what's rudy giuliani up to? >> i think part of this is a pr strategy, more so than a legal strategy. rudy giuliani is more on the pr side, public relations side rather than the lawyering which is being done by the real lawyers behind the scenes. look, here, as you pointed out is the different versions of rudy giuliani and he has different answers depending on who he talks to. first, is an interview with the hill. listen to what he had to say about whether or not the president would be answering any more questions. >> he's not answering any more questions from these people. their outrageous activity. we did enough. >> and as you pointed out, jim, just probably within 24 hours of that, he spoke to "the daily beast" and he said, quote, negotiations haven't formally ended yet. they haven't ended because it's not -- it's not just my opinion that matters. there are other lawyers involved, and the president of the united states, of course, my opinion is i don't trust them. jim, i think that's the answer is that the law

the point is, rudy giuliani has done this before. he front ran the president of the united states lying about stormy daniels there. that was purposeful, could this be the same? >> right, trying to cushion the blow before the blow comes. you've heard from so many people to include people in the white house would are talking quietly, rudy giuliani gets out in front of them before they know. many people are saying, rudy giuliani needs to stop talking as well as the president, they're putting more nails in the coffin and closing their own coffin. the bottom line is, when you talk about this payment, and i'm going back to 2016 again, and that time line of november. november was a big month. november was the leadup to the election. either way, no matter what part of november this happened in, it doesn't bode well, it looks like it's more about personal interest and personal gain for this president to be -- or president-elect to have over the good of the country. >> thank you all very much. >>> could be the best defense he's going to be abl

why do they continue to put out rudy giuliani? why is he the sunday morning show guy or -- is he the best voice for legal matters pertaining to the president of this administration? not to put you on the spot. i know you're going to talk to him later. >> it's a few things. first, for a long time there was no one in this role. the president really wanted a public face an attack dog. someone to mix it up on the sunday shows, a role rudy giuliani has embraced. and yes, he has caused some trouble and confusion along the way. i will say there are a number of key members of the president's staff in the west wing who are always holding their breath every time rudy giuliani goes on television. they're afraid of what he's going to say next. he feels like the president has been effective in putting his case out there and muddying the waters. there's so much for people to keep track of. it's easy to get confused. it's all the shifting narratives. he feels like this is good for him with the public and also macon fu may confuse the members of

rudy giuliani admits he was >>> rudy giuliani walking back a major blunder, admitting he was wrong about the trump moscow project and the letter of intent that donald trump signed. take us through the shifting stories of the president's legal team. >> let's do this fast. there's lot of them. sunday there was a real estate project, a letter of intent to go forward but no one signed it. let's go to tuesday, chris cuomo reported this, here's a letter of intent, you'll know that one, you know his signature, donald trump. wednesday rudy giuliani comes back to it, "i was wrong. i haven't seen the quote." that's the week that rudy giuliani has had, not a good one. >> that was a really good explainer. i followed that completely. >> i tried to talk as fast as humanly possible. >> it's not the first time we've seen rudy giuliani do something like that. >> no, let's go through it again. there's a bunch of these. here's the first example. he talked about trump tower that trump and his people may have been talking about tower moscow all the way up to the 2016 election. let's play that sound. >> did d

>> any other reaction to rudy giuliani besides the edwards defense? >> he couldn't have been committing a crime, what do we know? we know that ami made illegal corporate contributions to a presidential campaign which in and of itself is illegal. we know fake invoices were created to reimburse michael cohen. the payments were made on the eve of the 2016 election. i know what circumstantial evidence is and i know what direct evidence is. we have that in form of money payment, text message, timing. there's plenty of evidence, other than michael cohen's word to corroborate that donald trump is a co-conspirator and a campaign finance violation case. >> president trump has been tweeting up a storm this morning. earlier retweeted remember michael cohen only became a rat until after the fbi did something unheard of. they broke into an attorney's office. why didn't they break into the dnc to get the server or crooked's office. what do you think the president is trying to say with that tweet? >> i don't have the foggiest idea what this president is doing, yet a

don't do business without it. >>> new pushback from president's attorney, rudy giuliani. there are a few arguments he tried to make. >> it's not a campaign expense, it can't be a campaign contribution. >> but the campaign from ami would be clearly illegal. >> no, it would not be. it's not a contribution. >> did donald trump know that michael cohen was pursuing the trump tower in moscow in the summer of 2016? >> according to the answer that he gave, it would have covered all the way up to november. >> earlier they said it was january 2016. >> until you go back and look at the papers, you're not going to know what happened. we have three years now. he's changed his story four or five times. >> so has the president. >> the president is not under oath and the president tried as best he can to remember what happened. >> joining me now, jonathan alter, columnist for "the daily beast" and republican strategist nick poor. jonathan, you first here. your takeaways from giuliani's comments are? >> he's really not a very good advocate for his client who is in a world of legal hurt in

