that's where i felt relief. it actually helped to know that somebody else cared and wanted make sure that i was okay. that was really great. we're the rivera family, and we will be with usaa for life. usaa. we know what it means to serve. call today to talk about your insurance needs. hi. i'm ari melber. post about the show on twitter and facebook with the #thepoint. fallout of the trump administration abruptly firing those prosecutors. the point, trump's action is legal but what's the cost of chaos? also, pledging nobody will be worse off financially under his plan acr, a big claim.

donald trump vowed to give up his presidential salary. is he following through? we contacted the white house and the treasury and we have a special report on the point with the answer for you. we begin with the story that the trump administration does not want to be big news, seeing it came friday afternoon, removal of 46 federal prosecutors across the nation, including the prosecutor who oversees manhattan and trump tower, preet bharara. he refused to resign and today a new statement about why he refused the order. the firing is normal. >> u.s. attorneys presently in position will know where they stand and we can begin to build a team that reflects a department of justice that represents my views and the views of president clinton.

>> the trump administration has the authority, like any other administration. but this change came abruptly, causing avoidable havoc, right after fox news' cited conspiracy theories that deep states undermining trump and called on the president to fire those very prosecutors. >> for weeks we've been warning you about the deep state obama hold over government bureaucrats who are hell bent on destroying this president, president trump. tonight it's time for the trump administration to begin to purge these saboteurs before it's too late. duncan hunter, take a look what he said earlier today. >> overall, i think that they're dealing with people within the department of justice, within the fbi, within the department of interior. >> to be fair, the white house is denying this move had anything to do with sean h hannity.

other odd parts are leaking out, the ap reporting that the trump administration tried to reach out to preet bharara, still the prosecutor overseeing new york and trump tower, the decision s that he shouldn't talk directly to the psident. bharara made this unusual move not to tender a requested resignation. he says he was then fired. tonight we can tell you sunday he's sharing the first clues of at least his view of what happened. bharara releasing a statement on twitter, likening his firing to a controversial decision by the state's governor to shutting down a commission looking into corruption. it's not that bharara is saying something illegal occurred but that commission was shut down in the middle of an investigation.

president-elect had asked him to remain on the job. >> we had a good meeting. i said i would absolutely consider staying on. i agreed to stay on. i have already spoken to senator sessions, who, as you know, has been nominated to be the attorney general. he also asked that i stay on and i expect to be continuing the work. >> some democrats know bharara is the head of the office that would handle trump's dealings. >> when they asked about the monuments clause and possible violations of it and the u.s. attorney's relationship to that, i think that had, perhaps, something to do with it. >> you think there might be a connection? >> there very well may be. >> for his part, bharara is not maleable. his critics and supporters alike say he sticks to his guns.

>> any time a public official elected by the people is arrested it's a big deal. i think it goes to a core problem of honesty and integrity in the state legislature. they decide a lot of things that matter to people. see somebody who basically has sold his office to line his pockets and compromise his integrity and ethics with respect to how to make decisions on all those issues that affect people's lives it's a big problem and big problem for democracy. >> here is where this story stands right now this evening. former prosecutor beginning to hint at why he insisted on being fired. the white house with no explanation as to why the president tried to call him or much about the details that trump's doj thought that call was a bad idea. inquiries into trump's campaign ties to russia remain open with the attorney general recused from those and a slue of federal

prosecutors out of the picture. some move to behind these firings to say it's another saturday night massacre. a new administration can pick its own prosecutors. this was no massacre. but it sure is looking like a mess. we've got a special panel for this developing story. form former federal prosecutor who served with bharara and harry siegle from the daily news who first broke this story that preet was not going quietly. what did you find and why does it matter for anyone watching who doesn't live in new york, who doesn't follow all these characters but learning there might be national implications? >> donald trump, you're right, this is very normal to take the u.s. attorneys and remove them. it isn't what he did. it's the way he did it. yet he has not nominated a single replacement. but he met with preet and told him in november, you're staying. and significantly, i reported in

