was aware that michael flynn, the former national security adviser, had lied to the fbi before flynn was fired. and before president trump allegedly approached former fbi director james comey about backing off the investigation of michael flynn, something president trump maintains never happened. we should know the rumors about the firing of robert mueller have been swirling for some time. there's been legislation that's been presented, some of it bipartisan, to protect robert mueller as special counsel in case he were fired by someone at the department of justice or by the president. that legislation hasn't really gotten anywhere. we'll see if this week with that spending bill that congress is set to vote on, if that comes up again and perhaps it's included in some of that language, ana. >> okay. and laura, i know that after andrew mccabe was fired last night, he fired right back. what is he saying in his interview with cnn? >> well, he spoke to my colleague, pamela brown. and he had quite a bit to say about his interactions with the president. he described the trump essentially heckling him on more than one occasion, calling his wife a loser. as you recall, he has used her as something of a pinata on the campaign trail back in 2016, mentioning her failed state senate run back in '15, and how she took donations from governor mcauliffe, a close clinton ally, but mccabe also described to pamela how the president also sort of asked him a variety of different things as mccabe was advocating aggressively for a special counsel, behind the scenes, worthing to make sure that the russia investigation was shored up. but mccabe did confirm that he never, ever asked the president, rather, never asked him directly to end the russia investigation. >> okay, laura jarrett, boris sanchez, thank you for that latest reporting. the fbi agents association has also released a statement in response to mccabe's firing, and it reads in part, while the fbi aa does not comment on personnel matters, the association remains fully committed to insuring that every fbiaa member is provided appropriate procedural protections. they also strongly believe that personnel decisions should never be politicized. i want to talk about all that has gone down in just the past 24 hours with our panel. politics reporter for the guardian, sabrina siddiqui, former fbi supervisory agent josh campbell, and former prosecutor and cnn analyst, paul callan. >> josh, you left the fbi, and i imagine though you still have contact with your former colleagues, what's the feeling inside the fbi right now in light of mccabe's firing and everything that has transpired since then? >> i have heard from a lot of my former colleagues in the last 12 hours. i think the one theme i have noticed is one of confusion. people trying to make sense of two competing thoughts. trying to hold in their head at the same time. lack of candor in the fbi is something that is not tolerated. and you know, almost always leads to dismissal. that people understand. but they're also trying to make sense of the process that was involved here. and the timeline that was involved in the dismissal of former deputy director mccabe. there are just so many questions to answer. the way this is handled is 180 degrees opposite of what the fbi is used to. the fbi agents collect information and determine facts. they're always prifrby to that information that allowed them to determine, that conclusion was drawn fairly and based on the information that we had. and this situation, what the attorney general is asking us to do is to trust the conclusion without having any facts. >> and because that has come out with this ongoing investigation from the office of the inspector general, this mccabe portion of the investigation was apparently cleaved off, one of the words i have seen used from his attorney, is that unusual procedureerally, do they sometimes separate a broader investigation or is this different? >> yeah, they have the ability to do that, but i think what would have been fair is if they would have, in concert with that, released the full inspector general findings and report from that portion, which we don't have right now. what we're left to determine based on essentially a press statement from the attorney general indicating he has the authority to do something and he took action to do something, very generically details in there as far as what took place. we just don't know what it's based on. >> we, of course, have mccabe refuting the notion he did anything to mislead investigators. but sabrina, if president trump wasn't tweeting, wasn't politicizing this, would mccabe's firing be as controversial or would it be seen as sessions following the oig's recommendations as well as the office of professional responsibility, who recommended sessions fire mccabe? >> it would have drawn less scrutiny if there hadn't been this long-running public campaign by the president and some of his allies to single out andrew mccabe in particular and really put a great amount of pressure on jeff sessions to dismiss mccabe. you'll recall the president has been scathing also in his tweets about sessions, repeatedly lly belittling him and expressing his frustration that sessions recused himself from the russia investigation, and he suggested as recently as december that mccabe's days should be numbered. you also have to think about the fact mccabe was due to retire on sunday. and they made this decision to terminate his employment effective immediately two days before that date, which effectively deprives him of some of his pension benefits. a lot of this looks more retaliatory than it does drawn from the recommendations that were made in this report. i also think that it's now interesting to see mccabe having handed over these memos to the special counsel's office. he certainly is one of the few people who is in a position to corroborate the testimony of james comey, and i think that's going to be a key piece of this in terms of what happens next. is what mccabe has told the special counsel, and he certainly now feels even more obligated to share his side of the story. >> and paul, on that note, what do you see as the significance of the memos that are apparently now in the hands of special counsel robert mueller mueller? >> i think they're very important in this investigation, ultimately, and the level of vengeance that we're seeing demonstrated in the firing of mccabe suggests to me that trump lawyers are afraid that mccabe will be a key witness against the president going forward. remember, comey said that he went to mccabe and recounted several odd incidents that happened with the president, including the president demanding a loyalty oath from comey. comey said that he told mccabe about this, and presumably, mccabe may have made a memo or a note about it. the fact now that they're firing him for cause and saying that he's violated in a very serious way fbi regulations will be used later on to undermine his credibility. and say he can't be believed. this is someone the fbi fired. so i think that's what's going on here. >> and yet preet bharara, the former u.s. attorney, fired by president trump as well, responded to one of the president's tweets saying this. this is called lawsuit exhibit a. here's what the president had tweeted. this is what he was responding to. andrew mccabe fired. a great day for the hard working men and women of the fbi. a great day for democracy. james comey was his boss and made mccabe look like a choir boy. he knew all about the lies and corruption going on at the highest levels of the fbi. palm, he's suggesting mccabe could go after the president. no? >> well, yes. and i think mccabe has suggested in statements he issued yesterday that he might file a lawsuit of his own. you know, this is a labor law situation as well as sort of an investigation by congress and by the special prosecutor. and you can't just fire somebody who has worked for the government for 21 years without valid cause. so there's going to be a monster of a battle here, and mccabe's position is, i have been fired to prevent me from appearing as a witness or looking to be a credible witness. so i think you're going to see a lot of fireworks flying in this situation. >> josh, i want to share, again, former cia director john brennan's stunning response to mccabe's firing when he writes, when the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history. you may scapegoat andy mccabe, but you will not destroy america. america will triumph over you. that tweet directed at the president. given the facts, that may or may not justify mccabe's firing aren't public yet, is it possible, josh, brennan knows something the public doesn't yet know? >> i think brennan knows so much more than the public knows. i mean, looking at his service, nearly four years as director of cia, i think what we're seeing here, and i don't know if i would personally use that same kind of language, but it shows a level of frustration in government officials. i talked to a former colleague at cia who described it well and said look, if you were us in this situation and you have been going after this adversary, you have seen -- i'm talking about the russians, what they have done to our country, the targeting through the last election, and you have someone like john brennan in place trying to say, look, this is something you need to be focusing on as they change administration to administration, couple that with the fact that i was there at the trump tower meeting when you had brennan, comey, clapper, you know, presenting the new administration with the threat briefings. i think what we're seeing is a level of frustration where they knew there was something there, something that the government should be targeting, but they don't see this administration actually following through on maybe what they would have done. so i think that's reflected in a lot of the what we're seeing on twitter. >> sabrina, now the president's attorney is using mccabe's firing to call for an end to the russia investigation. this comes a few days after we learned robert mueller may have crossed that red line. trump had sort of spoken of by subpoenaing the business records from the trump organization. do you think the stage is now set to get rid of robert mueller? >> well, it certainly suggests that this broader effort to undermine the special counsel's investigation may be paving the way to do so. i think it's especially notable because the president and his attorneys have said on repeated occasions they're doing everything they can to cooperate with the special counsel's investigation, but then they make statements like these which suggest anything but. and i also think that it creates a major headache for republicans on capitol hill, who have created their own red line in the sand, which is that firing robert mueller, as lindsey graham put it in january, in the eyes of some republicans. would be the end of trump's presidency. i think it also speaks to the broader politicization of the fbi under trump, where you look at robert mueller, you look at james comey, andrew mccabe and rod rosenstein. these are all lifelong republicans. and yet it's being cast as this deep state conspiracy by trump and his allies to delegitimize the president. i think more broadly speaking, it sends a chilling effect across the agency and the work that a lot of those career officials do. and i don't think that it's going to -- i think you see in the president's attorney's attempts to walk it back, an immediate acknowledgment he may have made a mistake. >> such a good point, including most of these men, including mccabe, are republicans. now that he's been fired, though, is he free to speak freely about what he knows now that he's been fired? josh? >> well, to some extent. as a former government employee who had a security clearance, he would be bound by the restrictions. but does allow him to speak as far as his response to the political attacks he has seen on himself, on his wife, on his family over the course of the last year and a half. this is something that's unprecedented, to have a career serva servant, the deputy director of the fbi, who is now the focus of attacks from politicians. look back in history. does anybody remember any deputy director in the fbi by name, much less someone who has drawn such ire from leaders in government. so unprecedented and my opinion, so inappropriate. what we're going to see is him now able to tell his story. i hope he's able to do it. if he lays it out in a book, perhaps like jim comey did, we'll get a full delling of what happens, but we should stay tuned because he has a story to tell. >> josh, paul, and sabrina, thank you guys and girl. >> up next, a porn star and the president locked in a legal battle that could head to federal court. the president's attorney now says that stormy daniels could owe some $20 million for talking about her alleged affair. how her lawyers are responding next. okay folks! let's team up to get the lady of the house back on her feet. and help her feel more strength and energy in just two weeks yaaay! the complete balanced nutrition of (great tasting) ensure with 9 grams of protein and 26 vitamins and minerals. ensure. always be you. ♪ ♪ the fastest samsung ever demands t-mobile, the fastest network ever. because fast should be fast. ♪ right now get the new samsung galaxy s9 for half off. ♪ but prevagen helps your brain with an ingredient originally discovered... in jellyfish. in clinical trials, prevagen has been shown to improve short-term memory. prevagen. the name to remember. ♪ get outta my dreams ♪ get into my car ♪ get into my car ♪ ♪ get outta... applebee's to go. order online and get $10 off $30. now that's eatin' good in the neighborhood. >>> a new twist in the stormy daniels case. the president's legal team is now officially involved. in court documents, attorneying representing both michael cohen and the president himself say the porn star could owe as much as $20 million for breaching a nondisclosure agreement that kept her from talking about an alleged affair with donald trump. they have filed papers to get this case out of california state court. instead, they want to put this before a federal judge. cnn's sara sidner has more. >> i say it's an allegation. you say it's a fact. >> the the newest allegations from stormy daniels' attorney go beyond the suggestion of a mutual financial agreement between the porn star and the president's lawyer to pay for her silence, veering into allegations of physical threats and coercion to shut her up during a series of interviews. >> the fact is that my client was physically threatened to stay silent about what she knew about donald trump. >> if she felt physically threatened, did she go to the police? >> i didn't say she felt physically threatened, what i said she was she physically threatened, and she was. >> did she go to the police? >> i'm not going to comment on whether she went to the police or not. >> the white house is not confirming or denying the allegations of physical threats. >> obviously, we take the safety and security of any person seriously. >> saying only that it has no knowledge of daniels' situation. but avenatti is suggesting the white house should know to cnn's jake tapper. >> is there anything in the litany of accusations you would call them facts, that surround this case that happened while donald trump was president? >> yes. >> we asked but avenatti would not provide any evidence to back up his assertions about physical threats. he has become ubiquitous on cable news over the last two weeks, playing cat and mouse with reporters. dripping out new details of the story of the alleged sexual affair with donald trump in 2006 and the cover-up he says followed in 2016, just days before the presidential election. what he has not done is tell her entire story. pushing ahead to an interview with "60 minutes" that will reportedly air march 25th. >> i think when people tune in to this interview, they're going to learn the details, the circumstances under which she signed the original agreement, as well as what happened thereafter relating to the threats and coercive tactics used to shut my client up. >> we did reach out to michael cohen, donald trump's personal attorney, for comment. he did not respond. as for mr. avenatti, he says six more women have come forward with what he says are similar stories to that of his client, referring to stormy daniels. he hes two of those women have nondisclosure agreements. all of the women need to be vetted and did not give further details about them. sara sidner, cnn. >> thank you. we'll be, by the way, speaking with mr. avenatti coming up in the 8:00 hour here inside the cnn newsroom. stay tuned for that. meantime, still ahead this hour, a stunning development after the deadly bridge collapse in miami. a voice mail left just two days before this tragedy warned of cracks in that bridge. no one heard it until it was too late. you're live in the cnn newsroom. oh, not so fast, carl. ♪ oh no. schwab, again? 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[ crash ] and sometimes the expert the expert needed needs insurance expertise. it's all good. steve, you're covered for general liability. and, paul, we got your back with workers' comp. wow, it's like a party in here. where are the hors d'oeuvres, right? [ clanking ] tartlets? we cover commercial vehicles, too. i think there's something wrong with your sink. we cover commercial vehicles, too. others who felt whoa connection. it. many more who never saw it coming. but now they know... they descend from the people of ireland. in fact, more than half of our community have discovered their irish roots... which means your smiling eyes might be irish too. order ancestrydna and find the surprises in you. just $69 through monday. get your kit today. internet providers promise business owners a lot. let's see who delivers more. comcast business offers fast gig-speeds across our network. at&t doesn't. we offer more complete reliability with up to 8 hours of 4g wireless network backup. at&t, no way. we offer 35 voice features and solutions that grow with your business. at&t, not so much. we give you 75 mbps for $59.95. that's more speed than at&t's comparable bundle, for less. call today. pedestrian bridge in miami had a potential problem. but they didn't think it was dangerous, as we show you live images of what happening on the ground there right now. we're learning an engineer for the company that designed the bridge called the florida department of transportation on tuesday, saying this new bridge had cracks in it. he left a voice mail that nobody heard until after the bridge collapsed. here's part of it. >> i was calling to share with you some information about the fiu pedestrian bridge and some cracking that's been observed on the north end of the span, the pylon end of that span we moved this weekend. so we have taken a look at it, and obviously, some repairs or whatever will have to be done, but from a safety perspective, we don't see that there's any issue there. >> cnn's kaylee hartung is in miami for us near the place where the concrete bridge suddenly collapsed on thirds. it fell on the street, smashed at least a half dozen cars below. kahl kahlea, the cracks that engineer was talking about the voice mail, do we know exactly who knew about them? >> ana, even though that voice mail you played wasn't heard by its intended recipient, a state employee at the florida department of transportation, until the day after the collapse, the fact is that concern of the crack was addressed. we have learned there was a meeting thursday morning about five hours before the collapse that brought together the design build team, contractors from mcm, the construction company, as well as fig engineers, including the one you heard from there, as well as representatives from fiu and the florida department of transportation. that fig engineer then gave a presentation with the conclusion he did not believe the cracks presented a security concern or a safety concern, i should say, rather, and said that the crack did not compromise the structural integrity of the bridge. now, investigators say it is too early for them to determine how or if that crack played a role in the bridge's failure, but the focus here, at the site of the collapse now, is on respectfully removing the remains of the victims. miami-dade police director juan perez gave us an update on their progress this morning. >> earlier this morning, finally our crews that were assisting us in this process were successful after hours and hours of incredible work that they have been doing, were successful in removing two vehicles from under that rubbish. what i can tell you right now, we have discovered three bodies within those two vehicles. >> after those two vehicles and three bodies were removed this morning, much of the focus today has been on simultaneously extracting two other vehicles that are also two more, more deeply buried beneath the rubble. officials believe there are two more victims yet to be recovered. >> such a sad situation. kaylee hartung, thank you for the latest information there. >> meantime, a diplomatic tat for tat. russia expels 23 british diplomats after the uk kicked out russian diplomats over the nerve agent attack on a russian spy. so how can the west stop an increasingly emboldened russia from carrying out political hits on their soil? we'll discuss next. 