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i think there's no question that's going on. the question is could it be illegal, could it be obstruction in and of itself to kind of offer these pardons. for that we're looking at other evidence, john dowd had floated the notion of a pardon with manafort. if that has happened, if there's some back channel that this is what these mean, you might be talking some obstruction, but absent that, i don't think we're there yet. >> if he promises to pardon someone who's under investigation, is that some sort of doj investigation, or would it be up to congress? >> the whole subject of mueller and trump is really about impeachment, it's not about prosecution. i don't think anyone believes

that mueller is going to violate department of justice policy and indict the president. so the question is what does congress think about that? the pardons themselves i think are constitutionally protected. but the negotiations around them could well be evidence of obstruction of justice. if there were any sort of quid pro quos, any sort of deals where the president says implicitly or explicitly or through intermediaries, to paul manafort, to michael flynn, to michael cohen, hang in there, don't cooperate and i'll give you a pardon. that, i think, definitely could be seen as evidence of an impeachable offense. >> it's interesting, jennifer, because when you think of pardons, you kind of think of people who deserve pardons, worthy pardons, people who are unjustly imprisoned or people who had decisions of a jury trial for a minor offense.

>> that's right. the pardon is to right a wrong. in the case of the boxer jackson johnson, you have a wrongful conviction that's been righted now, that's one that president trump has done that's justifiable. dinesh d'souza, it's not around after the fact, i'm getting rid of your conviction on paper. so there's no wrong that's are being wrighted -- righted here. that really has an impact on the morale. that really -- >> there have been pardons in the relatively recent past. bill clinton pardoned mark rich who was a fugitive. he pardoned his brother. george herbert walker bush

pardoned all the iran-contra defendants. but those took place toward the end of their presidencies. there couldn't be any deal going forward. what's so unusual about these controversial pardons is the signal about what it might mean for the rest of the trump administration, and that's something new under the sun. >> it's also, jack, the fact that president is floating clemency for martha stewart and rod blagojevich, who was not just on the apprentice but was prosecuted by james comey. >> it's all personal with this president. it's all about punishing your enemies. >> the jack johnson pardon is great, it's -- he died in 1946. the pardon that kim kardashian came to talk about, seems like it might have merit. but to just refer to a

president, people may remember, barack obama had a clemency program where nonviolent drug offenders could apply to have their sentences reduced and there was a formal process in the justice department. and he commuted the sentences of more than 1,000 people in the latter part of his presidency because he thought that the sentences were too long. that's traditionally how pardons have worked through some sort of organized process, not through who was on "the apprentice" >> jeff, if you will stay with us, jennifer, as well, "the washington post" has some breaking news that we're just learning about the russia probe, on the phone we have matt zapotowsky. matt, explain what the report is. >> reporter: tonight we're reporting that prosecutors in d.c. -- federal prosecutors in d.c. have interviewed jim comey about andrew mccabe. andrew mccabe i'm sure everyone

recalls was sort of the target of this scathing inspector general report, alleging he lied to comey and other investigators. and so we understand that federal prosecutors in d.c. have now interviewed jim comey about his exchanges with mccabe. >> do you know when the interview took place or the kind of -- anything more specific about it? >> we know it took place recently, so the referral, the inspector general made what's called a criminal referral to the d.c. u.s. attorney's office. he had been conducting kind of an internal investigation into andrew mccabe over these lies, came up with some findings, those were released publically, and sometime after that, maybe in the last month or two, rereferred the case to the d.c. u.s. attorney's office. the interview we understand took place recently. i don't have an exact date for you, why it's significant is that it shows that the d.c. u.s. attorney's office is really taking this case seriously.

mccabe's camp had kind of intimated, there's really nothing to see here. mccabe disputes the inspector general's findings, a lot of criminal referrals go away. we don't know that criminal charges are going to come against mccabe, but this is certainly an indication that it's not going to go away. d.c. prosecutors are taking it very seriously. >> has mccabe made any comments about this? >> they said, look, we had confirmed the criminal referral more than a month ago and we said then, we thought unless there was political pressure, this would just go away, and they still feel that way, they also suggested that this news was leaking out tonight because of a report in the "new york times" yesterday about some memos that andrew mccabe had kept about his interactions with rod rosenstein. so that was sort of their response. >> so just overall, is it clear where the investigation of mccabe stands as a whole? >> it's not precisely clear.