the daily beast when i broke the news that preet was not going to resign that he talked to sessions this week and was told that he wasn't going anywhere. there's all these questions about why. >> so your rortinghows that as of this week, the attorney general left mr. bharara with the impression he was staying. then you have the white house phone call and full firings. this is a story a lot of people are interested in. you broke it. can you tell us where your sources came from? were they saying this is what's happening or this is concerning? >> they were saying this is concerning. trump's phone call is less concerning. presumably he's calling, like the two hold overs he's keeping, the next attorney deputy generals, and presumably he called preet as a courtesy to say, hey, you're out. as he's used to running a small family business, he would have that instinct. i'm more worried about the

hannity part. he got word this is coming and is reacting to something and not causing it to happen. two things that we know that happened -- >> your theory would be that on fox news, sean hannity heard this was coming and wanted to sound like he was making it happen? >> yes. >> interesting. joyce, tell us about your view of this as a former prosecutor and those who vo haven't followed mr. bharara's career, why should they care? >> the independence of the justice department is one of the cornerstones of our democracy. preet has always been a standout when it comes to understanding that independence is really the coin of the realm here. he has a track record, long time, of prosecuting public corruption, terrorism, drug cases without any fear of favoritism. so the idea that one of the u.s. attorneys, who has a track record of almost eight years of

unbending independence would be targeted for firing is really difficult to understand. what makes preet different from the other u.s. attorneys is that he met with the presint. the president asked him to stay on. and then suddenly preet's told he's fired. you have to ask yourself, what changed? yn the answer to that question. i'm sure preet doesn't know why he was fired. it's troubling and should be troubling to everyone in our country. >> i appreciate the precision in what you're saying we know and don't know. are you raising the prospect that would be potentially inappropriate that he was removed because of some case he might have been working on? >> there's a longstanding understanding in the justice department about how these transitions occur. so when the obama u.s. attorneys came on board, for instance, you had pat fitzgerald in chicago. in the middle of the public corruption investigation into the then governor rob

blagojevich and he stayed on. similarly in north carolina, george holding, bush u.s. attorney, republican, stayed on to complete a public corruption case into democrats. the whole idea here is that you don't want these transitions to take place in a manner that's disruptive. when u.s. attorneys believe that they got a little bit of time to transition their offices, most of them understood that there would be a period of time before their successors were nominated. when that happens on a friday afternoon with two hours for people to clean out their offices, you're interfering with the morale in the u.s. attorneys' offices, interfering with ongoing investigations and with the administration of justice. >> senator? >> what's important to know is who is at the top matters. bitter rivalry between the two offices. the amount of corruption cases sky rocketed. it's not just whoever you put in

those shoes will do the job. now in albany, he shook albany to its foundation. >> you worked with people who are in jail now? >> i definitely work with a lot of people who were worried about him and who asked me all the time, what's he like? what's he after? what do you think he will do next, as if no one would go after those cases unless they had altieulterior motive. two most powerful people, senate majority leader and leaders from both houses. this does not square with wanting to drain the swamp, those who were corrupt in a fearless manner and wiretapping politicians wasn't something that used to happen routinely. something you reserve for the mafia. he and loretta lynch helped to change that. to throw a person out like that so abruptly tells me we should be concerned with whether the president wants to drain the swamp and go after corruption because few did it better than preet bharara.

>> the president got the unusual meeting going at trump tower. the kanye meeting was unusual, the preet meeting was unusual. we call on you to investigate that trump enterprises do not receive payments and benefits from foreign entities. nothing about a letter coming into the office tells us what they were working on and you don't need to be a lawyer to know that. that is the different context here. 46 u.s. attorneys, why are we only talking about one or why are we talking about new york? it's not necessarily that we're new yorkers but the president's business empire is here. >> it's always been first among equals, among u.s. attorneys. look, here are the two things we know happened between trump's meeting and trump saying, actually, you're fired. we know, one, that word leaked. and this was not preet's intention, that there was an investigation into fox, that his

office was involved in, potentially involved in wiretapping, in hiding settlements. that's a pretty big thing. jeff sessions, second thing, gets beat up in his confirmation and after his confirmationut russia, about a bunch of stuff that's in preet's orbit and suddenly having somebody that's chuck schumer's guy, the one guy you're in the gth keep because he's respected across lines in new york, you start rethinking that. do i need this guy with his own brand who is looking at things around me, who i'm also told was looking at rudy giuliani, do i really need to keep him? >> joyce, harry raises the big question. i emphasize this, to be fair. it's only a question. it's a question of, again, if there might have been something that this office was working on. approximat preet is now a private citizen.