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(bright music) at custom ink, we make it easy for you to create custom t-shirts and other apparel for all of life's events. get free shipping and on time delivery guaranteed. go to customink.com to get started today. >>> russia is now retaliating in response to significant new u.s. sanctions imposed by the trump administration this week. among those who are now part of these new sanctions, the russians indicted by special counsel robert mueller for participating in the 2016 election meddling efforts. moscow is responding by expachbding its own blacklist of americans. the back and forth comes at an interesting moment. right now, russian voters are casting ballots in the country's 2018 presidential election there. polls opened last hour. let's talk it over with thomas pickering, the former u.s. ambassador to russia and davidandalman, former chief for "the new york times." ambassador pickering, president trump has been criticized for being unwilling to take on vladimir putin. are these new sanctions the appropriate response by the trump administration? >> i think they're part of an appropriate response. including meddling in u.s. elections, assassinations in the united kingdom, in which we're at least giving indications of standing firm with the british and europeans. these are significant because do we want a world in which assassinations go ahead? these are, of course, russians in the main, but the british have said there are 14 deaths that they're looking back into, not all of them may be connected, but it is interesting. we had one after mr. skripal and his daughter yulia were attacked. a man who was also connected with russian intelligence, apparently, died mysteriously and the british are saying it's murder or at least they're looking at it as murder. this is a very important set of developments that will require the full, i think, cooperation of the western alliance on doing what they can to block these kinds of things. >> so we talk about the u.s. sanctions that include some of these individuals because of the russian meddling. now you mention also the new developments in england, with the nerve agent that was used to attack a former british spy there, that's been blamed on russia as well. and how they have now gone on this tit for tat expelling some of the russian diplomats in that country and russia retaliating as well. david, to you, you say no country is doing enough to deal with russia right now. why do you feel the only answer is targeting their oil and gas exports? >> well, look, senator mccain once said russia is a gas station masquerading as a country. and he's right about that. the one thing that can really affect russia is its ability to sell its oil and gas abroad. this is how russia finances its military, it's how it stockpiles its weapons. how it builds its arsenal. this is the key to the heart of the soviet economy, financial, business, everything having to do with russian prosperity or even survival has to do with the ability of russia to sell its oil and gas abroad. we need to really target that directly, as much as we did with north korea. north korean sanctions, we believe, have started to bite. we haven't just expelled a few, you know, spies or whatever, these 23 who have been expelled are without question fsb agents that britain has gotten rid of, and the russians have gotten rid of british agents they didn't care for. that doesn't help much at all. even these targets of some of putin's friends. some day we'll be able to visit their villas in the riviera, but they'll go to the black sea instead. you know, this doesn't hit the heart of what is russia. and we need to understand that. not only that. in addition, i might add, if i may for a moment, donald trump has to really come right out and say this. he has not yet indicated that he is onboard for all of this. he needs to have a full and total public buy-in for this to really be believed in russia. >> ambassador, we also learned this week that russians attempted to penetrate the u.s. energy grid. in fact, we found out because russia left tracks to show they had the ability to shut it down, but they didn't go through with it. what does that tell us about russia's end game here? >> what it tells us, i think, is we're vulnerable, and in a world of espionage, if you're vulnerable, you can expect other countries' intelligence services to try to penetrate it. i think david is right that we need to come tougher. the really interesting question is, we don't buy much russian oil or russian gas, but the price of oil and gas around the world depends a lot on the russian supply. so one, we would have to convince the europeans who are heavily dependent on russia to move. two, we have to accept a higher price. certainly, u.s. fracking oil would come back on the market with a stronger role, so we wouldn't hopefully expect prices at $120. but we have to pay something for that. and i'm not sure our western allies are yet ready for that. but i think the general point is here that the russians will keep exploiting holes and opportunities as they see them. to imagine the u.s. is not doing the same with respect to opportunities in russia, of course, is to belie reality. >> david, what is your take on what we learned this week, specifically about the russian attempts to hack the u.s. energy grid? >> well, it's certainly, they're ratcheting up at every given opportunity. one thing we have to recognize is this election that's happening beginning tomorrow, by tomorrow night, russia will have elected its new czar. basically, vladimir putin will have been given another six years and without question, he'll be able to get another six years after that if he wants. he's been elected, as in communist china, he has been elected president for life. he is a real autocrat. he can do whatever he wants, however he wants to do it. we need to confront him in every sense, and recognize what he is up and to swhy he's doing this, to survive, to prosper, in many respects, to revive the old soviet union with his place in the world. we are beginning to fight that cold war. we need to fight at that every opportunity that we can. >> ambassador, how does putin stay so popular in his own country? >> well, i think one, he has pursued policies that exult russian nationalism and try to put russia and russians back on the map of the world leading powers despite the fact i think he's nowhere quite near there in terms of economic power, certainly, and perhaps military power. the second piece is that putin seems to be playing more fast and loose with nuclear weapons. and nuclear ideas. and i think we should be comfortable with, and i think we should be cautious about that. those of us who were alive and remember the cuban missile crisis don't want to repeat it. we spent most of the cold war after that at least in diplomatic channels trying to strengthen the stability of the nuclear deterrent because both sides recognized this was truly a dumb idea to get into a process in which escalation leading to accident, miscalculation or misjudgment would incinerate us all, including most of the globe. i know a lot of experts around on how you get into a nuclear war, but i haven't known anyone who has a real basis for understanding how you get out of it once it starts. so this is dangerous stuff as well. we need to be very careful to push back on the low end, but we need to be very careful, obviously, to guard against the high end. >> gentlemen, thank you so much. ambassador and david, good to see you. we appreciate your thoughts. >>> coming up, united airlines is already under scrutiny after a dog died in an overhead bin this week. and another pet was mistakenly sent to japan. well now, a united airlines flight diverted because a pet was on the wrong flight. how this airline is now responding, next. . how do you win at business? 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>> it's grown into the world class series of races called red bull crashed ice. >> first it was a fun thing. and now you have a sport that the guys are training year round on. >> the season begins in st. paul. four skaters hit speeds up to 50 miles an hour. first to the bottom wins. >> the first jump you have to clear about 35 feet to hit the landing. we've got a crazy s-turn, which is chaos. guys are crashing there. running into each other. lots of lane changes and passing. it will be tons of action. it will be fun. >> two-time champion cameron nods a minnesota native fell just short of winning in his own backyard. >> and he goes down! >> amanda trunso finished on top. as the first american women's world championship. >> trunso does it. >> look who's happy. >> she is fired up. >> you're inches from thousands of people and it just adds a whole level of experience that you really can't match. we're developing the associations in order to get it to the olympics and probably will be the most watched sport year one. >> and today we began another year of introducing you to everyday people, changing the world. our incredible cnn heroes. after carol rosenstein's husband was diagnosed with dementia, she felt him slipping away. one day, he sat down at the piano. >> i was seeing something magical happening before my eyes. the doctor told me that we were watching the power of music changing brain chemistry. playing a musical instrument is like a full body workout for the brain. the music actually resurrected him. >> to learn more about this story or if you want to nominate someone you think should be a cnn hero, log on to cnn heroes.com. we'll be right back. ♪ no, please, please, oh! ♪ (shrieks in terror) (heavy breathing and snorting) no, no. the running of the bulldogs? 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operated which, of course, they deny. >> it's very interesting to see and of course you can see the trump campaign trying to distance itself as best it can from cambridge analytica which is trying to distance itself from facebook all at the same time. there's a whole lot of international distancing going on. thank you for being with us. terrific reporting. >>> thank you to our international viewers for watching. u.s. viewers, breaking news in texas, so let's get to it. >> announcer: this is cnn breaking news -- >> good morning, everyone. chris and alison are off. we do have breaking news this morning. a new explosion has rocked texas. this time a package it blew up inside a fedex facility south of austin. >> this is now the fifth explosion in the area. police and hundreds of federal agents trying to find what they are now calling a serial bomber. we know that two people have been killed by packages. several others injured. ed lavandera is live in austin with these breaking details. ed? >> reporter: good morning, erica. fbi officials confirming to cnn this morning that they, quote, suspect that the explosion at this fedex facility in the town of schertz texas, a suburb of northern san antonio, about an hour's drive here from the city of austin to get down to that area. but that is where investigators are turning their attention to this morning after some kind of explosion at the package facility there at the fedex in the town of schertz texas. that's something where investigators, tarks f investigators and fbi investigators are at that facility there beginning the early investigations. not a lot of clear details how all of this has transpired and into what level and how all this will play out. but at this point, fbi officials saying they suspect it is connected to the four explosions that they're already investigating here. we are at the scene of the sunday night explosion here in this residential neighborhood in southwest austin. remember, what officials and investigators have been very concerned about is the changing way in which this particular explosion from sunday night was carried out using a trip wire different from the previous three explosions. this explosion in schertz, texas, is connected to the first four, it really is another sign of the changing method that this suspected serial bomber is using, which will be of greater concern to investigators which they're already concerned about. john and erica? >> ed lavandera, thanks so much. >>> joining us now retired fbi supervisory special agent james gagliano. what's so interesting about this is that this seems to be the third different type of device used in austin in just the last few weeks. you had the pocket package bombs set down there. you have this trip wire device on sunday. and both our affiliates are reporting that this fedex package bomb has shrapnel in it. what does that tell you, three different kinds of devices? >> we're pretty four the first four devices were interrelated. if first one, i caution people in matters that involve the military and law enforcement investigations, early reports are often inaccurate. we have to be careful, but there does seem to be some similarities there. we've heard reports there might have been shrapnel. there's four components of a bomb. has to be a power supply which is usually a battery. has to be an initiator and those are a blasting cap. then you have explosives that are often surrounded with sclab n shrapnel and the switch. the last bomb was initiated by a trip wire. these other packages are initiated by the opening. we don't know if that's what happened in this one. what makes this one different is that this was now either delivered or shipped into a fedex facility in san antonio but addressed to austin, which on the outset looks like there might be some linkage now. >> there's more information obviously on that package. we're learning it was shipped to austin. but it raises the question and law enforcement is asking for this, why move on to this type of bomb and why now involve an actual shipping facility? >> yeah. and what makes it scary, erica, we were talking about before, is the frequency of these. we talked about the unabomber case. it lasted over 17 years and only 16 devices. in this instance span of little over two weeks, we have five devices. i can tell you right now, the federal government, state and local officials and all the law enforcement there in texas, they are bringing out the calvary to get out in front of this thing. we need this person or people to make a mistake before another device is detonated. >> five devices in this short period of time, that's very, very high number. the fact that this was sent fedex, what kind of clues does that provide to investigators right now? they'll have a number to track and figure out where this was shipped from and have something to follow here. >> john, post-blast analysis is difficult as we discussed earlier. after the explosion a lot of the evidence gets destroyed. latent fingerprints, any type of dna or any type of evidence you can tie back to the person who did it. i'll remind you of 1993 here in new york in the first trade tower bombing. we were able to track down the truck with a partial vin number. that's when investigators are doing right now. going through each of these post blast sites and they're going to comb it for any type of evidence and try to prove the link analysis. that is as critical as the bomber's bomb-making signature in post-blast investigations. >> thank you. appreciate it as always, james. >>> turning now the russia investigation, the president's lawyers met face to face with special counsel investigators last week to outline the topics mueller's team would like to ask the president about. meantime, the president shaking up his legal team. c np's abby phillips is live at the white house with more on that. good morning. >> good morning, erica. sources tell cnn that an interview between president trump and robert mueller's investigators could be scheduled in the next several weeks. but as all of this is happening and these investigations are on going, it's clear that president trump is ready to shake up and change his legal team. >> reporter: cnn has learned that president trump's lawyers and robert mueller's the two investigators sat down for a rare face-to-face meeting last week. the two sides hashing out the details about the topics mueller's team wishes to discuss with the president, including the role attorney general jeff sessions played in the firing of fbi director james comey and what trump knew about michael flynn's phone calls with sergey kislyak in december, 2016. "the washington post" reports president trump's legal team provided the special counsel with written descriptions of these events and others in hopes of limiting the scope of a potential future interview. a source tells cnn that president trump wavered behind the scenes about whether to agree with an interview with mueller, despite publicly boasting that he's eager for a sit-down. >> are you going to talk to mueller? >> i'm looking forward to it actually. >> you want to? >> just so you understand, there's been no collusion whatsoever. there's no obstruction whatsoever. i'm looking forward to it. >>reporter: as it becomes clear that mueller's probe is far from over, sources say president trump is lashing out at the special counsel and blasting the russia probe as a witch hunt. president trump also hiring long-term washington lawyer and tv pundit joseph degenova who has repeatedly pedalled a conspiracy theory that the fbi fabricated the russia story to frame mr. trump. >> there was a brazen plot to illegally exonerate hillary clinton and if she didn't win the election to frame donald trump with a falsely created crime. it wasn't the russians who corrupted the presidential election. it was the american officials at the department of justice and the fbi. >> reporter: but as one lawyer joins trump's legal team, others may be on their way out. "the new york times" reports that the president is weighing dismissing ty cobb who argued for cooperation with mueller's team. "the times" reporting that the president's lead lawyer john dowd has contemplated leaving because he's concluded he has no control over the behavior of the president. both lawyers deny that they are going anywhere and mr. trump insisted last week that he is very happy with his lawyers. the president's escalating attacks on mueller drawing a rebuke from some republicans on the hill. >> it would be the stupidest thing the president could do. >> how would republicans react if they fired mueller? >> i think it would be total upheaval in the senate. >> reporter: others like senate majority leader mitch mcconnell have remained silent about the president's attacks. >> reporter: the presidents advisers say despite his comments over the weekend, he is not contemplating firing mueller. meanwhile on the president's schedule today is a meeting with the crown prince of saudi arabia. a senior official notably tells reporters they plan to talk about making russia pay a price for the role that russia has played in enabling iran and syria. the president also is going to be holding a meeting on the opioid crisis later today. he talked a little bit about that yesterday during a visit to new hampshire where he linked it to sanctuary cities as well. >> abby phillip for us at the white house. abby, thank you very much. >>> want to bring in david gregory and cnn legal analysis michael zelden. it seems to me we know three big things that have happened over the last few days. number one, the president's legal team has met with the special counsel's investigators. number two, the president all of a sudden started attacking directly the investigation by name, robert mueller. and number three, he's shaking up his legal team. he brought in a lawyer who is a fighter, david gregory. >> i think very much so. i think what's clear is that they're getting indications of exactly what investigators and prosecutors want to question the president about. i think that makes the team and the client very, very uncomfortable. so what we see from president trump, we've seen it from the beginning. he watches a lot of television. he see joe degenova as a long-time fixture in washington is saying just the things trump loves to hear. that's right. it was a framed job. the fix was in from the beginning. this is not on the level. now, it's just astonishing in our age of media because joe says these things without evidence that somehow it should require action. but in trump's mind it does. he likes that. he wants that kind of person around. and so he wants somebody who would be a skilled fighter and cable news and who will take this fight and make the case that it's all illegitimate at a time when i think mueller is baring down on critical questions that reach trump, whether it's his business dealings, something that implicates him directly or something that gets closer. >> there have also been -- this chaos we're seeing on the legal team is in some ways not new. what we've seen, too from this team essentially as we were reporting at the end of the year, oh, we're telling the president it's going to be wrapped up by november, december, whatever the next date on the calendar was, trying to placate a client in that way not only obviously michael zelden sets up unrealistic expectations but this is allowing this chaos to fester so in some ways wouldn't it make sense that the president not only wants a fighter but perhaps feels he's not getting good advice period and wants a shakeup. >> well, it's a very good point. the thought was when trump was looking for a lawyer initially that the names that were presented to him, the really good lawyers from washington, d.c., the ted olson's of the world, they -- it is reported have declined to take the representation for fear that they could not control this client. as a lawyer, the last thing you want is a client who can't control or who will not listen to you. and so the president is finding himself in this position of having lawyers trying to give him good counsel. if there's nothing there, cooperate just as trey gowdy said, cooperate and this will be over because mueller has the sort of intestinal fortitude to say there is no there there if there is nothing there. but the president just can't resist his own worst instincts which is to fight. now he brought in joe. we worked together. i was joe's deputy. we took president bush's testimony together. and we didn't limit the scope of that in any way shape or form and wouldn't allow bush's lawyers to try to do that. joe and i were on tv a lot during the clinton period when joe was a fierce defender of kent starr and his right to go after the clintons in whatever way he thought necessary to bring out the truth of the matter. joe will be in a difficult position to now say what i did in my investigation, how i defended kent starr is inapplicable to robert mueller. joe is experienced and smart and likable and we'll see what the president does. >> just another point. you have to just pay attention to donald trump as a client. i mean, he is by all accounts just a very difficult client given his personality. and so, all the leaking that's going on has to be coming directly from him. he wants this chaos on the team because he wants people to do what he wants to do. he doesn't want to be told to cooperate. he wants to lash out if he feels like he should lash out. i think what michael says, too, he doesn't have guys who have currently been in the courtroom. you know what i mean? he doesn't have young lawyers who are fighting things out everyday. he's got older guys, older white men who he'll listen to, except that he doesn't even listen to them. so he's going to go about this his own way and he's going to watch tv and look for people who are going to defend him the way he wants to be defended, murder as a client. i would say one other thing in this whole episode, especially around these conspiracy theories. we've gotten to a point in this debate where i think it's really unhelpful that former intelligence chiefs like brennan, andrew mccabe are lashing out at the president. i think it's really problematic when those people who are supposed to be beyond the political fray are the ones duking it out with the president and how jim comey is coming and it will make all of this much nastier publicly at a time when mueller is trying to do his work. >> they're taking the bait essentially. >> it gives them a foil. it gives the president a foil, someone to fight against. michael zelden, interesting connective tissue with many of the people involved. >>> i want to point out some of the things that we believe the special counsel has been asking about. this is interesting. in the meetings with the white house team, we understand the mueller team let on they want to talk about the firing of the fbi director james comey and want to know jeff sessions involvement in the james comey firing and michael flynn's phone calls with russian ambassador and they want to talk about outreach to intelligence leaders about the russia probe here. we understand through cnn's reporting, michael, again they've given some granular detail to what they're after here. and there's something about this granular detail to what they're after that seems to have set off the president that caused these angry statements from over the weekend that has led him to shake up his legal team even more. >> well, that's right. what we're finding is that