>> rudy giuliani does know what he's talking about. rudy giuliani is lying. he knows better. he knows every single one of these infractions that are just fine and get passed over or you pay a fee or and what are crimes. he knows all of this. he continues to spin everything about the mueller probe is i illegitimate. the president's team has made it sound as if mueller is on a deadline. he is not. we know what's being investigated and we do not. they want people to believe that it's overdue and mueller is looking around on the floor for things like paper clips that might incriminate. we have no idea how big this iceberg is. we have no idea what he working on. we know every time we see a revelation in these court document, doors are opening. they are not closing. it seems like every door he opens, there's six more. this will go well into 2019. they want us to believe that mueller is blind and we know everything he's looking into and that's not true. >> it isn't just the russia investigation. there's a lot of investigations. our polling is specific to what the special counsel is

if it ain't illegal, it ain't a problem, that's rudy giuliani's statement right there. but there does seem to be this new concern among the president's lawyers and in this white house. what are you seeing? what has the mood inside the white house been? >> well, it's relatively dark and staffers inside the white house will describe the president in a very dark mood. and at times we talk about what the president has been feeling. and it's not just because of the russia investigation but essentially touching every aspect almost of not just the president's political life but also his personal life, and that does seem to be weighing on the west wing, and we've seen that play out over the last few weeks as the president was searching for a new chief of staff and essentially was trying to combat that narrative that no one wanted to be his chief of staff and take over what is sure to be a tumultuous few years now empowered democrats taking over in january. so you're seeing it not only affect the president's mood and what you're seeing on twitter but also the staffing decisions

let's go to rudy giuliani. listen to rudy giuliani talking to the hill and talking about the mueller investigation. then tell me what you think. let's play it. >> the thing they started investigating can't a crime. collusion. >> is there anything that mueller -- >> the second thing they investigated isn't a crime. collusion. the third thing, the ddonation. making the payment to stormy daniels and mcdougal. asking the fbi in the name of comey to go easy on flynn. he was doing what thousands of people do with prosecutors and judges and plead for mercy. he could have done far more than that. he could have ordered him not to prosecute flynn. he has that power under article two. >> what is this legal strategy? >> he sounds worried to me. i think they are increasingly concerned that mueller has strong evidence on all counts. conspiracy we've talked about a lot. if there's evidence an agreement was reached to do something illegal in connection with the election, then mueller will indict the appropriate people. obstruc

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rudy giuliani actually did that several times. he did it with mcdougal. i think he did it with russia. he did it with one other thing. that's astounding that we also -- one other astounding thing we learned if rudy giuliani actually was all there when he was answering the question mentally that donald trump told voters, told americans that nobody in his campaign had any contact with russians during the campaign. that's what mike pence said as well. and donald trump said i have no business with them. i'm not even talking to them. said that during the middle of the campaign. rudy giuliani just admitted yesterday that donald trump was actually talking to russia all the way up to november 2016, the month of the election, about building a trump tower moscow. he also, by the way, side note said that the republican run southern district of new york is disgusting. and also said the president can lie because he's not under oath. where do we begin with rudy giuliani's performance yesterday? >> it's tough to say. so you lingered on that nove

rudy giulia rudy giuliani at odds with prosecutors. now where the russia probe may be hampered. >>> and obamacare up in the air. the texas judge scraps the entire law. will his ruling stabbed nd up o appeal? >>> and the big spike in teen vaping. interesting numbers. good morning. welcome to "early start." i'm dave briggs. >> i'm christine romans. it is monday, december 17th. 4:00 a.m. in the east. less than five days until the partial government shutdown unless the president and congress can reach a deal for the border wall. the white house is demanding $5 billion for the wall. remember, mexico was going to pay for it. congressional democrats rejecting that request. the white house senior adviser stephen miller taking a hard line on "face the nation." >> we will do whatever is necessary to build the border wall and stop this ongoing crisis of illegal immigration. this is a very -- if it comes to it, absolutely. this is a fundamental issue. at stake is whether or not the united states remains a sovereign country and establish and enforc

do you think there's a strategy behind rudy giuliani coming out with these admissions now? >> i hope that rudy giuliani has his malpractice insurance paid up because i don't see a strategy. i see simply damaging admissions on behalf of his client. and moving the goal post, as you just put it, john, is exactly the right way to term it, because what they're doing is trying to say, in effect, conspiracy is not a crime. it is a crime. and the president need not have known all of the ends of the experience. he need not all of what the russians were trying to do for his campaign, he need not know all of the collusion that was taking place or the obstruction of justice. it is still a crime. and there is a credible case now of obstruction of justice against the president of the united states. >> along those lines, rudy giuliani said yesterday of the possibility that the president would testify or answer questions from robert mueller. giuliani said over my dead body, but, you know, i could be dead. do you think presidential testimony is absolutely necessary for robert mueller? >> fo