what can a federal prosecutor say or not say? >> no federal prosecutor is going to talk about ongoing investigations that are happening in their office. it would be a mistake to read preet's tweet that way. he's simply commenting on the parallel of his expectation that he would stay on as u.s. attorney and the moreland commission. both were announced with a lot of fanfare. both of them were expected to be tough on crime and last for some years' duration. i don't think that's any sort of improper comment. as to what they might have had going on in manhattan, a full range of corruption investigations going on in everything that happened in their jurisdiction. they are aggressive, rightfully aggressive and one hopes that that office is continuously protecting the american people because of the unusual jurisdiction that they have there. >> joyce vans, harry siegle and

tom kaminsky, thank you. can the doj be independent? by the way, account fbi stay out of politics for a minute? we have a debate on that later this hour. special report on "the point." donald trump promised with much fanfare to forego his salary when he took office. is he delivering? i investigated that issue and have the answer for you later tonight. kids to get a repair estimate. liberty did what? yeah, with liberty mutual all i needed to do to get an estimate was snap a photo of the damage and voila! voila! (sigh) i wish my insurance company had that... wait! hold it... hold it boys... there's supposed to be three of you... where's your brother? where's your brother? hey, where's charlie? charlie?! you can leave worry behind when liberty stands with you. liberty stands with you™ liberty mutual insurance

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justice department still not ready to name a special prosecutor and the doj is basically shorthanded. it's been more than a week since attorney general jeff sessions recused himself from the probe, as many called for, when he did not initial ly disclose communication with the russian ambassador.

now almost 50 new job opening at doj after friday's abrupt housecleaning of u.s. attorneys, which we've been reporting on. our question on the "the point" tonight, is doj even capable of figuring out how russia might have tampered with the u.s. election and whether there are crimes associated with that? let's get right to it. great folks on this. national security reporter for "the new york times" and author of "power wore wars:inside obama's post-9/11 presidency" and sean-carlo, aide to karl rove. karen, you've been reporting on many angles of this. where do you see these going, given the context of the staff at doj after tonight? >> first of all i'm not sure that a special prosecutor is really going to get to what i

think are the most relevant questions for americans. which is basically what exactly happened? how vulnerable are we? and how can we prevent this kind of thing from happening in the future? a special prosecutor at the justice department would basically be trying to figure out whether there had been a crime committed. at the same time,gressional investigations often are where these kinds of big questions have been looked at in history. but congress right now is so polarized and so partisan, it is really hard to see that really getting to sort of these kind of credible, nonpartisan answers to these questions. so, you talk to somebody like lee hamilton, who was the co-chairman of the iran-contra committee, later the vice chairman of the 9/11 commission. he makes what i think is a pretty interesting argument that this should be taken out of everybody's hands and put in the hands of some kind of independent commission. >> right. >> that would, in fact, have the

power to subpoena people and bring them in and, again, get to the really big questions. >> charlie, i think karen is raising the classic question right when you say do you want steak or do you want lobster. sometimes you have to choose. and sometimes you go surf and turf. what we're hearing from folks concerned about this, can you get the steak of the special prosecutor to look at whether federal crimes occurred, which is just one path and can you go surf and have a special investigation that would be broader, who did what, when, whether it was criminal or not, it was certainly problematic if it impacted the election. can you do both? >> absolutely, you can do both. there's a long history of having multiple cuts at a question. something coming from the hill, an independent commission. you might have, as you say, a criminal investigation. i think i would echo for your listeners her caution about the special council.

there's a certain fetishization as to whether that would be some magic independent investigator. there's no such thing as an independent criminal prosecution anymore. there was one created after watergate and that's what the iran-contra investigation was, whitewater, moni lewinsky investigation was. the law that created independent council that was truly not reporting to the president and his appointees, attorney general -- or acting attorney general, that law expired in 1999. they have day-to-day independence but at the end of the day can be overruled or fired by the president and his appointees. it doesn't really mean what it used to. >> absolutely. that law expired and was very controversial from both sides. having said that, back to you, charlie, one more time.