mueller intends to have a very fulsome interview with the president about all matters within his mandate. that includes counterintelligence, that includes coordination, that potentially includes financial crimes. we saw the subpoenas last week to the trump organization and certainly includes obstruction of justice. and so if the president was of the mistaken belief that somehow they were going to be able to narrow the scope of the mueller investigation to a few questions that the president chose, he's sadly mistaken. and that's his own fault, if you will, because nobody who is a student of history of these investigations would ever see a prosecutor who has any self respect accepting the client's determination of what they will be asked. so that's where he finds. he finds himself in this fantasy land that somehow mueller is not going to do his job completely. and mueller has said otherwise. now i think the president is reacting to that and that's why we're seeing the possibility of change in the competition of his team and that's why we see the tweet storms. it's just a man enraged by this investigation. maybe that's fair because he doesn't think he's done anything wrong. but as trey gowdy said just a moment ago, if you're innocent, you're better in this case letting the proposition play out and have it be proven that you did nothing wrong. >> michael zelden, david gregory, thank you very much. >>> how far are lawmakers willing to go to protect robert mueller and why is mitch mcconnell so silent on 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if myrbetriq is right for you, and visit myrbetriq.com to learn more. a wealth of information. a wealth of perspective. ♪ a wealth of opportunities. that's the clarity you get from fidelity wealth management. straightforward advice, tailored recommendations, tax-efficient investing strategies, and a dedicated advisor to help you grow and protect your wealth. fidelity wealth management. >>> president trump getting a warning from members of his own party after escalating the attacks on special counsel robert mueller and the russia investigation. listen to this. >> that would be the stupidest thing the president could do to fire him. >> i think he needs to leave mueller alone. >> how would republicans react if he fired mu ed mueller? >> i think it would be total upheaval in the senate? >> will congress protect robert mueller from being fired? joining us now rick santorum, former republican senator from pennsylvania. senator, what do you think would happen if the president tried to push robert mueller out? >> i think it would be a great upheaval in the congress. look, everyone right now in congress is in election mode. how is this all going to play out at election time? the firing of robert mueller would take an energized democratic base and skyrocket it up. yeah, the republican base, the part that's very, very loyal to trump would be equally charged up, but not nearly as much as the other side. and that's what republicans are worried about. they're worried about donald trump doing something that's going to alter the dynamics of the upcoming election which already doesn't look for good for that. >> if you say this would hurt republicans if he went ahead to get robert mueller removed? >> there's a difference between the president doing something which most republicans feel is unlikely for him to do because he doesn't think that -- i think most republicans don't think the justice department would go along with it. and as a result, the chances of something like that happening, the idea that donald trump is going to fire justice department officials until they find someone who will fire mueller, i think that's a very unlikely scenario. so there's no reason to go out and prod the president and prod his supporters by doing something like that preemptively if the chances of that happening are pretty small. >> no reason to prod the supporters. you're saying it's a political calculation. they're scared of the political repercussions? >> absolutely. look at the dynamic and the lead-in you talked about the difference between paul ryan's reaction and mitch mcconnell's reaction. mitch mcconnell's reaction is someone who is a senator and looking at senate elections. paul ryan is looking at the congressional elections. ryan's big vulnerability to hold his speakership are suburban voters. suburban voters are voters that he is talking to when he goes out and criticizes the president and speaks more directly about these issues. he's willing to pick a little bit more of a fight because he's got to hold on to moderate republican voters. mcconnell on the other hand is worried about the base. he has to make sure that the base turns out. the senate elections that the republicans have a chance to pick up are in montana and north dakota and missouri. that's where you need the trump base. he doesn't want to prod anybody and get them upset. >> senator, i'm shocked to hear you say this is all about politics and not a decision about what they think is right. >> well, look, what's right and i think to suggest that both sides don't do this look at the political ramifications of the way they deal with this, i mean, i'm sure mitch mcconnell and republicans are communicating very vocally to the president how they feel about these things. that's different what you say publicly and how you manage the upcoming election. >> so, just let the record show, when i say i was shocked, i didn't mean it. that was facetious. lest anyone think it's a big surprise here. what do you make of the president's strategy here, senator? he hired joseph degenova to join the legal team here. this is a guy who is a fighter. let me just play some of the sound that the president no doubt has heard this man say on fox news. >> they tried to frame an incoming president with a false russian conspiracy that never existed and they knew it and they plotted to ruin him as a candidate and then destroy him as a president. >> is it a smart strategy for the president to just basically attack the investigation, which he's doing. he's hiring this lawyer who has been attacking it. the president is now attacking it by name. >> look, there is ample evidence out there to suggest that there is little to no collusion that it's been shown and any evidence that has come out, i understand the president's frustration. i understand these things drag on, but the counsel he should be getting is these things always drag on longer than they should. it doesn't necessarily mean they'll find anything because there's -- i know in the president's mind and many of the administration there's nothing there to find. >> except, senator, here is the thing, one of the things the special counsel did do is issue indictments for three russian entities and 12 russian individuals for meddling in the u.s. election and then the u.s. government sanctioned those same individuals. so the u.s. government, the treasury department, the trump administration, to an extent has already endorsed the finding of the special counsel's investigation which they call a witch hunt. >> no. what they call the witch hunt. this is something that i think the media doesn't focus enough on. what they call the witch hunt is the collusion. look at the president's tweet. look at everything he talks about. he talks about collusion between the trump campaign and russia. i don't think the president obviously they just sanctioned the russians. i don't think the president argues seriously that the russians weren't involved or engaged in trying to influence the election. >> where are we been for the last two years here, senator the president hasn't been jumping up and down saying the russians meddled in this election. i'm going to find out what happened and stop them. he's been dragged kicking and screaming to the conclusion that the russians meddled here. so it's hard to separate the two. >> but you have to because they're two different issues. i'm not defending. i disagree with how the president handled the whole issue of the russian involvement in the election. he should have tried to discern what the russians were doing and be very aggressive in defending our democracy. but the idea that that is the same issue as the trump campaign cooperating with the russians or colluding with the russians, they are two different issues and the one the president is solely focussed on to exclusion of all else and that's the problem is the collusion. >> he is just upset about obstruction. the idea he is only upset about one thing i'm not so sure about. you are a shrewd political observer in all sorts of different ways. as you watch how the president is behaving now both his statements and his actions, is he making his political situation better or worse? >> overall he's making it worse. had he been more aggressive on pursuing the national security aspects of the russian involvement in our election, that would have taken -- been the high ground. as i said, you can take that position and still say there was no collusion. and look, calling for the end of the mueller investigation, again, i understand the frustration. it isn't going to happen. bob mueller is going to take his time and do what he thinks is right and it may be a few weeks, it may be a few months. who knows. but the president harping about it as trey gowdy said, if you're innocent, act innocent. right now he's looking like, hey, i want this over because he's got something to hide. that's a mistake. >> senator rick santorum, great to have you with us. thanks so much. >> thank you. >>> erica? >> the whistle blower who exposed cambridge analytica invited to testify before the house intelligence committee. what will law enforcement officials want to know? we'll ask a panel of that committee next. as retools around washington, who does he think about? the wall street millionaires that ryan gave billions in tax breaks as ryan shifted the burden onto the middle class and kicked millions off healthcare? or maybe he just thinks about this guy and all his fancy perks. whoever speaker ryan thinks about, it probably isn't you. house majority pac is responsible for the content of this advertising. >>> i played a significant role in setting up that company. and i feel like it is my duty to tell people, you know, what this company does. but i can't express how much regret i have for playing a role in setting it up. >> cambridge analytica whistle blower christopher wylie speaking out the trump linked data firm used private information harvested from millions of facebook profiles. they are extending an invite to wylie to testify before the minority leaders on that committee. joins us now congresswoman jackie spear. >> thank you. >> as we look at this, we heard from christopher wylie who said i would be more than happy to speak with robert mueller and talked about his concerns whether willingly or not cambridge analytica may have given russia information that it used to bad ends. here is more of that. >> i am concerned that we made russia aware of the programs that we were working on and that might have sparked an idea that eventually led to some of the disinformation programs that we've seen in the interference that we've seen from russia in american elections. >> in terms of what more could be learned from christopher wylie, as i mentioned off the top here, adam schiff said we would like you to come testify before the remaining minority leaders because republicans had already closed their investigation. what more do you want to know from christopher wylie? what information do you think he could provide? >> we need to find out whether or not in their conversations with a russian oil company whether or not that was really a pretense to use what is called russian cutouts. they were, in fact, informing russia and maybe even working with russia and the trump campaign all comes back to why all these relationships with russia? we do know in our interview with cambridge analytica with alexander nix, who is the ceo, that he was attempting to reach out to wikileaks. so again, there is just -- this is no coincidence. these are arrangements that i fear have been made intentionally. and i do worry that facebook, which is always assessed itself as being a platform, we now know is much more than a platform and much more than just selling ads, that it does collect data and we as consumers need to be in a position to opt out of them collecting it and using it. >> do you believe facebook has been cooperative in any questioning from washington and even from consumers? >> i think facebook has tried to create a message that now seems to be very flat. it is not just the platform. it is not just about ads. it does collect data. it shares that data and frankly it sells that data. and it should be regulated as any company that has data on an individual. and we need to know that when we sign up for something through facebook, for instance, that that data is being collected and being used. i think in the past it's been seen as a much more benign setting. >> so how do we get that information then? how are you going to compel facebook, to in fact, recognize that? >> i think our committees both the judiciary committee would have a role in that and i do think the intelligence committee needs to look at that from an intelligence perspective. i think the fact that they have shut down this committee and the investigation at such a premature point is now being very obvious to the public that this is being done as an effort to prevent us from getting the facts. >> i want to point out a couple things we learned this morning. we know that cambridge an lit ka tweeting out this morning saying that facebook data was not used but uk protection authority is looking into whether facebook, quote, acted robustly when it learned about reports of access by cambridge analytica to these potentially 50 million users' data. so we're seeing something happening in the uk. the laws are obviously a little different there than they are in the u.s., but how could that be used for perhaps spur further action and compel facebook to perhaps be more forthcoming? >> well, in the uk and throughout the eu, personally identifiable information is far more protected than it is here in the united states. so, that makes a lot of sense. i think in terms of what we're going to have to do is we're going to have to look at regulating -- i know that's a dirty word to facebook, we're going to have to look at regulating how they do business. they are not just a platform. >> i want to move on because a couple other things to get to here. you tweeted on sunday, the president is careening us toward what i fear will be a constitutional crisis. mr. president, here is my redline, fire mueller and i will vote to fire you. white house counsel ty cobb coming out and saying the president has no plans to fire robert mueller. do you trust cobb's statement? >> no. i trust the tweets that the president puts out when he's unsupervised. and i think what we have seen over and over again is his intention to obstruct justice. he's so accustom to being able to use his position as a family company and shut people down by filing lawsuits and threatening them. and he thinks he can do that with the american public. he can't do that. and he cannot tamper with the justice system which he has clearly attempted to do over and over again. >> i want to say before we let you go, obviously friday midnight deadline when it comes to funding the government. the proposed spending bill will not include the sexual harassment legislation which i know you have championed. is it definitively out? >> it's not definitively out but i think the house both the republicans and the democrats in the house feel very strongly that the bill we passed over to the senate was comprehensive and any effort to erode that is not in the best interest of the institution and certainly not in the best interest of the employees that work for us. >> representative jackie speier, we have to leave it there. thank you. >> thank you, erica. >>> six months ago hurricane maria destroyed puerto rico. how are recovery efforts there now? we have a live report next. kevin, meet your father. kevin kevin kevin kevin kevin kevin kevin kevin kevin kevin trusted advice for life. kevin, how's your mom? life well planned. see what a raymond james financial advisor can do for you. ♪ you said you're not like me, ♪ never drop to your knees, ♪ look into the sky for a momentary high, ♪ ♪ you never even tried till it's time to say goodbye, bye ♪ ♪ everybody fights for a little bit of light, i believe. ♪ geico motorcycle, great rates for great rides. internet providers promise business owners a lot. let's see who delivers more. comcast business offers fast gig-speeds across our network. at&t doesn't. we offer more complete reliability with up to 8 hours of 4g wireless network backup. at&t, no way. we offer 35 voice features and solutions that grow with your business. at&t, not so much. we give you 75 mbps for $59.95. that's more speed than at&t's comparable bundle, for less. call today. >>> the younger brother of florida school shooter arrested on monday for trespassing on the campus of marjory stoneman douglas high school. according to a complaint affidavit 18-year-old zachary cruz wanted to, quote, reflect on the school shooting and soak it in. he's been released after posting bond. >>> company filing for bankruptcy and releasing victims and witnesses to alleged sexual misconduct from their nondisclosure agreements. dozens of sexual harassment and assault allegations against harvey weinstein have crippled the studio. they reached a deal with a private equity firm looking to acquire it through the bankruptcy process. >>> hurricane maria making landfall in puerto rico six months ago today. the island still struggling from wide-spread destruction and despair. understandably, many saying life will never be the same. leyla santiago joins us with more from san juan. >> reporter: today we are in san juan and the situation here has improved quite a bit since hurricane maria struck the island six months ago. here is majority of the people have power. the majority of the people have water. i mean, we're talking about in the 90% zone. and the goal is that by the end of march the u.s. army core of engineers say they want to be at 95% of power restoration for the entire island. still 103,000 people without power this morning. and you go into the interior part of the island and what you see here in san juan, the tourists, the businesses that are open, is not what you see in the interior part of the island. we spent some time with the family in puerto rico and they are still living in the dark, still washing clothes by hand, still eating canned goods because they don't have power to keep the food refrej rated. they don't have a generator either, that was a family that also has a 1 month old baby. so the daily struggle for them is very real and hasn't changed much in the last few months. so again, six months later, i don't want to take away from all the credit of all these power workers. many still on the island. although they are starting to leave. a lot has been done when it comes to power, but for the people in the interior part of the island that are still struggling, life isn't back to normal as you said. it's not life back to the days before maria. >> to your point, leyla, there are several layers and headlines to this story, obviously, not just from six months ago but continuing on today. a lot of the reporting, too, in the aftermath of that storm and since then has focussed on the death toll and the conflicting numbers we were seeing initially. where do we stand right now? >> reporter: well listen, that  number hasn't changed since december 9th. it remains at 64. now, the government is -- does have a thorough review, as the governor has said, of those numbers. so they are looking into it. george washington university partnering with them to do that. but, 64 is certainly not the number that we have seen when we look at it. still today, funeral homes and doctors are telling me that maria is still killing people. you look at death certificates from just the last few months and you will still see hurricane maria as a contributing factor of deaths. people who are dying because they don't have power for the medical attention that they need. they need oxygen tanks. they need cpap machines for sleep apnea and those don't work if you don't have power. >> no, they do not. thank you. appreciate it as always, leyla. >>> if you would like to help the recovery efforts in puerto ri rico, log on to cnn.com/impact and we identified several charities assisting those hardest hit by hurricane maria. >>> high stakes, why the evidence being discussed in the anti-trust trial could make or break the case. that's next. it can power your apps with public services without starting from scratch. it brings your business up to speed, doing more with systems you have in place. it can bring all your apps to life and run them within your data center. it is... the ibm cloud private. the cloud that's built for all your apps. ai ready. secure to the core. the ibm cloud is the cloud for smarter business. in honor of my dad, who was alzheimer's. i decided to make shirts for the walk with custom ink, and they just came out perfect. - [announcer] check out our huge selection of custom 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common cold symptoms urinary tract infection, constipation, diarrhea, dizziness, and headache. need some help managing your oab symptoms along the way? ask your doctor if myrbetriq is right for you, and visit myrbetriq.com to learn more. >>> one of the biggest antitrust battles in decades now under way. the federal government is suing to stop at&t from merging with time warner which owns cnn. the case has enormous implications for you the consumer. joining us, brian stelter and hadas gold. hadas, catch us up to speed. where do we stand after yesterday? >> yesterday and today are for what's called evidentiary arguments, when both sides go back and forth over what evidence should be included in this trial. at&t is trying to argue the thousands of e-mails between at&t and time warner executives, that not all of them should be submitted because not every single e-mail is necessarily an official business record. it could be some chatter. unless you have a witness on stand, you can't talk about what the e-mail meant it's not worth having. the government is arguing some of these are had docs that might reveal that at&t knew that buying time warner would stifle competition. that's part of the reason they were doing it. there's a few other issues at hand in terms of evidence including prior statements related to other media mergers. all of this will help determine whose side will have the strongest case possible because if a certain key piece of evidence is thrown out by the judge, that can completely change either side's argument. >> any body language from the judge to indicate which way they're leaning? >> this judge oversaw the settlement between comcast and nbc universal which had a different approach than we're seeing now. this judge is sort of an old school judge. there's no electronics in the courtroom at all. he'll throw you out if he sees a cell phone. he's really doing this very carefully. he's said over and over again how he recognizes how important