and rudy giuliani changing his story once again. not claiming that the payoff scheme that yielded a guilty plea from michael cohen and a nonprosecution agreement from the parent company of the national enquirer didn't happen but saying that he's arguing in the alternative, whatever that means. watch this. >> according both to cohen and to pecker, again, he's the head of -- or was the head of the national enquirer, they say they were in a meeting with donald trump. >> chris, chris -- >> in the summer of 2016 in which they discussed the payment to karen mcdougal. >> we're talking about something that doesn't matter. whether it happen or didn't happen, it's not illegal. >> but you're -- you're moving shelves around on me. either it happened or it didn't happen. >> but that's what lawyers do all the time. you argue in the alternative. i'm telling you definitively -- >> i'm asking you for the truth, sir. >> well, i want the truth, too. >> if you like that, there's more where it came from. here's giuliani again. this time he's not saying

i have tried says rudy giuliani. we're getting our latest evidence of that as we speak from the president on twitter. >> america just said good-bye to a man, a president who believed in loyalty, believed that loyalty not only went up to the president but went down who worked for the president. george h.w. bush who had a tumultuous eight years, my opinion of george h.w. bush has changed a great deal since he left office, not based on what he said, not based on his art, but based on some pretty hardened washington operators who when they start talking about george w. bush will start tearing up about the love and the devotion that they still feel for that man, they still will not say anything negative about him. dr. brzezinski, the thing that was so telling about dr. brzezinski in all the private conversations i had with him where believe you me he aired his grievances and differences with republican presidents, democratic presidents, senators, congressmen, secretary of states, had no problem in real-time telling you wh

let's go to rudy giuliani. listen to rudy giuliani talking to the hill and talking about the mueller investigation. then tell me what you think. let's play it. >> the thing they started investigating can't a crime. collusion. >> is there anything that mueller -- >> the second thing they investigated ed isn't a crime. collusion. the third thing, the donatiodon. making the payment to stormy daniels and mcdougal. asking the fbi in the name of comey to go easy on flynn. he was doing what thousands of people do with prosecutors and judges and plead for mercy. he could have done far more than that. he could have ordered him not to prosecute flynn. he has that power under article two. >> what is this legal strategy? >> he sounds worried to me. i think they are increasingly concerned that mueller has strong evidence on all counts. conspiracy we've talked about a lot. if there's evidence an agreement was reached to do something illegal in connection with the election, then mueller will indict the appropriate people. obs

is this another rudy giuliani gaffe? well, maybe not. on the one hand, you have to keep in hand a classic legal principle, which is giuliani gonna giuliani, which means some gaffes. but on the other hand, if someone did keep working on trying to get money from russia for trump all the way through november, and if bob mueller knows about it, then yeah, trump's people may keep leaking out these apparently bad things one at a time to try to blunt the impact of mueller's final report. let's get into it. we have a great panel. okay. so a lot of expertise here. we're going to get to you and your client, george papadopoulos. first, what is rudy doing? >> making mistakes. any way you slice it it's a mistake. either he doesn't know what he's talking ab ining about, or he i clear that the information we have been receiving from the white house, from their talking points, are not accurate. so it doesn't really matter what he's doing. either way it's a problem for this administration, and when you count up all its problems, including every single en

rudy giuliani was asked about that on sunday, and he sort of joked about it. listen to this. >> special counsel wants to interview the president? >> good luck. good luck. after what they did to flynn, the way they trapped him into perjury and no sentence for him, 14 days for papadopoulos, i did better on traffic violations than they did with papadopoulos. >> when you say "good luck" -- re: they're a joke. over my dead body, but i could be dead. >> giuliani struck a bit more serious tone saying he wouldn't comment on that cnn reporting, though he did say that there is an agreement out there between the president's attorneys and the special counsel that allows for more time and discussion over whether the president will answer more questions that may come from the special counsel. boris sanchez, cnn, at the white house. >> boris, thank you very much. now let's bring in scott lucas to talk more about this. scott, a professor of international politics at the university of birmingham and england. also the founder and editor of e.a. world view via skype this hour wi