there is a view that patrick fitzgerald, dealing with the leak and former rove aide here so you get rebuttal time. the view was that that was a better approach involving the white house than having a day-to-day recused investigation. >> pat fitzgerald is a force of nature unto himself. whether he was just the u.s. attorney from chicago in his day-to-day job it matters who that person is and whether they have the title of "special" or not is of secondary importance. >> jean-carlo, you're special here. your thoughts on the wider question here? >> those of us in the white house at that time will remember the fitzgerald seemed to be an investigation in search of a crime. what was ultimately found to be true was that scooter libby had very little to nothing to do with the outing of valerie plame.

because he misrepresented some of the questions and as far as my understanding, things that didn't even relate to the investigation himself, he found himself a heap of trouble. i certainly hope that's not the path that any special counsel, special prosecutor -- >> i don't want to say this is the news, not the old. the actual outi of the a agent had a criminal component to it. >> i'm not an attorney. i would defer to those who are, who would know far better than i would. what i recall was at the sonset of that, we wanted to know who outed valerie plame and joe wilson, rather. the person who was attributed to the quotes made was richard armitage, hardly someone that anyone in the bush administration would accuse for doing something for blatantly partisan reasons. he was middle of the road and

patriot as -- that episode left a bad taste in people's mouths, not the least of which is scooter libby. >> i think he's good at his job because i'm confused now at what we're talking about. take a listen to john mccain on whether we have the aens. it goes to whether republicans will keep up the pressure. john mccain here. >> there's a lot of aspects with this whole relationship with russia and vladimir putin that requires further scrutiny. so far, i don't think the american people have gotten all the answers. in fact, i think there's a lot more shoes to drop from this centipede. >> to your earlier point, karen, on the big question, what should americans be worried about, that vladimir putin was trying to mess with us and could have done better than he imagined or there was greater potential collusion? >> what maerns should be worried about the most -- i do think

there are very few sort of independent people who would say this really tipped the balance in the election. that had this not happened, hillary clinton would be president today. but if they could do this with the election, what else can they do? you know, what other types of our electoral system or national security are vulnerable and how did it happen? i think those are -- whether you're a democrat, republican, or whether you voted for donald trump or hillary clinton or didn't vote at all, those are things that you should really be worried about. what's really, i think, of great concern at this point is that this is yet another big question that has gone in to the partisan cuisinart of washington and ended up with these two parties firing talking points at each other. >> we started with the surf and turf, ended with the cuisinart. your final thought. >> pretty murky area and it may

be that there's not going to be an answer that is satisfying, that any kind of commission or investigation can get out of this. what we know now is that there are these various contacts. a lot of that is based on metadata, russians that then pick up conversations that seem, you know, unclear of what was going on there. i wonder if, at the end of all this there will actually be an answer of, yes, we know what happened or it will remain muddled forever hanging over this country. >> i appreciate it. jean-carlo stays for later in the show. how is president trump trying to change the way people learn about crime? it's not exactly fake news but could be misleading if you're not in on the trick. a breakdown of the plan and whether it's normal or not. straight ahead.

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whether it targeted a particular victim but rather by who is doing the crime. here is a new program voiced that trump unveiled during his speech to congress. >> i have ordered the department of homeland security to create an office to serve american victims. the office is called v.o.i.c.e., victims of immigration crime engagement. we are providing a voice to those who have been ignored by our media and silenced by special interests. >> having the government count or publicize crimes by undocumented immigrants as opposed to all crimes is a posture that actually grew out of trump's campaign, where he emphasized immigrant crime, peopwith family families who have had someone killed by immigrants. >> i'm going to ask angel moms

to come join me on stage. these are amazing women. >> now as president, trump's directing dhs to regularly publicize a comprehensive list of criminal actions committed by aliens and trump wants those numbers out on a weekly basis. then take trump's resed travel ban. here is something that got less attentn, t new order also applies trump's campaign fixation on immigrant threats, it directs the government to publicize how many foreign nationals are charged with terrorism-related offenses in the u.s., how many foreign nationals are radicalized after entry into the u.s. and whether they conduct honor killings against women in the u.s. each of those crimes is horrific. we do want to know about them. trump's approach raises a question. shouldn't the government track and close all terror charges,

