Russians Who Met With Keyed Trump Officials At Trump Tower Have Spoken To Senate Investigators
BROWN: Well, CNN has learned that Russians present at that now infamous 2016 meeting at Trump tower last summer have been interviewed by Senate intel investigators. This according to Senator Richard Burr, who is the chairman of the committee, who stopped short of revealing exactly who has been questioned, which Russians. And while the month-long probe into Russian and Trump campaign collusion continues, the President on a FOX Business interview airing Sunday, is calling this federal investigation quote "bad for the country." I want to discuss this now with CNN legal analyst Michael Zeldin. Michael, thanks for coming on.</s>MICHAEL ZELDIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: My pleasure.</s>BROWN: So the President says, this is bad for the country. This investigation is bad for country. Do you agree?</s>ZELDIN: No, I think it's important for us to know whether or not there was collusion or coordination between the Trump campaign and Russians. I think it's important to know what the Russians did with respect to tampering with the election, irrespective of whether there is collusion at the end. I think it's important to know what Paul Manafort or General Flynn may have done. I think these are important things to give confidence that we know what happened. We know how to prevent it. We know who is responsible, if there is anyone that is responsible, and then we can move on from that. But to call it a witch-hunt or bad for democracy, I think misses the point.</s>BROWN: From the White House perspective, you know, it's clear the President does not like the shadow hanging over his first year in office, but I have heard from people that the concern is also that it's hurting foreign affairs, dealing with foreign leaders, that this is brought up that the President is under investigation. Do you think that Mueller, at some point, if there isn't any evidence against the President should come out even before the investigation wraps up to say, look, this investigation is ongoing, but the President isn't a target of the investigation.</s>ZELDIN: Probably, if it was determined that there was no collusion that involved the President personally.</s>BROWN: Or obstruction of justice.</s>ZELDIN: Or obstruction of justice, then there is no reason why Mueller couldn't do that. There's no with four, five work streams that he is undertaking. There is no reason why he can't say this work stream is tied up and we are done with and here is our findings. But we're still working on others. So I don't think there's anything wrong with that. The problem is it's hard to get to the ultimate question of what was the involvement of the Trump campaign with respect to collusion, and what if any role did President Trump have in obstructing the investigation, until pretty late in the process.</s>BROWN: Right, because they have just started really the first round of interviews with White House officials and former officials, Reince Priebus, former chief of staff, Sean Spicer, and General Kellogg. What does that tell you that they're just beginning those interviews?</s>ZELDIN: That's right. So if you got concentric circles, they are still in the outer ring. I mean, nobody in the White House presently, hope hicks, who would know a lot about the communications. I don't know that she has been interviewed. And others who are presently in the White House, we have all go to former. So we are moving in, as you would normally do, and I think we have got, you know, weeks or months still to go.</s>BROWN: Let me just quickly ask you this. I have spoken to people close to the President who said if Mueller wanted to interview him that they would actually advise against it. What do you think about that?</s>ZELDIN: The White House would absolutely advise against it. I think that the White House wants to wait until the very end to see, one, where they can avoid an interview altogether or two, if they have to have an interview, they have that interview after they know as much as is possibly knowable about this. Because people have said, one, you want to know your enemy, if you will, has on you. But second, people have said Trump's greatest liability is with respect to whether he will tell you truth, just like with Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.</s>HARTUNG: We saw where that went.</s>ZELDIN: So that is something that they are really trying to avoid.</s>BROWN: All right. Michael, stick around because we have some new reporting on those Russian ads on Facebook and how they targeted voters in the U.S. But first here's a look at this week's "fresh money."</s>EMILY WEISS, FOUNDER, GLOSSIER: Glossier is different in many ways from most beauty companies. First of all, we have a highly curated collection of products. We are not interested in making a bunch of