this case is to the industry and to the public and he is going to be doing this so carefully, going to take as much time as possible. he's a pretty tough old school judge. day by day i feel like it could go either way. >> we were talking yesterday about the fact that at&t is no longer bringing up any questions of political bias. they have no plans to do that. but brian, we can't ignore the fact that it is hanging over everything that's happening right now in washington. >> yes. >> does that bleed in eventually? >> whether it does on the judge's thoughts, it definitely does on everybody else's mindset around this case. i've seen technology executives speaking out against the doj for bringing this case saying look at these tech giants in silicon valley getting bigger every day. why is the government so focused on at&t or cnn rather than facebook. >> not any news about facebook these days. >> the doj does need to review when there are mergers and deals. it's an antitrust department of the doj looking at this. these are career officials, not political appointees, not jeff sessions directly who is looking at this. however, we have to keep in mind thecontext, it's widely seen as a possible motive. that will be a sub plot. the business sub plot is the cable bundle, all this evidence about whether at&t and time warner e-mailed about competition, it comes back to the cable bundle. americans love to hate the cable bundle. yet most americans also see value in it. the price might inch up every year because you're getting more and more channels and they cost more, but we see this on going battle, on going tug of war between programmers like time warner and distributors like comcast or at&t, it's a tug of war, how much is the bundle going to cost every year? it's understandable at&t wants to buy more programming, more time warner, more cnn, in order to have more muscle in that on going tug of war. that's what comcast did with nbc. >> it all comes down to this bundle issue, in this world where you have more netflix and amazon creating more alternatives, can at&t gain more muscle in the environment? the argument from at&t is they just have to keep up with all the others. >> with the facebooks and the googles of the world. brian talking about the bundle, hadas, it has to do a little bit about what the evidence was yesterday with the communications inside at&t and directv. the concern here is a larger at&t would be able to increase prices in some ways and stifle competition in that bundle. correct? >> exactly. they're worried -- the doj is worried by having this much power with what they call must-have content. that's things like sports. the ncaa basketball tournament, a lot of that is on turner, part of time warner's. just last month google's youtube tv just added turner content. they are pointing to that as evidence that this content is so important that at&t will have so much incentive to keep it to themselves, to force people to buy it through them versus allowing this competition to flourish. you have to keep in mind in a way at&t is doing what amazon and netflix are doing. amazon and netflix are doing it in house. they're building out their own content in house. what at&t is doing is acquiring another company that has content to pretty much do something similar. while this case is focused right now on at&t, there's no question in the coming years we'll be seeing other big cases involving places like amazon or netflix. >> we'll be watching for that. hadas and brian, appreciate it. thank you both. >>> we are following a lot of news at this hour. let's get to it. >> this is cnn breaking news. >>> good morning everyone. welcome to your "new day." chris is off. alisyn on assignment. i'm john berman joined by erica hill. we have breaking news. overnight there was a new explosion in texas. this is a fifth. this happened inside a fedex facility south of austin. >> that explosion has hundreds of federal agents on the hunt for a serial bomber. they believe this latest blast is linked to the deadly series of bombings in the area. cnn's ed lavandera joins us from austin with more breaking details. ed. >> reporter: good morning, erica. a great deal of concern here at this fedex delivery facility in the town of schertz, essentially a suburb of northern san antonio, about an hour's drive away from austin. that's where investigators are focusing their efforts here this morning. fedex officials say one person suffered minor injuries, they will be okay after that package exploded inside that facility in the town of shertz, texas. the method by which these explosions are occurring seems to be changing, and that is what federal investigators talked about their concern yesterday. this is the neighborhood where the sunday explosion occurred just on this little patch of grass, you might see the divot there left by the explosion. investigators were already expressing concern because it was a trip wire connected to that package that set off that explosion on sunday night. they talked about -- investigators talked about how that indicated to them that this bomb maker had a sophisticated level of understanding and ability to create these explosives, and it also changed the m.o. of how this particular person or persons is operating which also caused them a great deal of concern as well. if indeed this is officially linked, this fifth explosion, that would be a different mechanism by which these explosions have occurred which is, of course, something investigators will be paying close attention to. john and erica? >> ed lavandera with the latest there, thank you. >>> also joining us on the phone, investigative reporter for

did the president not raise the issue of russian election meddling in that phone call? >> i don't believe it came up on this specific call, but it is something that we've spoken extensively about and continue to look at ways and steps forward to make sure it never happens again. >> and on the president's new attorney, joe digenova, he says that there is this brazen plot by the fbi and the doj to frame the president. does the white house share that view? is there a plot to frame president trump? >> look, we certainly have said that there have been some concerns with some of the actions that were taken, but in terms of any comments that he's made, i couldn't speak to those. matthew? >> thanks, sarah. two more questions on the putin phone call. first, does the white house believe the election in russia was free and fair? >> i'm sorry? >> does the white house believe that the election in russia was free and fair? >> look, in terms of the election, there we're focused on our elections. we don't get to dictate how other countries operate. what we do know is that putin has been elected in their country and that's not something that we can dictate to them how they operate. we can only focus on the freeness and the fairness of our election, something we 100% fully support. and something we're going to continue to do everything we can to protect, to make sure bad actors don't have the opportunity to impact them in any way. >> when you said election meddling didn't come up in the call, i'm curious, did the recent poisoning in the united kingdom come up in the call? >> i don't believe that was discussed in today's call. john? >> thanks a lot, sarah. over the weekend on one of the sunday morning shows, trey gowdy, republican of south carolina said when responding to the various tweets that the president had put out over the weekend, regarding special counsel robert mueller, he said, "when you're innocent, act like it." what is your response to what trey gowdy said over the weekend? >> look, the president has been very clear about the fact that there was no collusion between his campaign and any other entity. however, to pretend like going through this absurd process for over a year would not bring frustration seems a little bit ridiculous. i don't think that any individual, including members of congress, would like it if they had been accused of taking their seat in congress by doing something nefarious when they hadn't, particularly if it went on for more than a year into their time in office. my guess is they would be more than anxious to push back and certainly would defend themselves, as the president has clearly done in this situation and has since day one. >> another republican over the weekend, lindsey graham, also republican from south carolina said that if the president were to fire -- >> maybe we need to work on our south carolina members. >> -- said that if the president tries to fire robert mueller, it would be the beginning of the end of his presidency. what's your response to what lindsey graham said? >> as white house counsel ty cobb said earlier this week, the white house yet again confirms that t presidehe president is n considering or firing the special counsel robert mueller. bless you. sorry? >> do you feel like you're losing republicans in some way? that these two prominent republicans from south carolina both spoke in this manner over the weekend? >> i certainly don't think we're losing republicans at all. i think we're fovoicing some frustration over this ongoing process that we look forward to ending soon. pamela? >> in january, the president told a roomful of reporters that he would love to sit down and do an interview with robert mueller under oath, in just a couple of weeks, at the time, that's what he said. obviously, that time frame has passed. does he still want to sit down and do an interview with robert mueller? >> look, we've been fully transparent throughout this process, with we've been fully cooperative and we're going to continue to be cooperative with the office of special counsel. beyond that, i can't go any further. >> can you provide more clarity on the president's tweets towards robert mueller over the weekend, calling him out by name. what was behind that? >> i -- like i just said, clearly, we have not been shy about the fact that there is frustration of this process. we would like it to end quickly and soon. and the president has contended, since day one, and will continue to do so, that there was absolutely no collusion between his campaign and any outside force or country -- so i don't understand why it's hard for anyone to process, if you had been attacked, mercilessly and continuously, day-in, day-out, every single second while you're trying to work hard to do good things for this country and literally every day you wake up to an onslaught of people saying that you're there because of reasons that are completely false, that's frustrating. and certainly, i think fair for him to be frustrated. >> why doesn't he push for the firing of robert mueller if he thinks the probe shouldn't have begun in the first place? if he thinks the whole thing is a witch hunt? >> look, we'll continue to be cooperative and we would like this to wrap up soon. we don't feel like that's the most productive step forward, but we would like to see this come to a conclusion. jordan? >> thanks, sarah. i want to follow up on the accusations of fraud in the russian election. why does the united states government not believe that it should criticize russia for these accusations, which have been brought up by the osce and the uk government directly in a statement? you know, listing things like restrictions on fundamental freedoms and lack of access for opposition candidates. why does the president of the white house believe that's something that they should be discussing with the russian leader? >> i didn't say that we couldn't discuss it with the leader, i'm saying it didn't come up on today's call. again, the focus was to talk about areas of shared interest. we know that we need to continue a dialogue. it's important for a lot of the safety and security of people across the globe. we would like to be able to work with them on things like north korea, on iran, and also both country's share interested in lowering the tensions when it comes to an arms race, recognizing that that's not the best thing for either country. and so we want to be able to have those conversations. and that was the point of today's call. john? >> when's an appropriate time to raise questions about, you know, political freedoms with russia? >> look, we've continued to talk about these important issues, but that's not simply what today's call was about. john? >> thank you, sarah. two questions. first, we've discussed the president's call to president putin following his re-election. did the president make a similar call to chancellor angela merkel, who has just formed a new government and assumed her fourth mandate in berlin? >> i know he's spoken with the chancellor, i believe it was last week. i would have to look back at the specific details of their conversation, but i know that they spoke within the last week. >> the other thing is that congressman ryan costello of pennsylvania is expected, if not today, some time in the coming weeks, to announce he's not running for re-election, making him the 38th republican house member to announce retirement, resignation, or pursuit of another office, a post-world war ii high in the exodus of republican house members. is this something the president is bothered about? and do members call him when they say they'll make announcements like this? >> certainly, he's had conversations with a number of members, i can't speak to the situation specifically and whether or not he's spoken with the president. we're not concerned. right now, we think we've got a great story to tell, after the first year of being in office. and we look forward to communicating that to the american people and continuing to push the president's agenda. david? >> sarah, did the topic of religious liberty come up at all with the crowned prince today? did the president bring that up at all? >> i don't believe that came up, but i would have to check on the last half of the meeting to be sure, because i wasn't there. trey? >> two foreign policy questions for you. human rights watch estimates that the saudi-led coalition is responsible in 2017 of the deaths of a thousand civilians and took part in 85 unlawful air strikes. did the president bring up these concerns about high civilian casualties in his meeting with the crowned prince today? >> i'm not aware that came up specifically, i would have to check on the last half of the meeting. >> about the call between president trump and russian president putin, the russians said that syria came up in the call. the readout that was released by the trump administration did not include any mention of syria. did the president discuss the issue of syria with vladimir putin and did he discuss the high civilian casualties as a result of efforts by the assad regime and the russian government on the ground in syria? >> it briefly came up. and as you know, we had a number of public statements on our position there. and that certainly has not changed. >> sarah, yesterday, the canadian prime minister noticed the signs of the -- the pace of nafta talks were accelerating. and he said that the president, president trump, is enthusiastic about getting a deal. is the president that enthusiastic? >> the president is always enthusiastic about making a good deal. but that would be the key caveat to any conversation, is making sure that whatever deal he makes is good for americans and american workers. and so anything we do, that would have to be part of that conversation. >> there seems to be an end-of-april deadline. after that, the entire political process is going to get over the negotiations on nafta. anything possible that quick, within six weeks? >> i don't have any specific announcement as of this time, but we're continuing to have those negotiations and continuing to have those conversations being led primarily by ambassador lig lighthouser in working with the president. one last question before the president's event. >> thank you, sarah, the president frequently speaks about the need to fund the nation's crumbling infrastructure. can you talk about the gateway project, to form a tunnel that has the support of many republicans and also according to one study, is key to 20% of the nation's gross national product. >> the president wants to discuss infrastructure on a broader scale, not put all of our emphasis into one project. we want to see the infrastructure in this country rebuilt, which is why we put forward priorities when it comes to that in a plan moving forward, and we look forward to working with congress to make some real progress on that in the coming days. thanks so much, and the president has got an event here in just a few minutes. >> the president does have an event in just a short time, where he will get a number of shouted questions. there's sarah huckabee sanders endsi i ending a lively briefing today. notable, a big huge flag that sarah huckabee sanders and the white house will not confirm what everybody can see with their own eyes. a video came out just the other day, video looked at by the associated press, which actually showed people in russia stuffing the ballot boxes, yet sarah huckabee sanders and this white house refuses to say that the election in russia was not fair. she said, "we won't dictate how other countries operate." we can only focus on -- her words -- the freeness and fairness of our elections. that did not come up in today's call with vladimir putin, where the president congratulated vladimir putin on winning. what also did not come up, the spy poisoning in britain, which the uk has said russia is likely responsible for and we have stood by the uk in saying that. and what else did not come up? election meddling. russian election meddling in our election. also, stormy daniels, karen mcdougal, lots of women today speaking out, trying to get the attention of the white house, trying to get the white house to allow them to speak freely. stormy daniels took a polygraph test, which had been found to be truthful by analysts. karen mcdougal, former playboy playmate is now suing to break her silence on an affair she said she had with the president. and summer zervos, a former "apprentice" contestant can sue the president for defamation. that was found by a manhattan supreme court judge who ruled that today. lots to get to. nbc's hallie jackson is at the white house. ari melber is msnbc's chief legal correspondent. miriam rocah is a former assistant u.s. attorney in the southern district attorney of new york. phil rucker is with "the washington post" and an msnbc political analyst. hallie, i want to start with you. we're going to get to the other news in that briefing in a moment, but what did she have to say on stormy daniels? >> reporter: sarah sanders didn't say much about stormy daniels. it didn't come up. as you noted, i think, at the top of your remarks, katy, much of the briefing focused, in fact, on russia and about sanders' comments or lack thereof about whether or not that was a free and fair election. it obviously was not. she is loathe to say so. and apparently the president was loathe to say so to vladimir putin on the phone earlier today, as well. you asked about stormy daniels. again, we obviously have a lot of breaking news on that regarding the polygraph test that apparently daniels took, that i know you and ari will discuss a little bit further. you have those two new lawsuits that have come out in the last half hour or so while reporters in this room were waiting for sanders to approach the podium. we have reached out to folks in and around the president's circle for comment on both of those lawsuits. nothing to report yet. but i imagine this may come up at the next briefing. this was a typically quick briefing from sanders, less than 20 minutes, which seems to be par for the course these days, even though there is obviously plenty of news to discuss. >> we'll get to the other news for a minute. let's stick on the stormy daniels stuff for one beat. ari, we have an msnbc news article that has the headline, lie detector test that shows stormy daniels truthful about trump affair. how valuable is a lie detector test in the court of law? >> not very valuable in court, not typically admissible. it shows a couple of important things. number one, this occurred back in 2011. that is potentially helpful to miss daniels because it shows she was doing this prior to any politics, campaign stuff, potentially even separate from the counter-allegations from the trump folks that this was all only about money from her. and number two, it shows a high probability of her being truthful, according to this lie detector test. when you look at experts, they say these things are 70 to 90% accurate. >> phil rucker, our big question today is why won't the white house let these women talk. why is the president and the president's team paying women off to keep silent? do you have any idea about that? >> well, i know the white house wants to have nothing to do with this. they continually, for weeks now, have tried to refer a lot of these questions to the president's personal lawyer, michael cohen, who in some moments has referred questions to his lawyer. but there's an effort to really distance the president from this. you know, but if these accusations are not true, if the president says, i don't know why he wouldn't mind letting these women tell their story, there seems to be a very deliberate and concerted effort to keep them quiet, keep them from going public with their accounts of what happened and i assume that's going to continue. >> phil, we have stormy daniels, the polygraph test, also, karen mcdougal, the ex-playmate, who's now suing to break her silence. summer zervos, who can sue now for defamation, according to a judge in manhattan supreme court. it feels like the women in donald trump's past are now fighting back. they're coming out and they're refusing to be silenced or at least they're refusing to stay silent while they're being silenced. >> that's exactly right. this is the me too movement coming right to the oval office here. it could have a powerful effect, we can see. but it's clearly bothering the white house, it's bothering the white house. sarah sanders does not want to be dragged into this. does not want to have to be answering questions about this. and this is something i think, frankly, the president thought he had cleaned up and put aside before he came into the white house with these contracts and with these payments. but these women are coming forward now, eager to tell their stories. and i think there's a real movement here in the country that feels like they should be able to tell their stories. >> ari, yesterday, stormy daniels' lawyer was on your show, michael avenatti, and he said that by entering the lawsuit, president trump has come to grips with the fact that he knew about this nondisclosure agreement. what does that mean for the president moving forward? >> well, this is the most fascinating part of all of this. i can show from this filing on friday, it's just remarkable. and i don't think it's got a lot of attention, because a lot of other remarkable news that has broken. but let me read from this suit. mr. trump intends to pursue his rights to the fullest extent permitted by law. that is donald trump entering a case that is, as you know, the white house and many insisted he was not involved in. michael cohen went rogue. michael cohen facilitated $130k, yada yada yada, as