for that, we're joined by chuck rosenberg who twice served as a u.s. attorney, and also as a senior f.b. official, under both former f.b.i. directors robert mueller and james comey.e welack to the program. you've now had a chance to read james comey's book. what was your overall reaction? >> well, i did have a chance to read the book. i read it cover to cover this weekendi a couple oferent reactions. one, it's exceedingly well written. ates story well told. two, i don't think there are lots of new revelations in it hnd, by that, i mean, for the legal case mueller and his team might be building against the president orui others. then one other thing i think i should add, it's a little bit unusual to have witnesses out there as publicly as jim comey t there now speaking and writing. normally aw prosecutor -- and in was one for long time -- would caution a witness against that, but jim isn't anin oy witness, and i'm sure the mueller team already knows his story backwards and forwards.rd >> woodruff: i want to a you about that, chuck rosenberg, because the

for that, we're joined by chuck rosenberg who twice served as a u.s. attorney, and also as a senior f.b.i. official, under both former f.b.i. directors robert mueller and james comey. welcome back to the program. you've now had a chance to read james comey's book. what was your overall reaction? >> well, i did have a chance to read the book. i read it cover to cover this weekend. couple of different reactions. one, it's exceedingly well written. ates story well told. two, i don't think there are velots of new rtions in it and, by that, i mean, for thega case that mueller and his team might be building against the president orui others. then one other thing i think i should add, it's a little bit unusual to have witnesses oute as publicly as jim comey is out there now speaking and writing. normally aw prosecutor -- and in was one for aong time -- would caution a witness against that, but j isn't an ordinary witness, and i'm sure the mueller team alreadynows his story backwards and forwards.rd >> woodruff: i want to ask you about that, chuck rosenberg be

. >>> now joining the discussion, chuck rosenberg, former senior fbi official and former u.s. attorney. he is an msnbc contributor. ron klain is with us, former chief of staff to vice presidents joe biden and al gore and senior aid to president obama. he is also former chief counsel and chief of staff to attorney general janet reno. chuck rosenberg, i want to go to the last point that robert costa was talking about there, and that is the written report about obstruction of justice involving the president and that issue of intent that robert has emphasized to us on the phone as being part of this, of mueller's objective now. wouldn't that then suggest in the defense of donald trump that there is a strong argument to be made to not submit to the interview because it is through the interview that mueller would be able to establish intent, and without the interview, mueller doesn't have intent. >> well, i wouldn't go so far as your second point, lawrence. there is lots of ways to establish intent. it is the hardest thing to establish. but it doesn't only come from a subject or tar

. >>> let me bring in chuck rosenberg, former u.s. attorney, former senior fbi official, now an msnbc contributor, which is our good fortune. you figure prominently in the one-hour special that aired on msnbc about robert mueller and this seems to underscore the special counsel's adherence to all of the kind of letter of the law of how a special counsel is supposed to operate, that this was referred to the southern district. but if you could speak to, one, what this tells us about the mueller probe, and two, what this tells us about the president's attorney and any legal hot water he could be in based on today's raid. >> let me try and answer both questions together, nicolle. so, having a search warrant executed at your business on a monday is never a good day. let's take a step back, though. what does it mean and how does it happen? so, the fourth amendment protects us and our stuff from government intrusion unless an application is made to a federal judge and she signs a search warrant based on probable cause. and so the government

. >>> now joining the discussion, chuck rosenberg, former senior fbi official and former u.s. attorney. he is an msnbc contributor. ron klain is with us, former chief of staff to vice presidents joe biden and al gore and senior aid to president obama. he is also former chief counsel and chief of staff to attorney general janet reno know. chuck rosenberg, i want to go to the last point that robert costa was talking about there, and that is the written report about obstruction of justice involving the president and that issue of intent that robert has emphasized to us on the phone as being part of this, of mueller's objective now. wouldn't that then suggest in the defense of donald trump that there is a strong argument to be made to not submit to the interview because it is through the interview that mueller would be able to establish intent, and without the interview, mueller doesn't have intent. >> well, i wouldn't go so far as your second point, lawrence. there is lots of ways to establish intent. it is the hardest thing to establish. but it doesn't only come from a subject o

