On CNN New Day, Chris Cuomo and Alysin Camerota joined counterintelligence analyst Phillip Mudd, David Gregory, and Chris Cilizza about the significance of the new disclosure that the IRS is sharing Trump's financial information with special counsel Bob Mueller.
"The critical question when talking about Manafort is really we don't know what Russia did. We know what Russia was trying to. Was there someone or people guiding those efforts helping those efforts from within the campaign?" David Gregory said.
"Or they knew. They didn't have to help. If people said I have friends, we're doing this with Facebook. Who should we target, how should we do it?" Cuomo said.
"Just knowing might start us spreading the stake here. It is the biggest discovery we have had to date. We always knew people were using Facebook for that. That is the stronghold of fake news. But to have Facebook and the big operators turn and want to help the government, that is a big change. We have seen it discreetly, but not on this level. They have been reluctant."
"It is a huge deal for a couple of reasons. We're seeing the specifics of what the Russians did," Mudd said. "The government had some of this. The American public is now seeing there is fire behind the smoke. Russians were involved in placing these ads. The Facebook piece and the piece about getting IRS information for one specific reason.
"I can collect your phone records, I can get your e-mail, get a bunch of data in the 21st century. But asking questions like we were just talking about, who knew the Russians were involved? Was that a conversation at a restaurant over a table that was never captured digitally? If you can bring the IRS records to hammer down on somebody to talk about what they knew, that's critically important," he said.