we say in federal court. and friday night, while a lot of other stuff is going on, including the removal of the deputy fbi director, donald trump is personally in it. i'm holding it here. this but for everything else that's breaking, this would be the biggest story in the country. and this is, on page two, the new lawyer, charles harder, who's known to be, by the way, a very excellent lawyer and plays hardball, attorney for defendant donald j. trump. that is donald j. trump entering the stormy daniels litigation on his own behalf. how rogue does michael cohen look now? >> so what does that mean for the original contract where donald trump's signature does not appear? does that mean that suddenly that contract, which michael cohen was saying didn't need the president's signature, because he was representing him, does that mean anything for that? or am i connecting two different dots? >> i'm not sure that him entering the court case has an impact on whether or not that original contract was valid or not, which i think is the argument -- the issue being litigated. but i think to ari's point, the white house and the president spent a long time claiming that they had nothing to do with this whole affair, if you will, when clearly now, you know, he's acknowledging that he does, by entering it. which makes, sort of proves the point that what he's trying to keep quiet must be really big for him to acknowledge this. >> i agree. i would just echo that -- i don't want to over-lawyer it, but this is donald j. trump saying he has the right to impel arbitration. but the implication is that he's enforcing the things in the original contract. which is he is david dennison. this is why lawyers and reporters are thought of as the most annoying profession. i've got to call it fair. it looks like donald trump is david dennison. that's the implication in the case, and that's coming amidst breaking news in this hour that another woman is coming forward saying she wants out of a deal. >> so can karen mcdougal get her story back? can she actually successfully sue to break her silence? >> great question. karen mcdougal and stormy daniels are opposite sides of the same coin. stormy daniels did allegedly contract for silence. meaning, pay me and i'll be quiet. karen mcdougal says the opposite. that she contracted to speak. and she's alleging today, and we don't have the papers yet, so i have to say, i'm basing this off "new york times" reporting, that she thought she was making a deal to talk about things in the "national enquirer." then after she takes the money, she's basically told, through this very odd arrangement -- why is michael cohen involved in any way with the nation"national e " enquirer's" publication materials, but then she's told, you can't talk at all, you have to deny, and she, as other women have been, this is her side of the story, she feels tricked, threatened, and warned that she could face serious financial penalties and bankruptcy. and i can tell you from reporting on these stories in a broader ambit, this is something other women accusers have complained and faced and felt misled about. the law doesn't always support a contract if it's based on a law. the other side of this coin will be the enquirer saying, here's the truth that you took money for this and we retain the authority to run or not run your piece. and all publications generally maintain editorial control. so there's a counterargument here. but the mcdougal case interesting, because she didn't contract potentially only for silence. >> summer zervos suing for defamation and being allowed to do so. what does that mean to sue the president of the united states for defamation? >> well, i mean, look, i think trump is probably going to continue to argue that that shouldn't be allowed to continue. that, with you knyou know, he n able to focus on being the president. but clearly, he's distracted by a lot of things right now. and i don't think that argument is going to win out at the end of the day, as a legal argument. and, you know, look, as ari said, these are two sides of the same coin, if you will. and, you know, the truth is trying to get out. and you know, it does all link back, in my mind, to russia and to mueller and so trump's sort of -- >> feeling like the walls are closing in around him? >> yes. and also to his continuous attempts to try to silence people who speak out against him. >> well, look, he's having everybody in the white house sign a nondisclosure agreement. everybody that's ever worked for his organization has signed a nondisclosure agreement. everybody that worked for his campaign signed a nondisclosure agreement. he doesn't think books written about him should be allowed to be written about him, because he's not getting a cut of it and he's not able to silence what might be written in the book. we know that. let's move over, though, and talk about mueller for a moment. because donald trump is now adding to his legal team, at least attempting to add in some ways to his legal team. there's a new lawyer, phil rucker, and there's one lawyer who has said that he will not be working with donald trump, despite an offer from his team. >> that's exactly right. and that lawyer is ted olsen, a very well-known, established, and well-regarded republican lawyer here in washington. the white house reached out to him, according to my colleagues, bob costa and carol lenick and wanted him for this job and he's turned them down, according to our reporting in the last hour. so that's the new development there. but clearly, there's a lot going on behind the scenes with the legal team. there are divergent strategies, ty cobb, john dowd, jay sekulow, don mcgahn, of course, the white house counsel, all with sort of different ideas about how the president should be proceeding with regards to mueller and what we've seen the last few days is trump taking it into his own hands and attacking mueller by name and taking on a much more aggressive, combative posture. >> yeah. carol, talk to us about this new lawyer that he has been able to hire. digenova. who is he? what's he about? what about these conspiracy theories that he's proffered -- digenova, sorry. that he's proffered. about the doj and the fbi having a conspiracy to take down the president? >> yeah, katy, he's very much in line with sort of what we've seen from president trump in terms of his aggressiveness towards the mueller investigation, but also in just defending himself in all of this. and so he kind of fits in that piece of things. i think what we're seeing now is that in many ways, you know, this struggle between whether or not the president's legal team should be conciliatory, take a conciliatory approach to the mueller investigation or an aggressive approach, has been going on for some time. and there's two reasons why it seems like it's coming to a head at this particular moment. and that is, one, because the president has been told for months now that this was coming to an end soon. and it's clearly not. and so that is sinking in. and, two, he's at this point where they have to make a decision about whether or not he's going to actually sit down and do an interview with robert mueller. so you're seeing this clash and all of this kind of come to a e head at this particular time. >> so how far this president willing to go to fight off special counsel robert mueller. we've seen a lot of attacks over the weekend, jake. and what we did not see in response, at least not a lot of this, is republican pushback. we saw some of it with trey gowdy, saying, if you're innocent, act like you're innocent. but we got a pretty muted statement with the leader of the house, from paul ryan. what is the word behind the scenes there on whether or not the gop is worried the president might try to take down robert mueller, if he doesn't try to fire him, that he'll drag his name through the mud so thoroughly, nobody will have any credibility left. >> the leadership in the house and senate at the moment are taking trump at his word, that he's not going to fire the special counsel, that he has no intention to. paul ryan sought private assurances from the president -- or didn't say the president, but sought private assurances about donald trump's intention or lack thereof to get rid of mueller. and he said he was assured that he wouldn't. now, that doesn't preclude, obviously, congress from taking preemptive action from the president getting rid of mueller. and they take preemptive action on lots of things and could do so here. and they're choosing not to. so that says a lot about what their position is. and i expect that will be their position going forward. and it does seem at the moment even the rank and file is unwilling to take preemptive action on their own without the leadership's go ahead to protect mueller. so i think congress doesn't want to get ahead of what the president might do, no matter law that sounds. and they're willing at the moment to believe donald trump's assurances behind the scenes. >> if they find out that donald trump no longer wants robert mueller, if donald trump tries to start a chain reaction, robert mueller will get fired or have his hands tied by a new attorney general, do you have any indication, jake, that the gop will push back at that point? >> i might catch flack for this, but i do think they would. and you have to also keep in mind that democrats are going to try to make this election about the chaos of washington and the chaos of the trump administration. and if republicans feel like their electoral prospects, as dim as they've become in the house of representatives, are at risk, then they might take action to prevent donald trump from further plummeting them into a bad political position, as you noted -- as sarah huckabee sanders spoke about, 38 republicans are leaving congress. this is what could be an historic election for democrats. so i think republicans would take action to insulate themselves from something that many of them say, publicly and privately, is improper and not right, but will not do so before they believe it's a real threat. >> it all comes down to electoral politics. what does it mean for your re-election? guys, if you can, stay with us. i want to take a very quick break. when we come back on the other side, continue this conversation, but also talk about why this white house refuses to acknowledge what everybody can see with their own eyes. that the election in russia was not fair and why this white house continues to give russia a pass on all of its misdeeds or its alleged misdeeds. the president didn't even bring up the spy poisoning in the uk with his call with vladimir putin. again, he did not bring up election meddling here in the u.s. either. stay with us. we will be right back. oh! there's one. manatees in novelty ts? 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>> well, i mean, the president hasn't shown himself to be shy about doing things in public that further sort of, you know, increase the scrutiny of his actions, like when he had that press conference and spoke directly to russia about, you know, the hacking of the democratic e-mails. so, in that sense, you know, i don't know, i can't say whether it's that they don't understand the consequences or they just don't care. but all of these things are going to only increase the determination and dedication of mueller and his team and others, like, you know, excellent journalists who are going to try to get to the bottom of this. it's not going to go away, and he just keeps bringing this scrutiny on himself, and the facts and the number of what he wants to explain away as coincidences, and prosecutors don't believe in coincidences. so there's way too many of them here, you know, and i really think that that's why mueller has to be allowed to do his job and get to the bottom of this, because there is a lot of things to be explained. >> how does behavior factor into a prosecution or into an investigation? >> well, you're looking at what is provable. that's the evidence you have. and you're looking at what is in people's minds, which is always much more of a difficult and frankly, fascinating process. is there that corrupt intent? you just did something important. you played that video that americans should see over and over again, that was released within russia -- >> feel free to air it over and over again. >> of this ballot box stuffing. this is very clearly coming from a masters of propaganda at the kremlin. this is very clearly doing something. it's very reminiscent of the gangster in "the wire," marlo. when he comes in to steal something, he says to another character, a security guard, that he is showing he has more power over, he doesn't just steal, he steals in front of him and lack looks him in the eye says, you want it to be one way, and it's the other way. putin's not just saying that to the people in russia, where they know better than most that he's in charge and it's not a lawful democracy, he's also saying it to the rest of the world, very delibera deliberately. so that connects to the other point you made before we went to break. that the president of the united states, for whatever reason, still under investigation, is not standing up to that blatant video. >> carol, you dabble in covering the state department now and again. what does this mean for the way the state department operates? how do they operate if the white house itself won't come out and say that this was not a free and fair election? it's such a striking comment from sarah sanders. >> it is. and it puts diplomats in a sort of bind. but i do think that this is a white house that made a decision very early on, early in president trump's presidency, to that it was not going to make an issue out of democracy and human rights in other countries, until they want to, in instances like iran, but we've seen this time and time again, they've done this with turkey, they didn't speak out in a critical way when what happened recently in china. and i think with russia, the reason -- it just becomes even more stark because of all of the -- when you see a president not calling out this election for not being free and fair, it's putting more stark relief, because of all of what's going on here at home in terms of russia, the meddling in the u.s. election, the mueller investigation, and it's just another data point where you've seen this white house not really speak, as phil was saying earlier and making an excellent point, these sort of hard truths to people in power. >> carol lee, phil rucker, miriam rocah, thank you so much for waiting around. we appreciate it. and a reminder, you can catch a special edition of "the beat" with ari melber called "law and orders" tonight at 6:00 p.m. eastern only on msnbc. be sure to tune in. >>> and we're following two other breaking stories this hour. investigators in texas are on the scene of two fedex facilities after a bomb exploded at one facility overnight. it is the fifth bombing in less than a month in that state. we're live in austin, coming up. >>> and there's been yet another school shooting in america. this time in maryland. the shooter is dead. students are critically wounded. and officials just revealed how long it took for resource officers to respond. it's time for the 'sleep number spring clearance event'. the dual adjustability of the sleep number bed allows each of you to adjust to your ideal level of firmness, comfort and support... your sleep number setting... for your best. sleep. ever. in the morning, you'll discover the amazing effects the bed is having on your sleep quality... your sleepiq score. and snoring? 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>> well, probably, but, of course, we don't know if they are at the hands of one individual. >> the explosives are getting more sophisticated. on march 2nd and march 12th, they were left on doorsteps. they detonated because of motion. on march 18th, one was left on a roadside. it was detonated by a trip wire. we're still trying to figure out what happened in this morning's detonation. what does that tell you? >> well, it occurred to me that the offender is learning as he goes. not necessarily how to make a bomb, he obviously knows how to do that. but in the first couple of episodes, where people picked up a package on their porch, after the deaths, the police said, don't pick up a package that wasn't officially shipped. and then he changes and the trip wire case comes up. and then it's reported after the trip wire case that two individuals, may not be connected, in their males, in their 20s, were seen around the area. and that's fold by now he's no longer placing them, he's actually shipping them, it appears that he is actually shipping them. that they are in a fedex office. which, by the way, requires going into and, you know, filling out the paperwork, security cameras, tracking. >> potentially, you can drop it off -- you can drop those off in places, as well. >> well, i think it depends on the size. >> dropping it at the front door would mean that they are more sensitive. having them shipped and handled by multiple people, moving those packages around, that would suggest some pretty sophisticated engineering within that box. >> yes. yes. and he -- like i said, he's learning as he's going. he's getting better and better. >> candice, hold on one second. thank you for joining us. let's go to gabe gutierrez live in austin. what can you tell us about the latest from the scene? >> reporter: hi, there, katy. good afternoon. well, we're actually here at the scene, at the place where investigators believe that these two packages may have been mailed from. those two most recent packages, one of them that exploded overnight in that fedex facility near san antonio. and the other one that ended up at this fedex facility near the austin airport. now, you can see behind me, there's an fbi vehicle right here. and we've been seeing investigators going all the way in the distance there to that fedex office facility. and just a few moments ago, we saw investigators dusting for fingerprints there. and according to a source briefed on the investigation, this is the location where those two packages may have been mailed from, or at least where investigators are lacking at. now, katy, there's still a lot of unanswered questions up-to-the-on, you know, on how exactly they linked to a previous -- to the previous blast, but at this point, what we're told is that the package that exploded overnight near san antonio started at this facility and then was bound for austin yet again. a way that works, is that if that package is mailed from here, has to go sorted down to san antonio and then come back to an address in austin. so this city definitely on edge, as this investigation unfolds. katy? >> no doubt about that. gabe gutierrez in austin. and retired fbi profiler, candice delong, guys, thank you very much for joining us. >>> now to breaking news in great mills, maryland, where two high school students are wounded after a classmate opened fire. this shooting happened before classes began in great mills high in southeast maryland. the male gunman walked into the school and shot a 16-year-old female student and a 14-year-old male student. the shooter is now dead. just a couple of days ago, students at this high school participated in the national walkout, protesting gun violence. and here is how one witness from that school described the chaotic moments to my colleague, hallie jackson, earlier today. >> we were just standing there talking and we heard like a loud shot. and it was probably like a few yards away from us. to my left hand side. and like, when i heard that we heard it, and we instantly start running the opposite way. and like, i opposite way and i glanced back and i saw a girl, i didn't know who the girl was, but i saw a blond pony tail fall forward so we just kept running towards the closest exit. >> garrett, i understand we just heard from officials and they revealed how long it took for a resource officer to respond? >> reporter: it's really incredible, this is a case of the system working, this police officer already being hailed in this case, duane vasquel, apparently a top cop, responded in seconds and this incident was over in less than a minute. >> sheriff, can you say approximately how long from first shot till last shot this incident took? >> that was the exact question i asked of our criminal investigation commander, and it looks like less than minutes, my guess is less than a minute. >> i just want to be totally clear, from the time the student shot until the time the school resource officer shot, less than a minute? >> i'm thinking seconds, but definitely less than a minute. >> reporter: the sheriff said the indications are this was a targeted domestic shooting at the high school, they believe the shooter and the 16-year-old girl may have had some sort of relationship, that's what they focusing on now in talking to witnesses that were there. there were two security cameras that caught the fire incident that that will be critical to carrying out this entire investigation. >> garrett, thank you very much. and we have got one more thing for you right after the break, but first, while you weren't looking, the governor in mississippi is trying to make his state the hardest state in america to get an abortion. the law proposed would make it impossible to get an abortion. but not so fast, the federal judge has blocked the law at least for now, the court granted a temporary restraining order, against the state's only abortion clinic. the state now faces a real uphill battle to get that court order lifted. that moving out of the friend zone, moving in together and getting two of everything thing. those fur babies preparing you for real babies thing. that one for me, one for you, us together for the rest of forever thing. buy one iphone 8, get one iphone 8 on us. more for your thing. that's our thing. let's take a look at some numbers: 4 out of 5 people who have a stroke, their first symptom... is a stroke. 80 percent of all strokes and heart disease? 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because people are being stuck by nails, a chair collapsed with somebody sitting in it. it's 50 years old. i said, okay, we can potentially do is that. . >> there appears to be some contradiction in the record about your statements to the press indicating early on that you had no knowledge of this purchase. which is not what you're saying today. >> i never spoke to the press. >> your spokesperson initially denied the carsons had any involvement in the dining room selection. >> his resignation is unbelievable to some, but it is the context, the climate, everything else that makes this story truly unbelievable, is pattern, the glaring use of taxpayer money by the president's cabinet. scott pruitt is back in the hot seat, did he hear the communications? probably not because of the soundproof booth that was installed last year. that cost $13,000. don't forget about the $3,000 to have his office swept for hidden listening devices either. he's not at the cia, he's at the epa, who did he think was listening? the ghost of henry david autht r author roug. there are also a few options for 2 grand. but not for interithe interior secreta secretary. the gdepartment aplanted to sped 130,000 to upgrade the furniture in his office. and then he said he was able to get that number down to a cool $7,500 according to the ap. then there is the pricey travel. last week a new report from a walking dog group said that steve mnuchin took several trips on military aircraft in 2017, totaling near $20 million. pruitt. zinke, and secretary david schultz also forgot about their own travel. he paid about $60,000 of it back. the cost of his seats only. but it was not enough to save his job. more than a million dollars probably more than $2 million, taxpayer dollars, maybe we have gotten it all wrong, neighbor the president was being literal when he meant he would drain the swamp, has anyone checked the water