chuck rosenberg, former u.s. attorney and former senior fbi official. all three msnbc contributors. let me start with you, chuck. because you and i haven't spoken since carol's bombshell report with her colleague robert costa, dropped a little more than 24 hours ago. but i want to ask you about this notion that people aligned with the president are saying publicly and privately, john dowd who was the president's lawyer reportedly left in part over a disagreement about this, that no one even on the president's side thinks that the president can be trusted to survive an interview with bob mueller. >> well, nicole, he can be -- he can survive it if he tells the truth. i mean, at least -- >> i guess the point is nobody thinks he's capable of telling the truth. >> well -- he seems to have struggled with that in the past. this is not a place where you walk in and make stuff up. for a whole bunch of reasons. including the fact that if you happen to be under oath, it can be perjury. and even if you're not under oath, nicole, you could be guilty of a different felony, making false statements

also with us tonight, chuck rosenberg, former u.s. attorney, former senior fbi official, and an msnbc contributor. and jennifer rodgers, former assistant u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york. good evening to you all. congratulations to some of you. and, jennifer, i'm going to begin with you as you are, for the purposes of our new york studios, our lead counsel here tonight. what did today mean for two men, for donald trump and michael cohen? >> well, what's interesting is this is the first time that donald trump has appeared in any of these court proceedings. he actually had a lawyer show up and argue in one of these cases. so that's a key thing. the other important thing, of course, is that they lost their arguments today. cohen and trump lost their argument that they should be able to actually sift through all of these materials and hold back what they think is privileged. the government made a compelling case that they had appropriate procedures in place, that the crimes that they have suspected that michael cohen co

former press secretary for president obama, and chuck rosenberg, former u.s. attorney and former senior fbi official, all lucky us, are now msnbc analysts and contributors. >>> let me start with you, frank figliuzzi. what does this look like from someone inside the fbi that the people around the president who are sort of living proof of loose lips sinking ships won't even, you know -- they lie about the most audacious things, the size of an inauguration crowd, the size of, you know, this and that. no one is pretending that cohen isn't a live downed wire. >> well, think about this. let's say you or i have our home or office raided by the fbi. and think about a scenario in which all we and our friends can talk about is whether i'm going to flip on them. this simply is extraordinary. and the assumption here, of course, is that this guy has got something. he's got something he's guilty of and more importantly he's got something to share that is going to point toward the president. that's what seems to be indicated here by everyone leaking out of the white house an

chuck rosenberg, hank shankock, thanks. >>> tonight it is comey and madd maddow. the fired fbi director will be in the studio live at 9:00 p.m. eastern only on msnbc. >>> if it doesn't feel right, the president says he'll walk away from a face to face meeting with north korea's dictator. but if he stays, could donald trump get kim jong-un to give up his nukes? today, there are more sensors on our planet than people. we're putting ai into everything, and everything into the cloud. it's all so... smart. but how do you work with it? ask this farmer. he's using satellite data to help increase crop yields. that's smart for the food we eat. at this port, supply chains are becoming more transparent with blockchain. that's smart for millions of shipments. in this lab, researchers are working with watson to help them find new treatments. that's smart for medicine. at this bank, the world's most encrypted mainframe is helping prevent cybercrime. that's smart for everyone. and in africa, iot sensors and the ibm cloud are protecting endangered animals. that's smart for rhinos

chuck rosenberg, former u.s. attorney, former senior fbi official, now lucky for us an msnbc contributor. and steve schmidt is back with us today. courtney, let me start with you on your reporting, and i think this is a development since your story broke. i'm sure prompted by the incredible detail in this account. but i understand that the much now expulsion of russian diplomats didn't have anything to do with the number of russian diplomats in this country at all. the head count could very much remain the same. it seems like another data point in the picture you paste -- you paint of a very conflicted donald trump when it comes to russia policy and russia p.r. >> that's right. so he was presented last week with -- president trump was presented with three different options and he ended up going with the middle one, the one that was in the middle of a lighter option against vladimir putin and the one that was the harshest, and that included expelling the diplomats from the united states. what we found here was pre