rudy giuliani is the president's lawyer. most of what we know about mueller's investigation we seem to know because rudy giuliani lets tidbits drop here and there. mueller himself is way too disciplined to be giving this out himself. i frankly think that mueller probably has a great deal of evidence on the trump tower meeting. i would take what rudy giuliani has to say with a strong grain of salt. >> hmm. let me add to this. we are also learning this afternoon that robert mueller, his team, questioned chief of staff john kelly in regard to this potential obstruction probe by the president. i'm curious, this isn't just someone who was on a campaign, this is the chief of staff being questioned in this obstruction case. how significant is that? >> well, it is significant. and remember, kelly wasn't there at the time -- >> he joined july of '17. >> correct. so he came in after most of the allegations that we believe mueller is chasing occurred. he might have been there, though, for pieces of obstruction, conversations that he mi

rudy giuliani's new message to robert mueller. shield℠ annuities from brighthouse financial allow you to take advantage of growth opportunities with a level of protection in down markets. so you can be less concerned about your retirement savings. talk with your advisor about shield℠ annuities from brighthouse financial, established by metlife. >>> new today, president trump is taking aim once again at the special counsel in a tweet the president expressed his frustrations with the investigation. "the mueller angry democrats recently deleted approximately 19,000 text messages between fbi agents. this is a total obstruction of justice. all texts demanded." but earlier this month, the justice department released a report announcing the retrieval of more than 20,000 text messages between the agents. joining me now is msnbc legal contributor katie fang and former federal prosecutor steven, author of the new book "rethinking u.s. election law." katie, the president's lawyer, rudy giuliani, is also making these assertions about the

i got the rudy giuliani's tweet here. mueller filed an indictment just as the president left for g-20 in july. >> he missed a space there? >> twitter created a clickable link. when it sees a dot and two or three letters, i domain. what happens is if you click that, you would go, well, at first you would go nowhere. a web developer in atlanta realized what happened for five bucks bought the domain and he put up the message, donald j. tr trump is a traitor to our country. >> so then rudy giuliani discovers what happens and he tweets, twitter allowed someone to invade my text with a disgusting anti-president message. the same thing did not happen befo before. twitter did not do anything. >> that's right. the same thing did not happen because he did use a period and no space but he said helsinki and period, and the word either. the word either is not a web doumain so no link was created. he looked at that and he saw evidence of conspiracy to filter out the voice or embolden trolls. >> before becoming the president's personal

coming, yet he seemed totally unprepared. >> here's the thing about rudy giuliani. it's fascinating to me, because on the one side he does make some good points. he says michael cohen is a snitch. snitches can't be trusted. those are good points. here's the part -- and you two hit on it right away -- he is too relaxed in these interviews. these are serious moments and people are watching and he hasn't thought his argument through. >> that's why i feel this is less about a legal strategy and more about a pr strategy, like it's always been. >> is robert mueller looking at this and taking information that's important and meaningful? >> he's breaking every rule. he's being glib. he's being dismissive. he's doing everything that will make the government attorneys angry, because he's offering information that's inconsistent. he's vacillating on his answers. this is just not a good pr strategy even though you have in rudy giuliani an accomplished lawyer who makes at times some decent points. >> why go on the talk shows and talk like this when you're in the middle of an inv

rudy giuliani and president trump saying it's not a crime, it is a crime. however, if they made that payment and it was for the intent of influencing the election, which arguably it was maybe the most influential payment to influence a campaign in recent history. then that could constitute a crime. but i keep going back to the point that it may be defensible, but it's not correct to characterize it as a purely civil transaction. >>> so president trump's lawyer rudy giuliani went on a tear against the mueller probe yesterday, speaking to yahoo news he suggested a crime would only have taken place if trump was directly involved in russian efforts to hack into democrats' e-mails and computer networks during the 2016 race. quote, collusion isn't even a crime. collusion is like the biggest bunch of bull. the crime is conspiracy to hack. do you believe that donald trump engaged in a conspiracy with the russians to hack hillary clinton? of course not. giuliani also said he thinks that paul manafort isn't waiting for a pardon and is simply refusing to lie to appeas

>> always a good question to ask with rudy giuliani. there is. this is a well-worn defense strategy of desperation. we have seen it a bunch of times which is when you've got nothing, put the prosecution on trial. right, we used to talk about it in the southern district, would be talking about a trial you had coming up. evidence was strong, someone would go, what's the defense? there is none, they're going to put us on trial. that's what rudy is doing here. normally it's a desperate tactic and usually doesn't get anywhere but this is not any case. rudy is trying to play a pr strategy here as well and just trying to put something out there that the ardent supporters of the president can cling on to. and so they can say, look at strzok's texts, look at the dossier. these are just sort of buzzwords that are out there so they have something to say. >> on the issue of the -- well, let me ask you this. what he's calling for, you've got giuliani calling for an investigation into mueller now, at the same time he told the "daily beast" today that talks are