>> our thanks to brad meltzer and the people who do that. be sure to follow mow facebook and twitter. you can tweet the show. that's it for "the lead." i turn you over to "the i turn you over to "the situation room." -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com >> lawyering up. as he steps up attacks on the special counsel, president trump lawyering up. saying the president is being framed. mueller's questions. special counsel robert mueller is reportedly saent the presidet a list of questions. given the comments and questions drgs mueller touch a nerve? using stolen date. a a whistle blower claims that they harvested the information some of 50 million facebook users without their knowledge or consent. and serial bomber. after a fourth bomb explodes in austin, texas, injurying two people. police confirm feefthe fears of residents. who is behind the attacks? i'm wolf blitzer. you're in "the situation room." president trump goes on the offensive against special counsel, hiring a former u.s. attorney had a has tlaalleged t president is being framed by the fbi and top officials there. that comes after the president called out robert mueller by name for the first time. amid sharp warnings by key republicans. the white house insist they are not planning to fire mueller. i'll speak with joakim castro of the intelligence committee. and our special. is are standing by with full coverage. let's begin the president's sharper attacks. up first, our senior correspondent pamela brown. what's the latest? >> the president is breaking from the advice from his lawyers and calling out robert mueller by name. notably. this change of posture comes after months of the president saying he believes mueller would be fair to him and it is raising questions whether the president plans to push to fire the special counsel. >> tonight an emboldened donald trump is taking aim at his investigators. we've learned the president is adding a new attorney to his legal take. he has pushed conspiracy theories about trying prevent trump from being president. >> they tried on frame the president with a conspiracy. they knew and it plotted to ruin him as a candidate and then destroy him as president. >> does robert mueller still have your confidence? >> the president signaled his strong desire for the russia probe to come to an end. tweeting this morning, a total witch hunt with massive conflicts of interest. so far, three campaign associates have pleaded guilty and mueller's team indicted 13 russians for meddling. >> i'm just puzzled why the white house is going so hard at this. i don't know how you can have any other conclusion. on sunday for the first time, trump attacked mueller by name asking, why does the team have 13 hardened democrats? big hillary supporters and zero republicans. his question was rhetorical, as well as incorrect as mueller is a republican. as is deputy attorney general rod rosenstein who oversees the probe. and questioning the firing. the mueller probe should never have been started as there was no collusion and no crime. that tweet caused the white house attorney to issue a statement once again saying, there are no plans to fire mueller. trump himself can't fire mueller directly. he needs deputy attorney general rod rosenstein to do it or trump would need to replace jeff sessions because of his earlier recu recusal. they released the statement attacking the investigation as manufacturer and called on rosenstein to end it. i pray that attorney general will bring an end to the investigation. but the president did get one firing he wanted. the deputy director was firing by sessions on friday. just two days short of retiring with aer full pension. trump called it a great day for democracy. a notion which received pushback. >> the president said it was a great day for democracy yesterday. i think it was horrible day for democracy. to have firings like the happening at the top, from the president and the attorney general does not speak well for what is going on. >> mccabe's attorney coming his client's defense, calling the tweets childish, defamatory and disgusting saying that the tweets confirm he has corrupted the entire process. and suggesting that high level drug dealers be given death penalty. >> the ultimate penalty has to be the death penalty. maybe our country is not ready for that. it's possible. it's possible our country is not ready for that and i can understand it. maybe. although personally, i can't understand that. >> the president will be coming back to wash with the russia cloud continuing to hang over the white house. it is clear the president has had a change of mood. when it comes to robert mueller. one source familiar with the matter says he has become increasingly agitated as he realizes the russia probe is nowhere near wrapping up soon. despite that his personal attorneys have been telling us for months that it would be wrapping up soon. you'll recall it was last november, december it was supposed to wrap up. now we're here mid-march and there's no indication it will happen any time soon. >> you're absolutely right. the president's attacks have drawn warnings from republicans. a number of them said the president should back off and cool and it certainly not fire robert mueller saying would it prompt a revolt from boat parties. the one prominent republican, bob corker, who said that legislation should be attached to keep the government open on friday. >> the president launched these attacks over the weekend. i wonder if you're okay with that? >> no. i don't like that. and i noticed subsequently that they sent out a relief from the white house saying they have no discussions and no intentions of terminating. >> do you think there needs to be an effort in congress to protect him legislatively? >> i can't imagine. i can't possibly imagine why senate leadership wouldn't place a protection that would be the perfect place. >> do you think if he fired mueller? >> i think it would be a total upheaval in the senate. >> i think the president ought to cool it a little bit. i think it doesn't help him. i like the president. he is a person of strong emotions and he sometimes speaks out when he shouldn't. in the case of bob mueller, i like bob mueller. he is honest. as he very good prosecutor. he is straightforward. and i think it won't indict the president. and i think the president should treat that it way. it would be the stupidest thing the president could do is fire him. he could do that but he won't do that and he shouldn't do that. >> now, wolf, orrin hatch said that he does not support legislati legislation. also john cornyn observe texas. the republican who is majority ill when. he said he does not think they should attach any bill to frequent special counsel to this must-pass spending bill. he thinks he should lay out the attacks. it does not make essential to do anything legislatively. right now, republicans are concerned about what they're doing but not ready to take them on quite yet. >> all right. thanks for that. joining us now, a key member of the house intelligence committee. democratic congressman joakim castro. do you believe the president is setting the stage for mueller's firing? >> i think it is quite likely that he is. i believe for a while that he could be setting the stage to arrange for bob mueller to be fired. >> the president's lawyer said he is not discussing it, not contemplating it. you don't buy it. >> i don't. if you look at what the president has. it is clear that he has become veriage fated the investigation is still open. pits getting closer to the inner circle. >> we just heard orrin hatch saying firing mueller would be the stupidest thing he could do. he said it would be the beginning of the end of his presidency. are you reassured by what you're hearing from your republican colleagues? >> well, i'm glad that the republicans in the senate that you quoted have given the president what tumors a brush back pitch to warn him about firing bob mueller bust they need to put some protection in the omnibus or a stand alone bill. >> dpouth do you think that will happen? >> if you ask me dorgs i think the will is there in a republican senate and house that so far has frequented president? no, i don't. >> i want your reaction to joe digenova. what does it tell you if anything about the president's frame of mind? >> that he seems to be buying into these conspiracy theories. the idea that all of this has been set up to go get him. so to the extent that he is firing folks who have been on the fringe, it says a lot about his state of mind. for that reason and others, it makes me think that ultimately, he will arrange for the firing of bob mueller. >> he said make to mistake, a group are trying to frame donald trump of a falsely created cry. are according to the "new york times," they have sent the president's legal team a list of topics. they want to focus, should there be an interview with the president. does it look like the special counsel may have touched a nerve by sending over potential questions? >> well, absolutely. i think the president and his team probably read that list of questions which i imagine is fairly exhaustive. and he decide that had the there are answers that if he gave works probably get him in trouble or he can't be completely candid and may get caught lying to the special counsel. so for whatever reason, after he received those. he seems to have become unhinged. >> i want to read to you a tweet. john brennan, the former craft director, he served from january 2015 to 2017, he tweeted, when the full extent of your banality, moral turpitude becomes known, you will take your place in the dustbin of history. you may scapegoat andy mccabe but you will not destroy america. america will triumph over you. my sense is, he knows a lot of what was going on that the american public hasn't yet learned what do you think he's referring to in that very strong statement, predicting that the president will be disgraced in the dust bin of history? >> when i read that, i was astounded by the remarkable words of a former craft director to make that statement about a sitting president of the united states. i can only imagine it is based on classified information he's been able to see about what happened in the 2016 election. for the former director to say that, it says a lot about where it has gone and where we are as a country. >> you've seen classified information. you're a member of the house intelligence committee. have you seen anything would back those strong words up? >> as i said, almost a year ago. i told you that i thought people would go to jail based on what i had seen. i told that you i think more people will end up going to jail what i can't tell you is exactly how close that will get to the president of the united states. >> congressman castro, thank you for joining us. >> thank you. >>> up next, the whistle blower alleges that a data firm harvested the information of some 50 million facebook users without their knowledge or consent. and a fourth bomb explodes in austin, texas. wounding two people. police say a skilled bomb maker is behind the attacks. what's the motive? 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woo to blue from ? woo to blue bla ? some many many bla bla? the bla it was about a on bla bla he may say i won't sit down with you. he can do what he has been doing without naming mueller. he's used all these. now he's making it clear. he can do that and still leave his mind unmade to this point with whether or not he will fire bob mueller. the thing that i always say to people who say he will never do it. it would be political suicide. listen to lindsey graham or orrin hatch. he revels in doing things people tell him not to do. does that include this? i don't know. but i do think we should avoid the idea that donald trump won't do something with lindsey graham and orrin hatch might not like it. that's not who he believes his constituency. >> the deputy white house press secretary told reporters today aboard air force one, like to new hampshire, it is pretty clear there are no conversations or discussions about removing mr. mueller. given the president's tweets though, some of the rhetoric from his legal team. it is by no means clear at all that there's been no discussion at all. >> it is not clear at all. hogan gidley isn't there for every conversation the president is having. we already know at least this past summer, it is something the president was actively discussing. it was impeded by a white house staffer. we do know that. we also know that it is not clear that the president has an easy path to firing bob mueller. he needs he a person to do it. rod rosenstein would be the person to do it. he's come out and said there's no cause to fire bob mueller and whoever that person is would need a reason also. those are the missing pieces whether or not he would fire him and the things impeding it. >> what you're suggesting is the s if he wants to fire mueller, first he who is the fire rosenstein. >> all the regulations. it is incredibly hard to do that. but he has done things before. like fire comey. easier to fire comey than to fire mueller but again he is unpredictable. >> i'm with nia 100%. it is not something he just checks a box and it happens. rosenstein has been quite clear. he doesn't think that mueller should be fired. i just, i learned to stop saying donald trump will never do, fill in the blank. win the election, fill in the blank. it is not just that his views are different. it is that he revels in doing things that people think no one would be willing to do. i think that's a motivation for him to do things in a way that for every other politician. the idea that this could get you in trouble, he runs toward it. >> and don't forget, negotiations are going on about how the president testifies and if he testifies. if in the end, his lawyers don't want him to testify, in the end if the president says i won't testify. then has to be able to make the case politically why he's not testifying. and the way he makes case politically is by saying, why i would testify? this is all a bunch of mularkey. why would i testify before these people who are using evidence that is fake? and that it was gotten in a wrong way? it was based on fake news like the dos yefrlt et cetera, et cetera. so he is setting the ground work for not talking to mueller. >> it's a branding campaign, really. he brands his points. >> much more after this. sfx: muffled whistle text alert. i'm your phone, stuck down here between your seat and your console, playing a little hide-n-seek. cold... warmer... warmer... ah boiling. jackpot. and if you've got cut-rate car insurance, you could be picking up these charges yourself. so get allstate, where agents help keep you protected from mayhem... ...like me. mayhem is everywhere. are you in good hands? if your adventure keeps turning into unexpected bathroom trips you may have overactive bladder, or oab. ohhhh... enough already! we need to see a doctor. ask your doctor about myrbetriq® (mirabegron). it treats oab symptoms of urgency, frequency, and leakage. it's the first and only oab treatment in its class. myrbetriq may cause serious allergic reactions. if you experience swelling of the face, lips, throat or tongue, or difficulty breathing... stop taking myrbetriq and tell your doctor right away. myrbetriq may increase blood pressure. tell your doctor right away if you have trouble emptying your bladder or have a weak urine stream. myrbetriq may affect or be affected by other medications. before taking myrbetriq, tell your doctor if you have liver or kidney problems. common side effects include increased blood pressure, common cold symptoms urinary tract infection, constipation, diarrhea, dizziness, and headache. need some help managing your oab symptoms along the way? ask your doctor if myrbetriq is right for you, and visit myrbetriq.com to learn more. internet providers promise business owners a lot. let's see who delivers more. comcast business offers fast gig-speeds across our network. at&t doesn't. we offer more complete reliability with up to 8 hours of 4g wireless network backup. at&t, no way. we offer 35 voice features and solutions that grow with your business. at&t, not so much. we give you 75 mbps for $59.95. that's more speed than at&t's comparable bundle, for less. call today. >>> the "washington post" with a major report. president trump's legal team is seeking ways to curtail an interview with the special counsel. president trump's attorneys have provided the special counsel's office with written description that's chronicle key moments under investigation in hopes of curtailing the scope of a presidential interview, according to two people familiar with the situation. this is potentially a significant development. it follows what we've been reporting, that the mueller team that sent over some questions or topics, they want to discuss this. it looks like the trump legal team is responding. yes, it sounds like mueller sent over a list of things to cover. but trump's team in response has come back and said, here's the information we have on this topic. here's what we would say on that topic. trying on shrink down what the scope of that interview would look like. it is even unusual for a special counsel to send over a list of what they will cover and particularly unusual for someone asked to be a witness in the grand jury to come back a written document saying here's what i can talk about. >> let me read another sentence from the "washington post" story. trump's legal team recently shared the documents many an effort to limit it. they said that trump would be vulnerable in an hours long interview. that's the real concern that the president's lawyers have. >> right. and look. most of them, if writ perfect, if the world were perfect, trump wouldn't to have testify at all. they know if you sit him down before a special counsel, he can go off and wander and not tell the truth. and they're worried about it. so what they're trying to do to avoid that, i had one source say, look. ronald reagan did written interrogatories. maybe we can work it pout way. what they're trying to do is have the lawyers do the interrogatory which is strange, and maybe now try to get trump down to one or two or three areas where they can narrow his focus and actually sort of prompt him and help him with how to respond to questions. how to limit his answers and get him focused on what to safety i think this is part of the last-ditch effort to say, okay, we won't say he is never, ever, ever going to testify but we have to just america the circumstances so advantageous to us that it won't allow for any mistakes. >> champing at the bit to sit for an interview, according to one person. but his lawyers who are negotiating the terms of the sitdown interrogatory extraordinarily high stakes. >> yeah. that's spin to say, he really, really wants to do this but he just can't. if you go by what trump has said publicly, not recently but he said it, i want to do it but i have nothing to hide. the issue is what gloria hit on. fwreng donald trump being under oath as a private citizen, he just says stuff that isn't true. we want to hit this point and this point and this point. you would have no reassurance based on anything in his life or his presidency that he would say, okay. no problem. that's what i'll do. so i think we're seeing that. >> we've already seen already, people involved in this investigation getting in trouble for lying. we saw the same thing with president clinton, lying under oath. so you can understand, why would this person in particular want to put some guardrails around what he can say and will say because of his penchant for what that article calls erroneous claims. what might be called flat out lying. >> the problem is you can put guardrails around him and he can charge through. where are we now? >> he thinks he is the smartest guy in the room who can outsmart robert mueller. >> i'm not a lawyer. but will this fly? it is another thing for their clients to say the. does he look at it and say -- >> go ahead. >> if i could jump in. what we're talking about here is this idea of interrogatories and written conversations back and forth. that's what you find in civil law. it is important to understand how extraordinary this type of action by the president's lawyers is. you invite someone in for an interview. if they didn't agree, would you make a decision about whether or not you issue a subpoena or did not. so this is really unusual. i would be very surprised if they agreed to release significant limits to follow up on leads that come out of the conversations. >> just one thing. i've been told that the special counsel is very concerned and cares a great deal about the office of the presidency. and that he understands that interviewing a president, or having a president testify before you, is very different from having you or me testify. i think it shows that the special counsel understands this is a special circumstances. i don't think he'll go as far as the president's lawyers might like. but i do think, you know, presidents get special treatment. reagan got special treatment. clinton got special treatment. so he like i would get some special treatment of some kind. >> i think that's true but we have to think about what the mueller report would look line at the end if he does not have the president's version of events. i think you get the president into the room voluntarily. at the end of the day, i think the special counsel will want to hear that side of the story. >> more news. a whistle blower alleges the data firm hired by president trump's presidential campaign used private information from tens of millions of facebook users to target american voters. plus, breaking news on the hunt for a killer. >> we are clearly dealing with what we expect to be a serial bomber at this point. - i love my grandma. - anncr: as you grow older, your brain naturally begins to change which may cause trouble with recall. - learning from him is great... when i can keep up! - anncr: thankfully, prevagen helps your brain and improves memory. - dad's got all the answers. - anncr: prevagen is now the number-one-selling brain health supplement in drug stores nationwide. - she outsmarts me every single time. - checkmate! you wanna play again? 