>> i think chuck rosenberg may have said it best. prosecutors use the term target when they're about to diet someone. the term subject is much more broad and more commonly used. another chuck rosenbergism is there are small "s" subjects and capital "s" the subjects. paul manafort was a subject of the investigation before he became a target and now he's facing multiple felony counties. it may be robert mueller can't designate donald trump as a target until he leaves office, but that does not mean robert mueller hasn't developed substantial evidence of impeachable evidence. >> this is "washington post" reporting, carol. walk us through what exactly you guys were able to find that mueller's team is telling the white house that he's not the subject, but he's still -- not a target but still a subject. i'm twisting myself around. what was the reaction from inside the white house? what's the reaction from the president? >> to your first question, the three sort of news bullet items in this story by mysf and bob acosta is the tea told the la

joining me, chuck rosenberg. good to sigh, sir. >> nice to see you, chuck. >> let me start with the thing about the memos and how often james comey does this. one of the criticisms i have heard from the right is this. i'm not giving value to it but i'm cure your your reaction. did james comey make memos like this with president obama or was this only done to entrap president trump? >> i think the answer is neither. >> right. >> lawyers aren't the only people who write stuff down. doctors write stuff down. accountants write stuff down. chuck, i presume you as a journalist write stuff down when you want to remember something of the so we all have lots and lots of conversations every day that are normal and sort of just sort of we gon our way. but if something memorable happens, if you need to remember something, well, you write it down. and it strikes me that the conversations that jim comey had with the president were memorable. and i'm glad he wrote them down. >> another aspect this has to do with the classificat

. >> joining me now is msnbc contributor chuck rosenberg. good to see you. >> nice to see you. >> so i'll be honest, over the last 25 years i've probably read stories that said so and so is the subject of an investigation, so and so is the target of an investigation and i, like most americans, thought there is not -- i never thought that was much difference between subject and target but i never took subject to be a positive. >> in all of my years as a federal prosecutor, i've never told a defense attorney that his or her client was a subject and had them thank me for the good news. it is not a good thing. you don't want to wake up next morning and be a subject of a federal grand jury investigation. >> so under your best abilities that you can, why do you think they're trying to spin this as a win? what is the best case scenario from the point of view of secu low. >> i could think of an analogy. perhaps a wildfire that consumes a thousand acres better than a wildfire that consumes a hundred thousand acres but you won't celebrate it. being a

joining us now is chuck rosenberg, former u.s. attorney, former senior fbi official. thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> you saw my interview with mr. stris. >> i did. >> the fbi has raided michael cohen's home and office. ami said that it would fight karen mcdougal's lawsuit right up until today when they settled. this follows the raid. this follows threats that they'd start to enter into discovery in this suit. what do you make of the timing? >> a bank gets robbed and you find a guy down the street holding a bag of money and covered in dye pack ink. coincidence? probably not. so is this a coincidence? i don't think so. i'm not a big believer in coincidences. >> what about the raid would have pushed this to settlement? >> well, a couple of things. but probably first and foremost whatever was going to come out in the civil suit is going to be influenced by the fact that there's a parallel ongoing criminal investigation. so folks who might have been deposed or might have been inclined to speak in connection with the civil suit may now be taking the fifth

rudy giuliani was the man, chuck rosenberg, who was on tv before the hacked dnc e-mails came out. watch out, watch out, it's a much whispered theory, he has a pipeline from people at the fbi to get information. he's one of the people believed to be funneling information to fox news. do you think there is any point he might be a witness to the mueller investigation? >> potentially yes, nicolle, he could be a witness. one of the things that prosecutors and agents will want to know is how did rudy know -- i shouldn't call him rudy, i don't know the man. >> i don't think he'll mind. >> i'll call him mr. giuliani. i mind. how would mr. giuliani know these e-mails were on his way? did he know that derivatively because somebody else told him? or was he part of discussions to sort of pry those e-mails loose? if it's the second thing, you can't be both a witness and a lawyer in the same case. and so if you're asking whether or not there might be a conflict, the answer is there might be a conflict. >> ashley, let me ask you about something else the president said on fox and friends this mor

scare me. >> let me rephrase that, and a never to be fired up we hope chuck rosenberg. hi chuck. >> if it's thursday we delve into the great unknowns. ♪ >> good evening. welcome to "mtp daily" i'm chuck todd back mere in washington. the more we know about the russia investigation the more we realize how much we don't know. the best explanation for where we are was actually made more than 16 years ago. >> reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me because, as we know, there are known knowns, there are thing we know we know. but we also know there are known unknowns, that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. but there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know. >> come on. that's one of the greatest spin lines ever. let's take the lead and let's start with the most important of the known knowns in the russia investigation. here's what we know. 19 people have already been charged with crimes, including the president's former national security adviser, former campaign chairman and two former campai