that's what rudy giuliani said about this whole notion. and the office of the special counsel declined to comment. >> let's try to break this down and get a few further explanations here. did rudy giuliani and the president's legal team, did they believe that after they answered the written questions that the special counsel would stop asking or pursuing an in-person interview? >> you know, they haven't actually come out and said that they thought the interest would suddenly wane. i can tell you, though, there was certainly hope that once they provided the responses to the questions that they were getting one step closer for this wrapping up and that perhaps the whole idea of interviewing the president would be tabled. that mueller would get all the information they need. mueller's team, i should say. and they have maintained, the president's lawyers, that they don't needed to interview the president because they have all of these documents, thousands of documents. they've interviewed all of these witnesses and now they've answered his que

you can hear rudy giuliani trying to explain it there. the idea, the question, will the president sit down with robert mueller came up yesterday on fox news. >> is the special counsel wanting to interview the president? >> good luck. after what they did to flynn and they trapped him into perjury and no sentence for him? 14 days for papadopoulos? i did better on traffic violations than they did. >> when you say good luck -- >> they are a joke. over my dead body. i could be dead. >> it is such a trump white house answer. everybody has to put a qualifier on everything. they can't say anything definitively. >> this is a question now about rudy giuliani and the special counsel is going back decades. >> the witch hunt, they are going back to 1982, 1983. they are going through business records. >> that's a political argument more than a legal argument to say this guy is out of control and he's a rogue prosecutor. is there any evidence going back to the 1980s. >> he said they are looking into it and he got it from the "new york times." when i say

attorney in rudy giuliani saying, they're not big crimes? >> well, to suggest there are some crimes that are more significant than others i suppose has some truth in seriousness but that doesn't mean it doesn't count and you get a free pass. for one thing, there are civil matters in campaign violations. that happens when people are forgetting to dotcross a "t" ort an "i." this was what president trump sought to deceive. so it is a serious crime. and to hear a former u.s. attorney dismiss it as not so i think is disingenuous. >> i'm curious of your take of the president's legal exposure. right? you have the mueller probe. you have new york prosecutors not just with the michael cohen investigation and the stormy daniels issue, but also apparently the inaugural committee. then you have the new york attorney general examining the trump foundation. you've got the lawsuits followed by the attorneys general on the emoluments clause. and there's a defamation lawsuit from a former apprentice c contestant that ties it back to there. you look at the to

rudy giuliani saying something is an important law or not an important law is irrelevant. as we saw in the flynn case, we saw in michael cohen case, we're talking about serious crimes that involve jail time. he's not going to get out of this by sending rudy giuliani out to talk to sean hannity and say stupid things. >> glen, to talk about those serious things. one thing he's right about, there's a lot of tentacles. there's overlapping investigations from federal prosecutors and new york state. new york ag is investigating the trump foundation. what kind of entanglements could this create for the president, for his business organization? can you separate any of this really? >> there's so many tentacles and i think they will all become intertwined. it's all going to come home to roost. we see the attorney general from new york who has all but taken down the trump foundation. it looks indistinguishable from the trump organization. in the grand jury which is where bob mueller and his team have been for well over a year now. every time we're in the grand jury investigating and

rudy giuliani was the u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york, no one would dare speak like that about him or any of his assistants. we're living in unprecedented times. you don't speak with such disrespect. you don't speak with such, go ahead. this is not law and order. if you go something, charge my guy or leave him alone. in real life, okay. i see you. i raise you. we don't behave like this as a defense bar. >> it's not as though mueller hasn't produced things. he has put up despite what rudy giuliani says. 36 people and entities have been charged. there's seven guilty pleas. one conviction. four prison sentences. this seems like a pretty good track record for a prosecutor, isn't it? >> as far as mr. rudy giuliani and his client, the president of the united states are concerned, it really shouldn't mean anything. we're so focussed an caught up on the spins and reading of the tea leaves. the way the criminal justice system is supposed to work, federal practice, you can tella prosecutor to put up o

is rudy giuliani right? >> i'm chuckling because kevin used a line that my late father used all the time, fish or cut bait. and it is entirely reasonable that most members of the public no matter what your persuasion is, seriously they are like, let's see what it is and see it one way or another. on the specific question of when it is coming out, i have talked to many of my friends, colleagues, experts, the line for lack of a better term may be late march or april, and the reason that i say that is because of the wrap up. >> molly: given the late nature so far, april or march sound soon. >> yes, because it we have had so many false alarms coming in each one came and went. >> molly: here we are heading into 2019, kevin corke gave the long list, 12 russian agents, the christmas parade >> we can sing it in unison. >> molly: and there have been arrests and things that have come out of the mueller probe, but when it comes to russian collusion which is of course what the country is waiting to find out, give us wha