look, what we know is that there's some very serious allegations against him, and at that the d.c. u.s. attorney's office didn't sort of reject these out of hand. they took this report, and they're actually acting on it. they called in jim comey for an interview about these allegations. so that shows they're kind of seriously moving forward with this. now whether this will actually lead to andrew mccabe being criminally charged, it's just impossible to say right now. and i think a lot of people would say, look, what did you expect the d.c. u.s. attorney's office to do? to take the inspector general's findings and tear them up? of course, they were going to do some work and interviewing jim comey is a natural step. >> i want to bring back in jeff toobin and jennifer rogers. jennifer, again, i mean as matt was saying, it is hard to figure out exactly if this is significant. >> i think that's right.

i mean, what inspectors general do, they do investigations and they take whatever appropriate personnel action there is or make a referral, and that's kind of by the book. if there's the potential for criminal charges, then they make the referral. the referral is not that exciting in and of itself. the fact that they interviewed comey is evidence that they're taking it seriously. whether they're trying to bury this or not, who knows? we have to wait and see what happens with charges. so far you just can't possibly tell one way or the other. >> jeff, how do you see it? >> just to remind everybody who andrew mccabe is. i'm not sure everyone has their scandal score card in front of them. he was the deputy director of the fbi who supervised the hillary clinton investigation and later started to supervise some of the trump investigation, his wife ran for the state senate as a democrat in virginia and president trump really fixated on mccabe as a villain, someone who was doing the

democrats' dirty work, mccabe was an honored and respected fbi agent for many years. but he's had a tremendous fall from grace, this inspector general's report, which suggested he lied, really puts him in a great deal of trouble. yes, it's true, we don't know if he'll be criminally charged. but he's not only been fired and lost his pension, but this interview shows that the possibility of criminal charges is still out there. >> jeff toobin, jennifer rogers. thank you both very much. coming up next, the president weighs in had on roseanne barr and what he said and what he did not say coming up next. and the samantha bee controversy. also ahead, a republican member of the house republican committee joins us to talk about why the president's conspiracy theory about a spy in his campaign should still be looked into.

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him for a variety of offenses. today he tweeted, iger, where's my call of apology? you and abc have offended millions of people and they demanded a response. how is brian ross doing? he's the reporter responsible for an erroneous report about the president. the network offered several clarifications, suspended ross, so the president restated his apology demand, he tweeted the words fair trade in all caps, what he did not do is mention the racism at the heart of roseanne barr's tweet. keeping them honest, it's not necessarily because he doesn't feel it's appropriate or necessary or does not feel it's appropriate to appeal to elements of his base or for some other reason, it is part of a

here's from charlottesville. >> chanting jews will not replace us and other anti semitic slogan. here's how the president saw it. >> you had some very bad people in that group. but you had some very fine people on both sides. >> fine people on both sides, which is a rather broad minded interpretation, which is not true, certainly the demonstration you saw which was from friday night. not from a journalist in the crowd who said it was exactly what it looked like. the white house defended the president's remarks but later the president gave a more full-throated statement, saying, in part, racism is evil and those who call violence in its name are those who are neo nazis, the kkk and that are repugnant to most americans. something similar played out on

the campaign trail, when candidate trump was asked about comments by david duke. >> i want to ask you about the anti-defamation league which this week called on you to publically condemn the unequivocally former klan member david duke that condemning him would be -- to say that you don't want david duke's vote or that of other white supremacists in this election? >> just so you understand, i don't know anything about david duke. i don't know anything about what you're talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists. i don't know, did he endorse me or what's going on? because i know nothing about david duke, i know nothing about white supremacists, so you're asking me a question that i'm supposed to be talking about people that i know nothing