with me now, chuck rosenberg and nancy gertener, a retired federal district judge, who has an op-ed today called smearing robert mueller. this question, chuck, about whether it's appropriate, correct to send these memos over to congress, where do you come down on that? >> bad idea. >> you think it's a bad idea? >> yeah. so i don't know that it's literally unprecedented, meaning it's never, ever happened. i can tell you it's extraordinarily rare. and the reason is when you have an open investigation, it has to remain sort of cloistered. you want very few people except you want the people working on it to know everything about it, and you don't want anything else to know anything about it. as we've seen many times, chris, when stuff goes to the hill, it gets made public, and that's not the way you conduct a sensitive criminal investigation. >> they're almost certainly going to either leak all or parts of it. >> i'm not a betting man. if i were, they're going to leak it. >> nancy, i thought about this thought experiment with senator menendez, who was on the show last night, who has faced fed

the executive editor of bloomberg blind field and chuck rosenberg is former u.s. attorney and senior fbi official. tim, let's start with you, i wanted to get the sense of michael cohen, he's been pretty loyal to donald trump, you've obviously had dealings with him, what is your sense of how far michael's low pressure systyalt? >> i think anybody that's been around donald trump for any any lgtd of time that donald trump's loyalty is a one-way street. outside of his family, his children, his loyalty doesn't really extend very far beyond that. and that has to be weighing heavily in michael cohen's mind. a think a little bit of daylight came between cohen and the president the day that the fbi raided cohen's office. he said it was disgusting, the fbi knocked on my lawyer's door and they bursted into his office. and michael cohen said it was actually a little bit more polite. this is a guy who historically has said i will take a bullet for the president, i'll do anything to protect him. and in this moment when the chips finally came out on the table, he was saying no,

susan for usa today and chuck rosenberg, former senior fbi attorney and msnbc contributor. i want to ask you, chuck, and i don't know if this is within your purview to answer, but i know it's my question. i read the long form of the transcript, the part of it that grabbed me, that george did with him. i think it's a great interview. i don't think he should have identified the clinton thing, but let's go on. he said other and over again his loyalty was to the institution and to his country. i saw it three or four times in a row. i think he really wanted to get into the interview early on. loyalty to the fbi. you can talk about what it is because you were there. do agents of the bureau think of their loyalty to the bureau as basically an identity as loyalty to the country? because that's the way it came across. >> thing is some truth to that, chris, that in the justice department and the fbi we think about ourselves as being part of an institution. so we're institutionalists. and that our job is to serve the nation consistent with our oath to the constitution. so they're boun

. >> chuck rosenberg is back with us. former u.s. attorney, former senior fbi official, current msnbc contributor. so, chuck, let's start off where matt just ended. what do you counsel a principal about talking to other people who might be involved and caught up in an investigation, say nothing of people you know to be caught up in the investigation of you? should the president and mr. cohen be talking by phone? >> under no circumstances, brian, is what a good defense attorney tells his or her client, is under no circumstances do you talk to anybody who could be another witness in this case, and here's why. one of the first questions i would ask as a federal prosecutor, one of the first questions an fbi agent would ask is who else did you talk to? particularly since the investigation started and what did they say because they're looking for people trying to get their story together. they're looking for obstruction of justice. it's unfortunate. it troubles me greatly. >> haven't talked to you since the pardon of scooter libby. >> on t

joining us, chuck rosenberg, former fbi official. thank you for joining us. >> thank you for having me. >> you saw my interview there with mr. striss. the fbi raided mr. cohen's home and office. ami said that it would fight karen mcdougal's lawsuit up until today. when they settled. this follows the raid. this follows -- threats that there would be, they would start to enter into discovery in this civil suit. what do you make of the timing and this dynamic and the two cases? >> can i answer in the abstract? >> a bank gets robbed. you find a guy down the street handing money and covered in dye pack ink. coincidence? maybe, probably not. probably the bank robber. is this a coincidence they would dismiss or settle the suit right after cohen's office got raided. i don't think so. not a big believer in, coincidences. >> what about the raid would have pushed this to settlement? >> couple of things. but probably first and foremost, whatever is going to come out in the civil suit is going to be influenced by the fact there is a parallel ongo

and chuck rosenberg, former u.s. attorney and former senior fbi official. thank you all for being here this afternoon. susan, what stood out to you the most in interviewing james comey? >> the thing that i thought was most striking, most shocking, he said it was possible that the president of the united states has been compromised by the russians, and that they are holding something over his head, something about his personal behavior, his finances, what he called the moscow hotel room incident, or something that is compromised the commander in chief. that's what i thought was most surprising, shocking, and stunning. >> we have that. let's take a look. >> do you think president trump has been compromised by the russians? >> i don't know. and these are words i never thought would come out of my mouth about an american president, but it's possible. i'm not saying it's likely. i don't know, and the honest answer is, it's possible. he won't criticize vladamir putin, even in private. even in a meeting with three people in the oval office. sitting with the person