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(cheers) what's it worth to talk to your mom? what's the value of a walk in the woods? the value of capital is to create, not just wealth, but things that matter. morgan stanley (vo)just one touch.ith with fancy feast creamy delights, she can have just the right touch of real milk. easily digestible, it makes her favorite entrées even more delightful. fancy feast creamy delights. love is in the details. >>> there are serious questions about how the trump campaign was able to take advantage of personal data from of americans. date they never should have gotten their hands on it. it is truly a tangled web. >> it is. it is taken from facebook users. perhaps for one purpose. to target messages and ma anymore late voters. facebook reeling and saying it will conduct a forensic audit on the data analytics firm that helped trump get elected. the firm used private information from tens of millions of facebook users to directly target potential american voters. and now coming forward, it centered around deception. grassroots support and the a strategy that seems to bored order electronic brainwashing. the whistle blower says the idea to politically weaponize date taken directly if facebook users came from the former vice president of cambridge analystica. and steve bannon. >> he wanted weapons for his culture war. we offered him a way to accomplish what he wants to do. which was change the culture of america. >> the personal facebook data came at first from use here's were paid to fill out a personality test through an ad. what they did not know it was app loud researchers to penetrate not only their personal data but then exploited a loom hole to successes access their friends' profiles. facebook says it was misled by university research here's initially built the app for an demmic purposes but later used it for cambridge analytica. >> by having hundreds and hundreds of thousands of americans undertake this survey, we were able to form a way to predict the personality of every adult in the united states of manager. >> cam bridge an it will dlaik claims it didn't use it in the 2016 he campaign but it was fund. it was run by steve bannon. the scientist behind the the app is a russian america who also worked a russian university. seen here lecturing in st. petersburg. he is a psychologist and traveled to russia several times, according to the whistle blower. he wrote an e-mail to colleagues obtained by cnn which denies all wrongdoing saying he is willing to talk to the fbi and i've been asked quite seriously by the new york times i'm a russian spy. i really tried to explain that that seems just silly. if i am a russian spy, tim world's dumbest spy. they said it is time for facebook to come clean for trying to brainwash the american electorate. >> we are looking at drain the swamp. imagery of walls and how people engage with that concept. we are looking at suspicions about the deep state. if 2014 it would have sounded slightly crazy for any political candidate to go on. what we were finding were cohorts of americans who responded to these things and this all got fed back to steve bannon. >> the top democrat on the house intelligence committee is call for the head of cambridge analytica to testify. they said facebook needs to be called back to explain how private user information was provided to these academic research with links to russia. facebook tanked today nearly 7%. >> thanks for that report. after a fourth bomb explodes in austin, texas, police confirm feefrs residents saying the sth bombs are like i set by a sophisticated bomber. >> it is not targeted to individuals. we're very concerned that with trip wires, a child could be walking down a sidewalk and hit something. badda book. badda boom. this year, we're taking it up a notch. so in this commercial we see two travelers at a comfort inn with a glow around them, so people watching will be like, "wow, maybe i'll glow too if i book direct at choicehotels.com". who glows? just say, badda book. badda boom. nobody glows. he gets it. always the lowest price, guaranteed. book now at choicehotels.com ♪ ♪ fthere's flonase sensimist.f up around pets. it relieves all your worst symptoms including nasal congestion, which most pills don't. and all from a gentle mist you can barely feel. flonase sensimist. this is a tomato you can track from farm, to pot, to jar, to table. and serve with confidence that it's safe. this is the ibm blockchain, built for smarter business. built to run on the ibm cloud. 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>> wolf, tonight, investigators in austin are offering over $100,000 to anyone who can come forward and help them in this investigation. this case has taken a dramatic turn with the serial bomber now displaying significant skill and a chilling ability to strike fear in anyone, even people simply walking down a street. tonight, austin is a city on edge, as police say they are now on the hunt for what they believe is a serial bomber. the latest blast happened overnight, injuring two men, who set off a hidden trip wire, triggering an explosion. >> we've got trip wires there in the grass. >> investigators say they see similarities in all four bombs that have exploded in the city since march 2nd. but following sunday's incident, they now see something even more chilling. >> the belief that we are now dealing with someone who's using trip wires shows a higher level of sophistication, a higher level of skill. >> reporter: unlike the previous bombs, which were stuffed inside packages apparently placed by the bomber at the homes of people of color. two african-american men were killed and an hispanic woman was injured. but police and the fbi say the trip wire bomb overnight did not appear to target anyone specific. it was hidden near a fence in a predominantly white neighborhood and the two people injured are both white men. still, police are not ruling out the possibility that the previous bombings could have been hate crimes. tonight, a former fbi profiler says the trip wire bomb might have been an attempt to throw investigators off the trail. >> previous victims may have been targeted and now he wants to put time and distance between the targeted victims and make it appear that he's out, just to randomly victimize anyone. so it could be a game-playing technique on the bomber's part. >> reporter: no matter the motive, investigators say their most urgent concern now is the bomber's change in tactics, because the bomb overnight was not easily noticed. >> we're very concerned that with trip wires, a child could be walking down a sidewalk and hit something. >> reporter: overnight, police warned residents using a reverse 911 call system and today a school near the site of the bombing was shut down. according to mary ellen o'toole, who profiled the unabomber for the fbi, the fear of random terror in austin is exactly what the killer wants. she says she thinks the bomber is most likely a man who is reveling in a sense of power. >> this is someone who is basically enjoying, some type of enjoyment over what he's doing, holding the city of austin in a fixated state of fair. they're scared. they're upset. >> and tonight, police are appealing for help from the killer himself. >> we asked him to contact us and gave us phone numbers to contact us at. and again, we won't understand what the motive might be behind this or the reason behind this until we have an opportunity to talk to the suspect or the suspects that are involved. >> and police and fbi officials in austin are also asking for the public's help, saying they need anyone with surveillance video, other video or images, of any suspicious activity, to come forward. police say they have persons of interest in this case, but so far, no suspects. wolf? >> brian todd reporting. thanks. coming up, breaking news, as he steps up his attacks on the special counsel, president trump hires a former federal prosecutor who claimed the president is being framed by officials in the fbi and the justice department. been jimmy's longest. jimmy (shouting): james! he's survived record rain and a supplier that went belly up. so while he's proud to have helped put a roof over the heads of hundreds of families, he's most proud of the one he's kept over his own. brand vo: get the most out of your money, whether you're using quickbooks smart invoicing to get paid twice as fast or automatically tracking your mileage. smarter business tools for the world's hardest workers. quickbooks. backing you. liberty mutual saved us almost $800 when we switched our auto and home insurance. liberty did what? yeah, they saved us a ton, which gave us a little wiggle room in our budget. i wish our insurance did that. then we could get a real babysitter instead of your brother. hey, welcome back. this guy, right? 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the russia investigation. special counsel robert mueller has focussed in on rick gates. new details revealed in court filings this week are giving us the first indications of how prosecutors are getting that from gates and using it to tie paul manafort, the former chairman of the president's campaign directly to russian operatives. so to sarah murray with this bit of news. what more can you tell us? >> reporter: we knew rick gates was cooperating with the special counsel and people looked at that as this guy is going to flip on his long-time business partner and try to get him cooperate or help the government build their case against paul manafort. but one of the things they're telling my colleague is when rick gates was working for robert mueller, they said we don't need you to help build this case against paul manafort but what we need you to help us and provide details that work toward our core mission and that is investigating any collusion between the trump campaign and russians. that's the latest indication and a bright signal from mueller's team that yes, this is the core of their investigation, they are pushing forward on a collusion investigation. >> do we know how this is playing out with gates? >> reporter: this is interesting. we know this partly with sources like i said who are familiar with the conversations but also from the court filing that came out that didn't have anything to do with the gates case, it wasn't the manafort case but it was this other lawyer who pleaded guilty to lying to special counsel robert mueller about this interactions between gates and a russian intelligence operative. and what came out was them saying gates was in contact with this guy throughout the campaign, he knew the guy had ties to russian intelligence and stayed in touch and this is all pertinent to our investigation. so it gives you this window into the way they're looking at collusion right now. >> what kind of information might gates have had access to that mueller would be interested? >> reporter: president trump wasn't a huge fan of rick gates so he wasn't in the inner circle but he was close to paul manafort, and he was working in the campaign at a time when interesting things were happening at trump tower. he was there in 2016 when there was the meeting in trump tower between paul manafort and some other trump campaign aides and a number of russian officials. so it's possible that rick gates has some kind of information about that. but he also stuck around after manafort was fired he was on the campaign for longer and then he went on to work on the presidential inauguration with tom barrack, one of president trump's close friends. so he could have information we're not aware of right now. >> i want to bring in our next guests. hello, everyone, welcome to the program. we're learning more and more about robert mueller's focus. do you think rick gates is the lynch pin mueller needs to make the collusion case? >> no. he'll need more, but it's not just rick gates. so remember, rick gates, might have kept -- have e-mails, have documentation, other evidence that then leads to other people who may know more. sarah was reporting rick gates was not in the inner circle but as mueller is able to get more information about what might have been happening in the inner circle, some of that inner circle may begin to talk as well. this is how a conspiracy unfolds. we're watching it in 24/7 cable news time. which is some random case of some random lawyer, a court filing at 10:00 p.m. at night with like a little reference to a potential, you know, discussion between manafort and a russian intelligence agency or that they were friendly. then leads to, you know, sort of disclosures about what gates may be saying. and this is just going to keep happening. it's at the oval office, we know that now, and we are heading towards, as i've been saying the unknown. is it a pardon or is it a firing? the idea, in my mind, the idea that donald trump lets this get much, much closer seems inconceivable at this stage to me. that one of those two things is going to happen. >> wow. okay. after manafort was fired, gates stayed on during the transition, and beyond. what would he have been in a position to know? >> well, a number of things, don. for instance, there has been investigation by mueller of what happened at the republican convention, the changing of the gop platform regarding sale of weapons to the ukraine. potentially the selection of michael flynn as national security advisor, and the policies of the administration regarding russia. and as juliette said, a number of things regarding potentially the trump tower meeting and other contacts with russia. here's what we do know don, based on the reporting by cnn tonight. what we do know is that gates' attorney was told we want something more than manafort r in order to give you a plea deal. we want something that's going to help us move forward our main mission and eventually gates did get a plea deal. so what that tells us is that gates did offer something significant to mueller. mueller thought it was worth giving him the deal. we don't know exactly what it is, but we know gates is moving mueller's case forward for him. >> in a filing earlier this week, in a separate case, mueller let it be known that gates was in contact with someone he knew was a russian spy. doesn't that draw a line to the russian orbit? >> it does. we know mueller is a tactical prosecutor and he started squeezing the tooth paste tube at one end and the tighter he squeezes, the more stuff that comes out. that's what we're seeing here. i think he's been putting the pieces of the puzzle together here. he's keeping it close to the vest. we're not sure what the next step is going to be. we've seen it in the court filings how he let a little information go and we're able to assume and put the pieces thoogt we know. there's nothing unusual about it. it's true he does not need gates to get manafort. that's a money laundering case. you don't need anything but the documents and the person in charge of keeping the records to do that. there's a reason rick gates got the plea deal he did, and the reason there have been charges not pursued against him. i think that tells a story. it's interesting to me we're keeping focussed on russia, we're seeing the circle tighten around the president, the oval office. pretty soon it will be the oval office will begin to tighten in on him a little bit too as we get closer in on the investigation. so no surprises from mueller at this point. i think he's doing what a good prosecutor would do. >> i think juliette feels a similar way, i don't want to speak if you, if you don't believe that's the case say so. let me ask you about rick gates, can i or do you want to respond first? >> i totally concur. >> rick gates became close to president trump's friend tom barrack, who is a man who introduced paul manafort to the president. do you think there is scrutiny on tom barrack as well? >> absolutely. only because you have to assume that gates is talking about sort of how he came to the campaign, how manafort came to the campaign and what did they do once they were in the campaign. so anyone in the orbit now is going to be a subject of inquiry by a really smart team of lawyers working on this investigation. and so what that tells us if we gist step back is, remember how this started, this started with donald trump's team saying there were no contacts with the russians. we are past that. that is a dead, lying story now. we are at a couple dozen contacts, most of them lied about originally, that are getting closer and closer to collusion. you can use the word collusion, but contacts that were about something. were they about protecting the president and his finances, were they about undermining hillary? directing cambridge analytica or were they about all of the above? that we don't know. what we do know, just reminding everyone, is that the president of the united states in his campaign, during the period in which they were trying to be the president of the united states, were in direct contacts with russians and a lot of people in the campaign knew that. and the only question now is how much did trump know and how close will this get to trump or, of course, his family members. >> there's reporting today that mueller is also asking about meetings between jeff sessions and then russian ambassador sergey kislyak at the republican national convention and also at the mayflower hotel in washington d.c. what does that tell you? >> that tells me mueller is interested in whether or not there was an official act in exchange for something of value. in other words, i mnentioned, te gop platform was changed at the convention. there was a provision about providing arms to the ukraine. it was changed to be more pro-putin. you have to wonder why that was the case. there were reports it was done at trump's request and the reason is unknown. so i imagine that mueller is very interested in finding out the circumstances of that, what jeff sessions and other members of the trump campaign were discussing regarding that, because it is a federal crime to promise any official act in exchange for something of value. it's called theft of honor services and there are a number of people, including the former governor of my state, that were in prison for that crime. >> illinois, i remember it well. chicago, those were the days. when i was there, it was bagoyavich, obama, mayor daily. >>> today the attorney general pushed back against intense pressure by the president and republicans to appoint a second special counsel to investigate the the surveillance of carter page and the investigation of hillary clinton's e-mails. what's this about? >> it's about a politically motivated stunt, don. flange cli there's been these alarm bells going off in the right about the surveillance of carter page and culminating with the nunes memo. no misconduct has been shown regarding the surveillance of page. they've been calling for a special counsel to be appointed. there was no basis for sessions to appoint a special counsel, which is only done when there's a conflict of interest or some other circumstance. sessions went out of his way to appoint an attorney to oversee the investigation of the inspector general of the doj. i have to say that is a politically motivated investigation. and only in the trump administration would we consider it a moderate step to have an investigation. >> you're talking about him appointing prosecutor john huber to look into various matters as to whether the fbi abuse surveillance of carter page and the sale of uranium one and that. what do you think about this, them abusing their authority supposedly when it came to fisa and so on. what do you think of this? politically motivated? >> absolutely. the fisa process is not some willy nilly process that you get a warrant on simply because you go in and throw information up in front of a judge. it's a deliberative process. there's a great number of checks and balances to make sure the process is run an appropriate way. the judges who are appointed are not hacks somewhere out there. so i think all the talk about did they somehow abuse carter page, to me i'd be thinking if i was carter page, what in the world is going on? i mean, there's clearly some reason i'm in here. there's some reason i'm in the records. there's some reason they have a judge convinced they ought to do surveillance on me. i don't know why we're pushing back, upset about carter page and apparently every rock we turn over there's another russia. i don't know why we're suddenly so worried about protecting krp. >> it's carter page, uranium one, hillary clinton's e-mails. it's 2016 all over again. >> it never dies. >> that's your response? it never dies? >> well, i just want to -- it's so politically motivated that you don't know what to do with it except for thank goodness that sessions didn't take it even further. but remember, these are article three judges who are given special appointments to serve on a specialized court whose purpose was to actually regulate warrants of u.s. citizens because they were being abused at a prior time with the fbi in the 1960s. so the fisa court is the check. so the idea we're going to unleash a prosecutor to review whether these article three judges were legitimate with no basis, no basis, except for speculation by the president and maybe some members of his political team, is a really scary step forward. i'm confident nothing is going to come of it. it's one of those things you say in this era whatever because there's bigger fish to fry. >> didn't these same folks reauthorize the fisa process? >> four times. and all republicans. >> i know. listen, quickly because i have to go here. p is jeff sessions, is he on the chopping block? he's on the cover of "time" magazi magazine. you know what happens with this president -- >> what are we going to do spank somebody with the magazine? >> i will tell you, don -- >> i really want to hear from michael on this one. go ahead, michael. >> let me tell you. jeff sessions has had his run-ins with trump. no secret of that. trump likes to get rid of people when they get more attention than he does. let me put one plug in, though, for rod rosenstein. i don't always agree with rod, i had the chance to serve with him, he's a good guy. i think he's a gate keeper in the organization now. he stood up when there was pressure to move on mueller. he's indicated he feels no reason to do that now. so sessions has his problems, he's on the way out now, i don't think it's a secret trump wants to remake his cabinet. what that ultimately does to the russia investigation, i don't know. let's hope rod hangs around for a while. >> i have a new appreciation for magazines. that's why i get the online version. >>> just ahead, robert mueller using rick gates to get to their central mission, and the president still calls the investigation a witch hunt and continues to claim there was no collusion. as we learn more about the investigation, will the president try to fire him? we'll talk about that next. >>> our breaking news tonight cnn learning that roy moorebert mueller's team is using help from rick gates on the russia investigation. we're going to talk to scott jennings. gentlemen welcome. the white house has been denying collusion from the get-go but the web of connections between the trump circle and the russians is continuing to widen and deepen and go back earlier in time. how can the president continue to claim no collusion. >> because the president is practiced with lying with a straight face. that's what he does. but if you look at the evidence objectively, the signs of collusion are certainly voluminous and growing. it's not just the latest report about rick gates, the deputy campaign manager, talking with this russian intelligence officer, who was a long-time associate