not just those against immigrants? if a woman is murdered in a so-called honor killing, shouldn't the government track and disclose that no matter who did the murder, immigrant or not? this is the obvious difference between looking at all the facts and looking only at the facts that you want. that's why experts on crime have scoffed at how the breit kbart website has a whole section called, quote, black crime. if you had an uneasy feeling of trump campaigning with family members of those killed by immigrants, that might be part of it. backing a candidate that's their right. but the government has a different obligation to patrol crime objectively. trump is trying to tilt government resources not based on the threat but based who did it. let's be fair, what about the counter argument? what if the facts show certain

groups are a greater risk? tsa focuses less on the elderly because they don't hijack planes. does that argument apply here? let's look at the facts. convictions of males inside thes who tend to commit more serious and violent crimes, native-born american men are incarcerated double the rate of immigrant men, less like to engage in violent or nonvlent anti-social behaviors. so the crime and stastics can be complex. this story is not. president trump campaigned on the perception that immigrant crimes with a huge problem. that's not supported by the data. now president trump is governing with the publicity plan so that people will hear about more crime by immigrants even if they aren't committing more crimes than other people. and that is not normal. now up next, megan trainer may have said it best. if your lips are moving then you're lying, lying, lying, baby. i didn't write the lyrics. that's how she said it. some trump officials in hot

water for lying to congress, which can be a crime. is there going to be accountability or is lying to congress one of those things people just get to do? we'll explain. also as promised, what our reporting found on donald trump's pledge that he will forego his salary, in the next hour. mom: oh no... tech: this mom didn't have time to worry about a cracked windshield. so she scheduled at safelite.com and with safelite's exclusive "on my way text" she knew exactly when i'd be there, so she didn't miss a single shot. i replaced her windshield giving her more time for what matters most. tech: how'd ya do? player: we won! tech: nice! that's another safelite advantage. mom: thank you so much! (team sing) safelite repair, safelite replace.

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and justice is, as any reasonable person will tell you, the finding of the truth. >> everything but the truth. what's the truth? >> i want the truth. >> you can't handle the truth. >> he's lying. he's just trying to get himself off the hook. >> most people will tell you it's hard to make a mistake. you just lie. >> it's not a lie, if you believe it. >> truth, justice and the american way. >> the truth, and that means, as you may have heard, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. if you ever have to testify in court you will take that oath and breaking it is criminal. when it comes to the same oath before congress looks like a

different story. jeff sessions said he never met with russians ambassadors during his confirmation hearing. trump officials are getting off the hook, experts tell us while regular americans are charged with perjury at times, lying before congress much, much safer. 2007 article from quinnipiac review, almost no one is prosecuted for lying to congress. senior editorf slate and christina greer at fordham university, political science. let's start with the reason. it is harder to prove perjury than just a note that someone said something false. >> well, i think you -- it goes to the core that you said at the very beginning. we have been kind of defining truth down with lightning speed. and i think now there's this real question of intent. and even for a perjury charge or for "the new york times"

alleging that someone lied, the question is, if we can't prove that someone intended to lie, then it's not a lie. and i think that more and more we're living in a world where we can never show intent. the popular rhetoric is we don't know what's in his head, in his heart. and so nobody lies. >> you put that so interestingly. you were describing, very precisely, the costanza defense. >> right. i think i'm even describing -- you may remember last week when folks were being called upon to defend donald trump's tweet about watergate and what we're hearing more and more is, well, he believed it as though then it's not false. i think we really, really want to realize that that slippage has now happened. that we all seem to be in agreement that if he didn't know he was lying, because he believes it, even if it's not true, it's not a lie. and that's the america we live in today. >> well, i don't know if -- i think i do live there. i don't know if i want to live

there. you're describing kind of a bonus for crazy. take a listen to a similar thing. did jeff sessions know he was being untruthful? was he knowledgeably being inaccurate when he said this? >> senator franken, i'm not aware of any of those activities. i have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and i did not have communications with the russians. >> this is highly problatic. i agree with lia in so many ways. what we're seeing now are people who are telling untruths if not flat-out lies and all they have to do is say oh, either i misspoke or i don't recall or, with this particular president, who has told us several times that he doesn't read. he doesn't like to read and he watches television all the time while he's eating his buckets of fried chicken and railing at the tv, what we're -- >> are you stereotyping him? >> no. these are facts, right? >> have you seen -- >> these are real fact.