four days ago, trump's lawyer rudy giuliani told dana bash that trump never signed such a letter. can this be explained way as giuliani not getting his story straight? >> could i suppose, pam. it is very unlikely. he has made a number of admissions, slips, mistakes. remember, we learned that donald trump paid michael cohen off for the hush money payments from rudy giuliani. he has done this sort of thing before. i think it's very unlikely. maybe because trump is a difficult client, maybe giuliani didn't get the whole story. he asked and thought trump answered the question and trump didn't necessarily answer the question. i guess that is all possible. the problem here is that michael touched on this, there is just so much smoke. there are so many misunderstandings as it relates to russia or things that trump said that are either outright false or he didn't tell the whole truth. in a vacuum, one thing like this maybe we can say he made a mistake, slip of the tongue, whatever. but there are so many slips of the tongue or mistakes or admissions or contradictions, it becomes difficult,

at the same time rudy giuliani says he's not going to talk. he's using gang roadster talk to be crude about t. he's going after people -- which he says is tantamount to admission of guilt. >> lax to make that connection to the mob language. he talked about paul manafort. not only calling cohen a rat, but he's saying manafort -- he's praising him for not flipping on him. i don't think giuliani did him any favors in those interviews because, number one, he pushed the time frame way back in terms of the trump tower that trump may have known about trump tower and been negotiating with the russians all the way to november of 2016, which would be a key plank in the argument. >> in other words, he was working on his deal in russia with the russians all the way through the actual general election of 2016, not up until january of 2016 as previously confessed to. anyway, in his interview with abc, rudy giuliani, the president's out front lawyer, seemed to shift the goal post, as heidi said, when the president stops talks over building a trump tower in m

saying like the president's court gesture je jester on tele >> is rudy giuliani being rudy giuliani or revealing information at a later date like when he told everyone via an interview on fox news that the president had actually paid back michael cohen for the $131,000 paid to stormy daniels. it doesn't seem to be helping anyone by saying didn't sign this and then the president did sign it and then got the letter in your hands as you just showed, the classic trump signature and makes people question, why did they lie and say he didn't sign this letter? why did rudy giuliani get so specific as to say he didn't sign the letter if he had signed it? if their defense is the president essentially did nothing wrong and nothing wrong with him pursuing this business deal as he was becoming increasingly clear that he was going to be the republican nominee and still pursuing a business deal with attorney that was going to require russian government aprol, thatprovaappr it's a problem but if it's not, why are you saying things that aren't true about the pursuant? >> on the twitter feed, he un s un

this as current trump attorney rudy giuliani says the president is done talking to robert mueller. what does this mean for the russia probe now? >> not answering any more questions from these people, they are outrageous. we did enough, we did everythin everything. >> julie: a fox news alert, as we turn our attention to wall street, closed up more than 250 points. oh 600-point drop being erased, the largest single day rebound for the dow. this month has seen serious volatility with the stock marke market, joining me now is susan lee of the fox business network. we talked yesterday about 401ks, reading more about it. people should not be as alarmed as it seems, the numbers obviously are normal for there to be a correction. if you have your 401(k) and you're numbers dip, is it best to just not look at those numbers and not touch it? >> especially someone with a long time horizon, it will be fine in 30 years' time. if you're retiring next month or the next six months, maybe there's a bit of a jitter, a bit of worry about in the end, this is a natural market correction wherein. we are s

here's rudy giuliani. i want your reaction to this. >> the president knows -- he knows what you knew what a time. the men pled guilty. >> he knows what flynn said to his vice president. >> tells a lie, but that's not a crime. gillian: okay, the slippery slope. the official explanation for booting general flynn last year was the lie to the vice president. he told them he never spoke to the russian ambassador about sanctions that has been proven for intelligence that he did. it's a slip or a slope in the sense that when someone lies in it's on the record, how do you know when you can trust them and when you can't? >> if we held the standard, hillary clinton and bill clinton would all be in jail serving decades and decades. there should be equal justice under law. this is why think was a very minor one in the fact he would get through the guilty line, why did he do that. the limited resources of the justice department were put against and bankrupted. he was worried about his son being indicted. those are the

you have the president's lawyer rudy giuliani making these assertions here. what evidence could there be as far as the president and rudy giuliani basing these claims on, and could these do more harm legally to the president? >> with respect to the text messages, frances? >> right. >> i'm not sure what is being mentioned there by the president. there doesn't seem to be any basis for alleging that there are these mysteriously missing text messages at this point. that matter had been the subject of a very professional, very thorough report by the doj office of inspector general that was released some months ago. i simply don't know what to make of this latest allegation. >> it's also, on the side you have rudy giuliani who goes back and forth, sending mixed signals with his messaging. in an interview with "the hill" he said he believed the investigation should end soon. but then changed on whether the president would answer any more questions. does the mueller investigation move forward if there is no interview and would there be a subpoena after that? >> the m