of gates and manafort. it's also that manafort had tied with a wealthy russian oligarch to who he owed a lot of money. they had discussions with guccifer 2.0. we know that george papadopoulos, who was a campaign adviser had had discussions with a professor linked with the kremlin. on and on and on. i mean, there's more than 70 reported contacts in 2016 between the trump campaign and the kremlin. so, you know, it certainly is very strong circumstantial evidence of collusion no matter how much trump and his minions may deny it. >> three people closely associated with president trump are now cooperating with robert mueller, all of whom had russia ties, michael flynn, rick gates, and george papadopoulos. is it becoming absurd for trump to call this a witch hunt? >> well, it's not a witch hunt when you consider the fact that russians have been indicted by mueller for meddling in the elections. so the investigation is worth it if that comes of it. i think we're speculating tonight on the court documents. no one has been indicted of collusion -- >> you can't be convicted of collusion. >> that's the question tonight -- >> you can be impeached for it. >> your question is how can donald trump continue to claim no collusion, no collusion. until it reaches him or someone he believes was acting on his authority, that's what he's going to continue to claim. that doesn't mean this investigation is invalid. it's uncovered valuable information about what the russia was trying to do with our democracy. but i think the president is in his rights to say he doesn't have any knowledge of or believe there was any collusion. >> go ahead, max. >> you made an important point that collusion was not a crime. of course, that's absolutely correct. so therefore it's not like robert mueller is going to bring charges of collusion because collusion does not exist in the criminal code but it is something that congress can impeach for. it's a high crime or anything that congress says. and the more you develop there was collusion between the trump campaign and the russians, the stronger that makes the case for possible impeachment, depending on what the special counsel's investigation comes up with. >> robert mueller wants to interview president trump, but as he gets closer to making all these connections between trump circle and russia, do you think trump will be less inclined to sit down and talk to him, max. >> we just had john dowd the president's lawyer quitting because he was frustrated that he was telling trump not to talk to mueller and trump apparently so full of himself that he insists on talking. i hope he does. he has an obligation to the american people to explain this damning evidence that's collected against him, not only in the area of collusion but also in the area of obstruction of justice. where you're seeing presidential action. it may be harder to prove direct action in the collusion. but i think trump has the obligation to sit down and explain it. from a defense perspective that's something that his lawyers are advising him not to do but trump knows better than any expert so he's going to do what he wants to do. >> there are reports that the trump administration is becoming increasingly nervous about the mueller investigation. do you think we could get to a point -- this is a question i've asked everyone -- where president trump would feel he must fire mueller? >> i certainly hope not, because i think that would be the functional end of his presidency -- >> what do you think republicans would do, scott? >> i don't know what they would do because we don't know when in our political future time line it would happen. we don't know who's going to be in control of the congress, say if it happens after november. but i have heard from enough high-ranking republicans that it would be the beginning of the end of the trump presidency. i believe he's hearing from enough senior republicans this would be the most unwise thing can you do. might be he be upset about it, yes, continue to complain about it, yes. but that would be putting us into the twilight zone that i don't believe he wants to go into with his own party in washington d.c. forcing their hand to grind this presidency to a halt. it would be a disaster if he did it. >> max i want you to respond but i think i know where you're going to go with it. you say how you don't believe republicans have backbones. samantha was on earlier and she said privately to her they've made it known to the white house this is a red line to not cross. but in actuality do you think republicans would revolt? >> i'm skeptical given how many lines trump has crossed with racism and praising vladimir putin. and the republican party has gone along with it. if they discovery backbones, i'd be pleasantly surprised. if trump is, in fact, innocent, it would be extremely fool hearty and unwise to fire mueller, and that would set off the political -- whatever republicans say or do it will set off a political storm and the biggest crisis since watergate. that doesn't mean that trump is going to do it. just imagine what if trump is guilty, what if the crimes are so bad he's willing to fire mueller to cover it up. i don't think we can exclude that. that's why i'm concerned about the possibility even though there is some push back from congress that at the end of the day trump may decide he has to fire mueller anyway because he simply can't allow all this stuff to see the light of day -- >> max, scott, thank you very much -- >> let me say one more thing. >> quickly. >> to fire mueller means he would fire other people in the justice department above mueller. he would have multiple vacancies. and i know the white house is warned there's no way you'll get high ranking justice department officials confirmed in a scenario like this. it would be unprecedented for republicans to do something like this, to grind a presidency to a halt, and i think the president and the white house have been advised of that. it would create just a situation that i don't think he wants to open this door. >> gentlemen, thank you so much. >>> when we come back hope hicks leaving the white house today and the president is told by allies he doesn't need to replace her. but with so much chaos swirling there, doesn't he need a communications director more than ever? 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>> i think it depends whether he finds a successosuccessor, some house aides are encouraging him not to appoint a new communications director or a new chief of staff. which is dumb. for 40 years presidents have had directors and strong chiefs of staff. in both cases you want the discipline of ge geting your message discipline, the same kind of sense that works in a campaign works in the presidency. and you want somebody who's stra tee gi -- sta tree strategic. to think with mueller closing in you have the significant decision coming up on iran, the north korean talks, plus midterms over the horizon. this is a crucial time in the life of this presidency. not that other months we've seen haven't been important but you do need top-flight people. now i think the harder problem is replacing someone who has the trust that hope hicks had, and the kind of relationship. someone who could talk to the president straight at times. >> jimmy carter tried this. he didn't have a chief of staff. he eventually hired one two years into his term. he said not having a chief of staff didn't work for him because there's too much to do as president. i think you agree with that, right? >> absolutely. there was a time republicans believed you had a pyramid structure. this came out of isha seseisenh. the president would have all these different people reporting to him, it was a disaster under carter. jerry ford tried it for a while, it was a disaster. the staff gave dig cheney, the chief of staff a gnarled bicycle tire showing how bad it's been. >> this president makes de decisions on his own, do you think the president is better off without some staff from your reporting? >> when you say better off, what do you mean? what does success look like from a communications perspective from this white house? tax reform rollout that was considered a rare success. but a communications director, david could speak to this better than i could, it's a lot of long term planning, a lot of planning how you roll out different policies trying to figure out what kind of traveling, public events you do, what kind of access the press gets to the president. it's not just tweeting. but because the president does throw everything off course that nobody on his own staff is prepared for him to say without any warning, that's why people have this idea he does not need traditional staff, they're irrelevant. in a way they are, a former white house official described it to me as being on speed in that press shop because you jump from one topic to the next to the next. but i don't think that means he does not need staff. i think more than any other president recently, this president needs staff to be a barrier between his impulses and the public. >> go ahead, david. >> one more thing, communications director is also the coordinator of the entire executive branch in terms of communications or daily conversations with the communications people in the agencies about what you're going to say that day, what may be happening on national security or you're pushing some big initiative on the domestic side. it is a crucial role and if you don't fill it, i think it's idiotic to not fill it. make sure you have a strong chief of staff and communications director. >>> we'll see whether he does it or not. when we come back the president congratulating rose ann barr on her rebooted television show. but with a country to run, why is the president paying attention to how many people are watching a tv show? >>> president trump revealing his sweet spot for tv ratings especially for the "roseanne" reboot. i want to talk about that with charles blow, andre carpetter and amanda bauer. the president was in ohio to promote his infrastructure plan but it was more like a campaign rally because he spoke about the ratings of the "roseanne" reboot. watch this. >> look at her ratings. look at her ratings. i got a call from mark burnett, he did the apprentice, he's a great guy. he said, donald, i called just to say hello and to tell you, did you see "roseanne's" ratings? i said, mark, how big were they? they were unbelievable. over 18 million people. and it was about us. >> it was about us. i mean, us. he's a middle class person like -- anyway, i don't know. maybe he's talking about him and his supporters. is this what we want our president to be concerned with. >> stormy daniels got 20 million viewers it was also about him. >> shade. >> it is. but the idea of being obsessed with television, though, is really strange. and, you know, i saw online somebody said they had done an accounting and he tweeted about ratings like 260 plus times and human rights, their counter point was three times or something. the obsession with television is the problem. even trying to put people in the cabinet because they are good on television. trying to the find television personalities who could be part of the cabinets. we cannot have a television presidency. >> we do. he's a reality television star. amanda, like it or not, maybe he knows something that a lot of people don't, and that's why he became president. he worked the media, he knows television. >> sure. i'm not surprised that trump and "roseanne" are sort of on the same wavelength. to me she was trump before trump was trump. she's crass, strangly tolerant of nazi references. and she likes fast food. i don't say that to hate on her. when i watched that show as a kid, it was refreshing to me because her house looked like houses my friends had and i had, it was far more relatable than things i'd see in "full house" so it's necessary we see honest depictions in real life and it's funny. i think everyone is getting spun out about the ratings. it was a one-off thing. i think many people were curious to find out why dan is still alive more than anything else. let's see how it goes. it's a smart show, there's funny jokes and it's an honest depiction of life. maybe we need more of that. >> andre, i'll give you the last word on this because i have to get into the next block. >> "roseanne" is in touch that most americans know, like the president, she knows what hardworking folks are dealing with much unlike the other folks in hollywood. she's relating to a seg m of the population which feels like they've been left behind, which is what donald trump dialled into. >> she's a multimillionaire. again not hating on roseanne. but i'm sure some of the writers of the show have a lot to do with it. and i understand it wasn't her idea to redo it, it was the woman who plays her sister or daughter, the one on "the talk" i think it was her idea. >> the crassness and courseness, my first thing was watching her do the national anthem, so i'm not holding her up as a model figure. i think appointment a way to see that's not pandering that's why that succeeds. >> i have to get to the break. we'll talk more when we come back. 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(laughing) (colonial penn jingle) >>> tonight one of the students who survived the parkland, florida school massacre taking on a powerful host at fox news. 17-year-old david hogg standing up for himself after a public attack by laura ingraham. yesterday, laura ingraham mocked david hogg for being rejected by multiple colleges. in response, david hogg called for a boy scott on her advertisers. singling out 12 companies that ran ads during her broadcast this week. there they are on the screen. is this a smart thing to do, hit her where the money is? >> he's been very effective. i'm a free market guy, everybody has a right to pull ads. but he gets it both ways, when he wants to be treated as an adult and people take a swipe at him, he wants to be treated as a child. people that pay troe niez those companies can feel free to not pay troe niez them as well. even though i am not a huge fan, i think he's becoming a bigger and bigger factor in the news lately. >> you think he should be able to be criticized, charles, a teenager but a child but yet he's an activist? >> i think he's teenager, child, but also victim, right. i think you give broad latitude to people who are talking out of their pain. and when that's happening, suck it up. you may not agree with them. the mother of one of the guys who was killed in benghazi, she spoke at the convention, you suck it up. if she's attacking you directly hillary you suck it up. when they asked hillary clinton about that, she said she deserves to be able to say what she wants to say. the facts may be different -- we may understand the facts differently but she did deserves to be able to say it, whether you agree or not. but also laura ingraham is a horrible human being and that was a low blow. i wish i had a 4.1, 4.2 gpa when i graduated high school, that was not the case. >> charles, you and i agree on something. >> that is not the kid to attack. >> what you said about giving latitude i agree with that. i use that example last night of the benghazi mother. the nra is mad at me, i don't care. when someone is in that much pain. like the young man that came on last night from sacramento. he's in pain. so he wasn't ready for an interview. so you wish him well and you let him go. whenever he comes back -- you give people latitude. you don't criticize them. you know what i'm saying. let me read this for you amanda. here's what i want to say, she apologized -- laura. any student should be proud to have a 4.2 gpa, including david hogg. on reflection, in the spirit of holy week, i apologize for any upset or hurt my tweet caused him or any of the brave victims of parkland. for the record, i believe my show was the first one -- she went on saying her show was the first one to give him a platform. do you think her apology was sincere? >> a couple things. i don't think you should have to hear from your advertisers or check your calendar to see easter is coming to know what you posted was mean, unchristian and just plain stupid. let's say you hate the parkland kids, which i think the way a lot of people have piled on them, ridiculed them, mocked them is revol voting arevolting. put that aside. if you are a republican voice like laura ingraham who reports to want to tragic people to the cause, i cannot think of a worse way to drive young people away from republicans than to laugh in their face when he didn't get into all of the school that is he wanted to, because he did also get into some very good ones. so i just don't understand this. not only is it counterproductive, but it's just so mean spirited to do. and this is this new trend -- i don't know if it's brought on by trump or maybe it was always kind of there and it wasn't nearly as pronounced in conservative media, not everybody, but some voices. and man, like i'm with you guys on a lot of these issues. i have fought for ted cruz, fought with jim, but this kind of attitude, i'm not on board with it. and if you're losing me, trust me you're losing a lot of other suburban mother types. >> mic drop and scene. >> can i say, amanda i'm reading your book. it's good so far. >> thank you, charles. >> what's the name of it again? >> it's coming out in may, called "gaslighting america why we love it when trump lies". i can't wait to talk more about it. >> good night. thanks, you guys. good night, everybody. thanks for watching. hi, i'm bo jackson. for years, i was the king of both football and baseball. but now that i'm getting older, my body is starting to slow down. that's because after the age of 40, your body produces less free testosterone, making it harder to get in shape. thankfully, i found alpha king from force factor. 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and sit down with robert mueller and show his openness and honesty. and the lawyer did not agree with that. the special counsel's office wanting to sit down with the president. unfortunately, his lawyer disagreed and so the two have been sort of butting heads for quite sometime. so now we are learning that, in fact, john dowd has officially resigned. yet, no word as to what or who will replace him and president trump's attorney so we will, of course, keep an eye on this. the director of the f.b.i. says politics was not the thing that got his former deputy andrew mccabe fired. we'll tell you what christopher ray is saying about that now. and the house is voting on the spending bill today. house speaker paul ryan is set to address the media any minute now. we'll take you there live whether it happens. >> julie: fox news alert, john dowd, president's lead lawyer and special counsel inquiry has resigned. effective today. fox confirming this isaac wright is a partner at forward solutions strategies inc. and democratic strategist. david avela is the chairman of go pac. thank you both for ta

in the russia investigation. cnn learned how special counsel robert mueller zoomed in on deputy rick gates making it clear they wanted his help to get at the central mention investigating potential collusion between the trump campaign and the russians. new details are in to cnn in court filings giving us the first indications how prosecutors are getting help and using it to tie paul manafort the former chairman of the president's campaign directly to a russian operative. attorney general jeff sessions rejecting calls from republicans on capitol hill to name a second special counsel to investigate the fbi and the justice department. at least for now. however, he is revealing that a top federal prosecutor is, in fact, investigating allegations that the fib february abused its power to surveil a trump campaign adviser and looking into political bias in the investigation of hillary clinton's handling of classified information. president trump appearing in its first public event all week, talking up his plan before a crowd of union builders in ohio and joking act his past as a real estate

robert mueller as the russian probe legal team suffers a big shakeup. let's go to our legal correspondent, jeff, the latest? >> reporter: the revolve door extends to the legal team as well, raising serious issues he wants to have a more aggressive approach here in the russian investigation. all of that, one key question is hanging over this. will the president testify to the special counsel? i asked the president that directly today in the diplomatic reception room, he looked me square in the eye, and he said yes. president trump has spent months blasting the russian investigation. tonight, he insists he still wants to sit down and answer questions from special counsel robert mueller. >> mr. president, would you like -- >> would you like to testify to special counsel robert mueller, sir? >> thank you. >> you would? >> i would like to. >> reporter: it's uncertain whether he actually will. the president was not in the mood to take other questions. as he faced another major shakeup on the legal team. john dowd's lead lawyer on the investigation resigned today amid disagreements

lot to cover. president trump taking direct aim at robert mueller on twitter as his personal lawyer calls for rod rosenstein to end the investigation. sparking new fears the president will fire the special counsel. >> if he tried to do that, that would be the beginning of the end of his presidency. >> if you have an innocent client, act like it. >> how about this, dislike, a shocking new report detailing how a research firm closely tied to trump's campaign mined personal data from 50 million facebook users without their knowledge. >> this is a company that really took fake news to the next level by powering it with algorithms. >> and on high alert. a fourth explosion in less than a month leaves the texas capital on edge. this one possibly caused by a trip wire leaving police scrambling for any answer. >> we now need the community to have an extra level of vigilance and pay attention to any suspicious device. >> on this monday, we begin in a place we have not been before. with the president of the united states calling out the special counsel by name and trump's own attorney calling

considering firing robert mueller? >> president trump attacks robert mueller. >> are you done with robert mueller, mr. president? >> tonight donald trump formally joins the plot to stop the mueller investigation as he also hires a new attorney. and as republican lead sayers mostly silent. >> if you van innocent client, mr. dowd, act like it. >>> plus -- >> to your knowledge, did the trump campaign in 2016 use that improperly accessed data? >> bombshell new reporting on the trump campaign's data analytics operation. >> this is a company that really took fake news to the next level. >> explosive new details about the kind of operation cambridge analytica was handling. and why facebook's handling of a massive data intrusion. >> i understand that facebook was how donald trump was going to win. >> when "all in" starts right now. good evening from new york. i'm chris hayes. new reporting tonight that president trump's lawyers are now turning documents over to special counsel robert mueller in hopes of limiting the scope of mueller's interview with the president. that news comes in the wake of t