joining me now are alexei mccammon, political reporter for axis and chuck rosenberg and former u.s. attorney and fbi officials and natasha bertrand staff writer for "the atlantic." great to have all three of you with us. chuck, the president has made a series of tweets about the department of justice's missed deadline to turn over a slew of documents that the house judiciary committee is requesting. trump tweeted this on saturday. lawyers of the house judiciary committee are angrily accusing the department of justice of missing the thursday deadline for turning over unredacted documents related to fisa abuse. fbi, comey, lynch, mccabe, clinton, e-mails and much more. slow walking. what is going on. bad. how often are deadlines like this missed? is this out of the ordinary to need more time to produce a large volume of documents from the department of justice? >> well, deadlines can be missed if the deadline that's set ayman is incredibly short but there's a more important point here. it's not a slow walking. it's a process. imagine, and i'm sure this has happened to you, that an e-m

chuck rosenberg said that's like the difference between getting hit by a bus and a car. you could survive maybe a hit by a car being the subject. target you'll definitely be indicted. it's not troen celebrate. >> robert, are they afraid of having violated the law? >> my whole thing is listen to that, you can't speculate. he's got to report it out. report it out. we don't know. can't speculate. >> that's your job, keep it up. >> we will. >> great reporting. we're feeding off you all the time. the "washington post," "new york times" doing fabulous work. ken dilanian, joyce vance, and mieke joe yanks thank you for coming on tonight. president trump says no one's been tougher on russia than he has been. h. referring mcmaster taking a parting shot at the president saying he hasn't done enough to count ker the menace from moscow. he just did it. everybody tells the truth on their way out of office in this town. unbelievable. cheryl dent, corker, just say you're leaving. you might get truth out of these guys plus, trump's trade war with china. it's going to hurt a lot of people

chuck rosenberg is an msnbc contributor and a former u.s. attorney. chuck joins me now. a seventh search warrant for paul manafort. can that be construed to mean that the special counsel is having a hard time finding what they're looking for? >> well, i don't think so. let me give you some context for this, katie, if i may. normally, a grand jury hears evidence and receives documents and then is asked to consider an indictment. if it returns what we call a true bill, an indictment, normally its work is done. but sometimes in complex cases like this one, both the counterintelligence investigation and a white-collar investigation, prosecutors and agents continue to get more information, and so here, what i think you're seeing, katie, is an example of an ongoing criminal investigation on new information that has come in probably either right before the indictments or just after the indictments. >> what's more likely, that they're after more charges against manafort himself, though, or potentially somebody else that might be connected to him? >> well, there seem to be a whol

. >> chuck rosenberg. thank you for coming on. we appreciate night my please your. >> >>> that will wrap thing up for me this hour. ali velshi. oh, my gosh it has been wild. >> i just don't wanna. >> it's been wild. buckle up. >> i can't keep track. i can't keep -- i'm not a simple guy. i just can't keep track. >> one commercial break that hour. the ig report came out. >> from the fbi about -- >> cohen in court. new information on what was seized. >> the bradentony. >> bradentony stuff. playboy playmate. >> and then there is sarah huckabee sanders. >> let's listen to sarah huckabee sanders for a minute while we collect our thoughts. >> memorial on the ellipse it is a moving experience. president trump and the first lady encourage you to visit the memorial before it leaves washington, d.c. on april 18th. today at the summit of the americans in lima peru vooi ivanka trump oversees private

so chuck rosenberg, what do you think is the most fascinating or potentially impactful thing that has come out of james comey's book and is some of it destructive? >> the most impactful thing that comes out of the boork is the truth. you can fault jim for lots of things. he admits he's got a big ego, he can rush to judgment, he can be head strong. i agree. i like him, he's my friend, but like everyone else, jim has faults. you have faults and so do i. but i've always known jim to be a truth teller. i've read his book cover to cover over the weekend. it's a good read, but more important it's the truth. and all the years i've known jim, faults aside he's always told the truth. he told the truth about what he did wrong, he told the truth about what he did right and he tells us where he sort of wrestled with things and you know, hopes he got it right. that's the most impactful thing. now, by the way mueller already has all of that. jim's book and jim's interview last night are not the first times we've heard this stuff. we've heard it in congressional testimony. it's in the memos he wrote