and doesn't donald trump look sane by comparison to rudy giuliani? >> and smart, too. right. it is a mystery to me why he goes out there and as you say says more incriminating things. and admits, well, he didn't, maybe he did, well if he did, it wasn't a crime. i don't know what purpose he's serving other than perhaps entertaining donald trump. he certainly isn't representing him in any context. but the wonderful thing about it is we've reached that stage where what rudy giuliani says doesn't matter at all. it matters what the facts are, it matters what it law is. it matters what the southern district of new york and what the state investigators in new york and their investigation and what robert mueller and his team have. it's the law, the facts, the judges and rudy giuliani just doesn't matter. >> and mimi, it's really striking you could say that about a presidential lawyer. giuliani's function now it strikes me as purely nrlt entertainment. it's purely to supply little things for media to use in these kinds of scripts and for others to use. what he says has nothing to do w

rudy giuliani told the atlantic, quote, i don't think there's anyone in the world that can stop donald trump from tweeting. giuliani said, i've tried. giuliani told the atlantic that the special prosecutor's treatment of paul manafort really upsets the president. when trump learned that the former campaign chairman was in solitary confinement giuliani said he said to me, don't they realize we're america? never in the history of the presidency has a lawyer working for the president ever done more damage to that president than rudy giuliani does every time -- every time he talks about the president. in the atlantic rudy giuliani actually said this about answering the written questions that robert mueller put to the president of the united states. answering those questions was a nightmare. it took him about three weeks to do what would normally take two days. giuliani said the reason the president took so long to answer the questions included numerous distractions. quote, giuliani recalled one instance when they were working on the list and chief of staff john kelly broke in to talk about

rudy giuliani seemed to move the goal post legally. i want to play what he said about the possibility that the trump campaign was given a heads up about wikileaks releases supplied by the russians. have a listen. >> did roger stone ever give the president a heads up on wikileaks leaks concerning the dnc? >> no, he didn't. i don't believe so. but again if roger stone gave anybody a heads up about wikileaks leaks, that's not a crime. >> i don't want to turn you into a lawyer about whether that's a crime but if they learned of stolen intelligence in advance of their release, that's not a crime. again, i don't want to treat you as a lawyer. is that disloyal to america to take advantage of that? >> i think, yeah, it'scertainly questionable. and i think something that struck me as very important is then candidate trump's exhortation to the russians to go find those e-mails. again, collusion, as supporters of president trump and president trump himself on numerous occasions is not necessarily a crime. conspiracy, though, is. and, again, i do

as you noticed in interviews, rudy giuliani is on the defensive. saying the only way to believe the claims he's made about president trump is to take him at his word. that is simply not the case because as you know the southern district of new york has corroborated much of what michael cohen has said with outside evidence. we know that ami, the company that owns the national enquirer, the paper that ended up not publishing those stories about stormy daniels and karen mcdoug mcdougal, they corroborated some of what michael clone was saying. beyond that, rudy giuliani is suggesting the payments were not campaign contributions. two of the charges that michael cohen plead guilty to were campaign finance violations based on those payments. we may have not heard the last of michael cohen. represent elijah krrz cummings said he wants michael cohen to testify again in congress. listen to this. >> i'm hoping that mr. cohen will come before the congress where he can tell the american public exactly what he has been saying to mueller and others without interf

i also spoke with rudy giuliani and jeff the past few minutes about all of this. he says it is a complete exoneration of the president, saying they have nothing, and we are very happy about it. while the office of the special counsel says it manafort lied to them about his business dealing dealings, rudy giuliani insist to me that manafort was not telling lies about the presiden, and the contrast between paul manafort and michael cohen, according to rudy giuliani, manafort has nothing to lie abot regarding the president, and a cohen doesn't know what to lie about. i also asked rudy giuliani about that reference to political syny in the office of special counsel memo, he said he did not know what michael cohen was referring to, and michael cohen certainly did not talk to the president about that particular aspect of it. i also asked giuliani if he was worried at all about what might be contained in the redacted sections of the manafort memo, or the information that is under seal of the redacted section. he said the beginning and the end of those parts don't relate

been a long time since rudy giuliani was actually a prosecutor, you should be begging for an appeal of your conviction on the basis that whatever it was you pleaded guilty to or convicted on wasn't actually a crime because, you know, as we now know rudy giuliani doesn't think anything is a crime as he's arguing for donald trump. >> let's remember that rudy giuliani was the mayor of new york, and in order to clean up new york he had a broken windows policy, there was no crime that was too small not to be prosecuted in new york city while rudy giuliani was mayor. that's how he cleaned up new york. now he's trying to say that crimes aren't really crimes, and it's not a big deal because nobody died. it's really quite an about face for somebody who was so strict once upon a time. david fram, jonathan allen, happy holidays, happy new years. >> tonight's last word is next. s first 5g ultra wideband network, it'll be because we were the first to install the fiber-optics and small cells, and upgrade the towers that will change the way we learn, work and live. and i'll always be proud that we