about. >> the next day he claimed he disavowed david duke in that interview, which he did not. just a short time ago, roseanne barr tweeted again and once again, it's inflammatory, talking to abc executive ben sherwood about valerie jarrett, the african-american woman she compared to an ape, he says what were you thinking when you did this? i said, i thought she was white, she looks like my family. he scoffed and said, what you have done is egregious. i bigged for my crews jobs. will i ever recover from this pain? omg. do you see a pattern of the president not calling out racism as an initial instinct full stop? >> yes. >> and why do you think that is? >> you know, i don't know why. but i tell you what, i have fears. one fear i have is that there's a big part of his base that does harbor a lot of racial resentment where african-americans and other groups and that he's afraid that

he will look weak if he caves in to the politically correct demand that he say these things, so my fear is that he's got a stick going with a big section of his base that likes for him not to buckle on the political correctness. what that means is he doesn't live up to his moral and political obligations to guide the nation past this stuff. why? i don't know why. i hope it's not because he has actual hatred and bigotry in his heart. butminimally, if he's not a racist, he's a racial opportunist who plays with racism of his base, and that's almost worse because it can be so cynical and so destructive. >> jason? >> after spending so much time with president trump in 2016 and in the white house in 2017, i never heard president trump make any comments that were aimed at disparaging another race or religion or anything of the

sort. those are not the attitudes or beliefs he has. i think there's this trend going on that any time somebody, like roseanne barr, goes and makes an absolute idiotic, racist comment, so many people on the political left immediately want to sprint and try to pin that on president trump. i think that's unfair. this is just my own thought on it. i think part of it may be as soon as president trump goes to speak out or have a big huge speech on the roseanne barr comments or something of the sort, that every single time going forward, he's going to be expected to answer for the behaviors and actions of other people. and that's unfair. what i said 24 hours ago, you can't blame samantha bee 's ababsolutely vile comments and behavior on hillary clinton, or bernie sanders or someone else in a political party. but that's where people want to go, they pin it on president

trump, and that is his feelings and that of the entire trump base. >> i don't understand this nightmare scenario that you have. here's the nightmare, people say horrific things and trump has to speak out about it. trump speaks out about earning, -- everything. he speaks all the time. he tweets all the time. the idea that it would be some unsufferable burden on him to point out that people doing bad things is horrible, he should speak out against these things. >> one of the only reasons that anyone would make a connection between president trump and roseanne bar is that president trump himself made that connection weeks ago, embracing her, saying it's about us. that's really the only linkage there and the only reason really that there's an expectation that he might want to say something. >> yeah, and also because he seems to embrace that, you know, everyday guy, i represent the

forgotten man, okay, maybe. but then when the person who you -- he took the time from the podium, from the bully pulpit, to talk about her ratings, which i don't think that's something the president of the united states should be commenting on, since his time is so precious, allegedly, according to sarah sanders he has other things more important to worry about. yet he finds time to vans point to tweet things all the time. so it seems convenient for him now that he's silent about it. and it's because there is an issue there. as a republican, and as a conservative, i've been over the years very reluctant to jump on the race cards. often times i think it's used too quickly. but in this case there is a race problem with this president. it is undeniable at this point. people feel energized. these racists, bigots feel energized with him out there. >> you're saying president trump

is the one to blame? >> no. individuals are responsible for their own individual behavior, however the era of trumps and his own comments and behavior, and his history of racial discrimination, from the housing, to the central park five to the nfl sobs, look at these people running -- >> i don't think this is president trump's fault. >> you're not hearing me. i'm saying the president's own behavior, him being unapologetic for being as bigoted as he has in the past has emboldened people. what he doesn't condemn, when he says there's good people on both sides, it tells people it's okay to act like this. >> i disagree. the things he's pushed. look at the event you did, van,

on prison reform. that's something you wouldn't have seen from many other republicans previously. >> i disagree. >> no. that was strong leadership from president trump on that. i think you look at the way he's acting, the way he brought people together at events like that -- >> i want to hear from you, van, we have to take a quick break. we'll finish this discussion. >> you do 99 bad things, and one good thing, i'll give you credit for one goods thing, but that doesn't get you off the hook for 99 bad things. let's take a break. and then we'll look at the comment by samantha bee towards ivanka trump. feel the clarity of non-drowsy children's claritin allergy relief. the #1 pediatrician recommended non-drowsy brand. because to a kid a grassy hill is irresistible. children's claritin. feel the clarity and live claritin clear.