>> reporter: i just got off the phone with the president's attorney rudy giuliani. his first response was that michael cohen was not blindly loyal to the president. he says, in his words, that he was aggressively disloyal. and he pointed to the fact that he had recorded conversations with his then client, donald trump, and didn't tell him that he was recording those conversations. as you'll recall, cnn has played a tape where michael cohen and donald trump appear to be talking about karen mcdougal and paying her off so her story isn't made public. so rudy giuliani was really seizing on that in response to what cohen said that, sure, he was weak because he was basically so loyal to donald trump that he did his dirty deeds. he said basically he said that's not true, he deceptively wore a recording when he was with donald trump. he said he is responsible for his own lying and misdeeds, no one else can tell him to do so. and also something else you're seeing, this line of argument you're seeing from the president, from his lawyers and others in the white house is this n

rudy giuliani said it's time to put up or shut up. >>> we're going to start this hour for you with the partial government shutdown over funding for border security president trump launching an attack on democrats tweeting that any deaths of children at the border are strictly the fault of democrats and their pathetic immigration policies. that tweet sparking a backlash from democrat who pointed out no child died in dhs custody in ten years. now under president trump that's been two deaths in one month. the white house is not backing down on the president's inflammatory rhetoric. >> any death of a child, any death of anyone is an utter tragedy. i think the president's point is an important one which is he is stayed in washington to negotiate border security. >> i don't like some of the democrats using the deaths as political pawns. >> isn't that what the president did? >> the president isn't doing that. the president doesn't want the children to come on the journey to begin with. >>> john kelly says to be honest it's not a wall. the president still says wall. he's say barrier or fencing

this may be a hard fight for rudy giuliani and the president's lawyers. dana bash, thank you for your reporting. thanks to lauren fox as well. coming up, something ordinarily tax-deductible but now it could be a liability. the trump foundation has agreed to shut down what the -- the new york attorney general investigation found what it calls a shocking pattern of illegality, unlawful coordination with the campaign, repeated self-dealing and on and on. let's not ever forget they used other people's charitable donations to buy two large portraits of donald trump and a signed football helmet. the latest next. hey kurt, are you watching the best of geico ? i sure am, linda. they've been saving folks money for years. and now they're re-airing some of their all-time greatest hits. with classics like... hump day. caveman airport. and even... celebrating squirrels. this crudité is great, but those geico ads are even better. but that's not all. vote today and you can enter for a chance to appear in an upcoming geico commercial. just visit geico.com/bestof. oh, ge

be able to put the lie to him, and but for lanny davis and rudy giuliani, he wouldn't have had this tape go out there that corroborated him enough that these deals were going on paying off women for favors. and that just killed him. and he had a significant choice, and i think lanny signed up because he was convinced this guy would now see the light and tell the truth. and he could be the most -- he could be the most explosive thing that's happened. it's out of washington. it's in new york. do what you want to mueller, this guy can take down the president. >> i'm not a lawyer, i know you are, i know you're out of time, but i watch an extraordinary amount of "law & order" with that, i will tell you when you give the right information, you should get something in return. it's not quid pro quo, but that's the way the das work. >> and "law & order" is just

that was obviously rudy giuliani. come on, elie, rudy giuliani on fox saying put up or shut up. he's been putting up for quite some time, bob mueller. not like we haven't seen any developments in the mueller investigation. he seems to forget manafort. sorry. i keep going. he seems to forget cohen. >> a lot of facts out there. people who are behind bars or about to be going behind bars. >> look, my ultimatum is rudy giuliani punts himself into the sun. giuliani -- he's not relevant to the investigation. he does not care what they want. 2019 is going to be a real year for donald trump and for this investigation. mueller has put -- i don't know if you play chess, right? but all he's done is set up all of the pieces and he's closing in on the -- >> i can tell you that donald trump doesn't play chess. >> he doesn't even play checkers. he plays tic tac toe. >> i came prepared. >> i bought a knife here. because i eat mine -- >> do you eat pizza with a knife and fork as well? >> can someone get this person off set? >> in 2019, mueller is going to continue going after the money. that sec