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word. ivanka trump who works at the white house, chose to tweet this week. that's a beautiful picture your child. but let me say from one mother to another, do something about your dad's immigration practices, you feckless [ bleep ]. he listens to you. put on something nice and tight and tell your father to [bleep] stop it. okay. we'll be right back. >> this afternoon, samantha bee apologized. she said i would like to sincerely apologize to ivanka trump and to my viewers for using an expletive in my comments about her last night. she wrote on twitter it was inappropriate and excusable. i crossed a line and i deeply regret it. the network also aired the remarks shouldn't have been aired. sarah sanders were obviously very critical of her life, saying they were vile and vicious.

samantha bee unlike roseanne barr has not had her show cancelled. is their unfair bias here? >> i think there's a fair case to be made. because what samantha bee did was completely unacceptable. that's one of the most vile words that you can possibly use. i think that was on george carlin's list of 20 words you you can never say on television. that's one thing you don't do on cable news. i'm no fan of ivanka trump being in the white house. i have been critical of ivanka trump before, but that doesn't give you license to be that offensive. cbs has made the decision they the fact -- made, that's their prerogative. i don't think they would have been as charitable to someone else who was not on the left that they like, and it gives fuel to the other side to say that, look, see, there's a double standard here, and i think over the years, you can see that, johnny depp made awful comments about assassinating trump, and madonna, and you see these things and everybody goes, yeah, that wasn't cool and they

move on. it was another example of the coarsening of our culture. it's just bigger. it's just another example of that. and when you can't have your kids watching cable anymore and you have to explain to them what the c-word is or what the p-word is after what trump was caught saying on video, it just speaks volumes to where we are as a culture. and that conversation has to be had. if you were cheering on applauding roseanne getting fired, then you're dismissing samantha bee, you're a hypocrite? >> do you see an equivalency? >> i think it was really inappropriate what samantha bee did, i know her, i like her, i think it was really inappropriate. it also, unfortunately, stepped on her point, which is that immigration officials are separating babies from mothers and that's wrong, and i think she completely ruined that conversation. i like second chances for people. i think she apologized, that's

good, i like second chances. with roseanne barr, it's hard because she has such a long pattern of doing these kinds of things. but i think liberals should be aware that this kind of thing adds to the disquiet among conservatives that there is a double standard. if i had to make the argument, i would say well a white person calling a black person an ape is different than a woman calling a woman -- i could do all that stuff, but i know in doing that, i'm feeding into the narrative that we'll excuse liberals and come down hard on conservativ conservatives. i think people need to be very, very consistent. it not fair to people across the country and it's certainly not fair to ivanka trump. if it becomes a pattern, she could go. >> van had a lot of good points >> there, and i'm glad to hear you denounce the terrible language and the terrible comments. i don't know what's going on this week, it's like crazy week. >> it's a full moon.

>> it's definitely a week that needs to be over. >> i'm not going to get into the whole what aboutism this is with samantha bee is what should have happened, and what roseanne barr did, this should have happened. you were saying just about the whole coarsening of the culture. i was surprised to see so many people cheering on samantha bee, and this is a wife, this is a mother, this is the president's daughter. who's in the white house. that's what really concerned me today. it almost feels, especially from some of the comedians that are out there, whether it be michelle wolf, at the correspondents dinner, what we saw from samantha bee, these comments are terrible and horrible except when it's about trump or someone in his family or someone around him. i think we have to get away from that. that type of behavior shouldn't be out there anywhere. >> starts in the white house. >> let's take a break. have to take a quick break. >> coming up, the latest on the

trump's claim about a spy in the campaign, and the odd silence of the house committee's chair, devin nunes. ♪

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pg&e has allowed us to be the most sustainable organization we can be. any time you help a customer, it's a really good feeling. it's especially so when it's a customer that's doing such good and important work for the environment. together, we're building a better california. rudy giuliani tells dana bash that fellow conservative trey gowdy was quote drinking the kool-aid when he said the fbi did not have spies in the

trump campaign. the president, of course, and many of his defenders say that the fbi spied on the campaign. gowdy, one of the two republican lawmakers who attended one of the first intelligence briefing about this whole thing said that the fbi acted appropriately. so then there remains the question of the other lawmaker that attended the meeting with gowdy, and that's devin nunes. since congressman gowdy said there's no there there, devin nunes has been silent. we invited him on the show, no response, our producer called his press person, got no response. they called his california office, said they don't have access to his calendar. and they referred us back to his press person, the same one who didn't call us back. congressman nunez did appear on facebook briefly, he appeared on social media talking about a nut. check these out, can you guess what they are? you're right, they're nuts.

the invitation to congressman nunes, of course, stands. i talked earlier about trey gowdy's comments and a spy infiltrating trump's campaign. with congressman kris stuart, a member of the house intelligence committee. congressman stewart, congressman trey gowdy who's seen the documents says that there's no there there that the fbi sent a spy to the trump campaign. and he says others who saw the documents assessed it the same way. do you trust gowdy's assessment? >> i look forward to talking to trey, he's a good friend of mine and he's someone that i really do trust. i don't know who these other members of congress who you say have come to the same conclusion, i don't know any of them that do, but this might be a time where trey and i are going to agree to disagree. unless virtually everything that's been reported on this is untrue. i still have real concerns and i still think we want to pursue this and have a broader look at

the documents. >> you say everything that's been reported about it, really what -- the most public things are the things that the president has said and he's consistently used the word spy, sometimes some of his supporters had said two spies or a spy ring. >> yeah. >> what do you think has been reported that needs to be looked into more? >> well, let's look at the "new york times" and "the washington post" reporting. an important consideration on this is that we've been trying to get this information for actually months, intensely for the last few weeks. they refused to show it to those of us on the committee and more broadly to congress yet much of this information has been leaked. i have a real problem with that. i think most americans do, they're uncomfortable with that. the reporting isn't just that the president has used the word spy. the reporting has been that this individual had at least three contacts that he was instructed to make contact with these people, they weren't people he

knew before, he had to initiate contact. i want to know was he wearing a wire? were the meetings recorded? did he pay them anything? what did he tell them? those are the things that are reported and those are the things that many of us have questions about. >> if there were concerns about russian interference in the election, which the fbi and department of justice clearly seem to have. what else should they have done, other than what they did in the midst of a campaign? >> yeah, well, i would say one thing, and i think this is kind of the starting point. if they felt like there were individuals around any government official who presented a security threat, i think they have responsible to acknowledge and warn that individual. if there were people who were trying to make contact with me, i would hope the fbi would come to me and say, hey, let's talk about this person here, let us tell you the concerns we have here. and unless i was the target, unless i was the person they

thought was -- you know, had ill intent, i think they had responsibility to do that and they didn't in this case. >> carter page they investigated previously so they clearly had some concerns about carter page's connections to russians in the past. >> anderson, i have to disagree with your characterization completely on that. he had attempted to be recruited by russian agents before and he reported that to the fbi. and, in fact, he worked with the fbi to collect information on these russians and to help to prosecute them. he wasn't working with them secretly and providing them information. exactly the opposite. he was working with the fbi to inform the fbi on these agents. it's the opposite of what he's been accused of doing in this case. >> candidate donald trump was briefed in july about russian infiltration. so the idea the campaign itself wasn't warned is not accurate. >> well, it depends. and that's why the timing on it

is so important. that's why we want to again see the documents and see some background. if this individual had contacts after that point, that would be one thing. if this individual had contact before that, what we believe is perhaps months before that, that would be very different. and once again, this is why we want to see the underlying documents that will pride that information. >> congressman stewart, i appreciate your time as always. thank you. >> thank you, sir. >> up next after hurricane maria ruined puerto rico, president trump praised the response and pointed to the low death toll of 16 people that was the official death toll at the time, now it's 64. but a new study says about 4,600 people died in the storm and in the aftermath. how is it possible that authorities in puerto rico got the death toll so wrong? we'll get reaction from the governor of puerto rico when we

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delayed medical care in the weeks and months after the storm. 4,600 people, some 1,800 people were killed during hurricane katrina. what's so stunning about the estimate is that it's more than 70 times the amount estimated by the puerto rican government. the official death toll in puerto rico is 64 people. earlier tonight i spoke with ricardo rossello, the governor of puerto rico. >> this new survey suggests 4,600 deaths from the storm. that's 70 times the official estimate by your administration. how is it possible the numbers have been so wrong? >> well, thank you for the opportunity to be here, anderson. ever since the storm came along and even as we were ending the year we established that this

number was going to be much higher than what we had as an official tally. we had a protocol that was based on data, on what we got from the registry. we knew that more deaths were, you know, were a by-product of the storm. as a matter of fact we had commissioned, george washington university to do a study so that we can narrow down not only how many deaths, but also what we can do towards the future to prevent them. >> that study was supposed to -- it hasn't begun. it's supposedly going to get done this summer. this study is shocking. your government did stick with this low figure for a long time. you said it was widely believed it would be higher. cnn interviewed funeral directors and knew it was going to be higher even before the survey.

why stick with a number you know is artificially low? >> it's not sticking with the number. it was just establishing that the process that we had prior led us to that number which is what we got from the doctors, the death certificates. it was the only mechanism we had. this study by harvard is a welcome addition to our analysis. it's a household survey analysis. i think in conjunction with the analysis that has already started with george washington university, we'll get a better gauge, not only of the final death tally, but also how we can prepare better, how we can avoid some of the events that occurred on these massive catastrophic events and that not only applies to puerto rico, but to everywhere else in the nation. >> it seems a massive failure of

the government's ability on the island to actually account for the deaths. the survey was done for $50,000. they had researchers from harvard and universities in puerto rico go around and interview households and ask them about who has died in their family, things like that. you say you welcome the survey. according to researchers officials from your government refused to provide them basic data. they refused to give mortality statistics. why is that? >> well, i -- you know, i'm shocked to hear that. i signed an executive order to facilitate that information, both to the independent george washington assessment as well as two others. what is important to note is that, you know, data and some of these death certificates and the assessment process was not the best process. the best data was not available.

that's actually why george washington has taken a little longer time than expected. we expected to have a phase one analysis here by may 22nd. of course, data has been hard to come by with respect to that and what we want to do is land on the most concrete accurate numbers so we can assess what really happened. >> i know you expressed surprise and concern that officials didn't cooperate with the study. is that something you want to look into? if transparency is your stated goal, it doesn't seem transparent if officials aren't giving out basic mortality statistics. >> we need to look into if it's that they didn't want to give it out or the data has just been really hard to come by. it's been really chopped up data.

i will certainly look into it. there's no doubt about it. our goal, anderson, is to make sure that everybody is accounted for, that all the families have, you know, closure within this process and for the people of puerto rico which have gone through a catastrophic event unlike any other in recent his of the united states that we can guarantee if we face another event like this we'll be better prepared and we can serve as a model for other jurisdictions in the united states should another happen. >> i know you said the data is hard to come by. the researchers are says categorically that officials from your government refused to provide them with data that does exist. >> well, like i said, i signed an executive order whereby this data is being accessible. we opened the books.

in february when we made the announcement of this executive order and the collaboration with george washington, that was precisely my mandate. >> but they didn't cooperate with this study? >> i'll look into it. >> let me ask you -- >> i'll certainly look into it. if it's true, anderson, there will be hell to pay. i really want this to be very transparent. i want the truth to come out. that's the bottom line. i want us to learn from this tragedy so that we can prevent in the future something like this happening. those are my stated goals. i will work towards making sure those happen. >> governor, appreciate you time. thank you. >> thank you, anderson. >> up next president trump pardons a conservative pundit. we'll talk about who, who can be next and why it's raising questions about the president's motives. that's next.

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