>> to be fair he has posted photos of burgers and chicken. >> while watching television, right? >> to be fair he eats other things, i'm sure. >> i'm sure. >> go on. >> i shall. this is -- we're in a moment right now where we have a president who obviously can say, well, i didn't know, right? because he isn't reading briefings. he isn't going to meetings. he's actually giving himself a perfect shield in so many ways because he's actually not doing the job of the president. now when you have someone like devos, sessions and all these people who can't seem to recall really major events, things that they should have been prepped on by their lawyers or their confidants before these senate confirmation hearings or any of these meetings. so i think my frustration is that the american public seems to just acquiesce when they say i misspoke or can't remember. these are the things that you're misspeaking about that are r

really crucial. >> we talk about building a record and that's on the principle that the record matters. when people say in congress, for the record, they don't just mean this is a thing i say before i say something else. they mean this will be useful in accountability. here is tom price, saying something that was later found to not add up. >> they were available to every single individual that was an investor at the time. the reality is that everything that i did was ethical, above board, legal and transparent. the reason that you kn about these things is because we have made that information available in real time as required by the house ethics committee. >> in fact, some of the investment acts he had were special. not going too far down that rabbit hole, dahlia, what does it say if he can do the hearing, say something like this and we all just move on? >> i think that you're really, i think, hitting on something deep. that is how we destabilize

language and how we need these truth-seeking enterprises. this is what court does, what congressional hearings are meant to do. we're meant to believe we put all this stuff out there and some objective empirical truth emerges at the end. it's not just distincting what lie or truth means but these institutions that courts can no longer find truth. if you ask a gotcha question in a hearing, as apparently al franken did to jeff sessions you can say what you want in response and what isn't a gotcha question by that standard. i think it's really worrisome. i would add this. it's destabilizing here at home where we're trying to figure out what just happened. really? the president tweeted that? but think about foreign countries. they're trying to determine whether these tweets are true or false, whether congressional

hearings have value, whether jous judicial findings still have meaning and we're immersed in this project of instability but the rest of the world hasn't changed. they kind of count on us to be truthful in our dealings with one another. that's terrifying. >> you put your finger on it, the notion of kind of a factual nyalis nyalism. >> both of you guys stay, i'm glad to say. n. theory the fbi gathers facts and stays out of politics and in theory it reports to the doj and, in theory, leaking information from an fbi inquiry is a crime. if those sound like theories that aren't in practice right now and you're wondering why the fbi seems to be in the middle of so much politics, stay tuned for our political history panel with rick stengle who in 2010

interviewed wikileaks founder julian assange.

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legalzoom. legal help is here. this week, there was an interagency battle between the fbi and the department of juste with director james comey asking doj to refute the president's bizarre accusation that obama personally wiretapped ham. james kochlt comey and the fbi work for the justice department. he often acts like he reports to no one. extra e-mails in the clinton case which broke doj rules and hardly the first time the fbi has meddled in american politics. j. edgar hoover spied on the

kennedys or the watergate leaks that brought down nixon, senior fbi official mark felt. they may have been of the fbi deciding for itself what is best for our democracy. here with us now, we have a super history panel, jeremy bash, former cia chief of staff and national security analyst for us. dalla lithwick, rick stingle, former editor of time and charles kyzer. jeremy, the counterargument on behalf of the deep state, if you will, which is leaks are unavoidable. people are doing their best and everything is infused with politics in washington. by that defense, do you still have concerns about the fbi today? >> well, you have to have concerns about any organization that has as much power, as much investigative power as the federal bureau of investigation.

but i think it is also important to note that the modern fbi is a professional organization and they really have two missions, not just criminal investigation, but also national security investigations and we rely on the professionals at the fbi and they are professionals and they are for the very vast majority nonpartisan, apolitical people who are responsible for national security investigations. i think the watch word in a political season is restraint, that'shy i think the director digo too far in talking about the clinton e-mail issue back when his investigation wrapped up. he certainly stepped out too far on the eve of the election, and that's why i think they have to show a lot of restraint here in the coming weeks and months on the investigation that we know is under way on trump's organization. >> dalla? >> yeah, i mean, i just think -- i think you made this point initially. if the hallmark of the fbi is legitimacy, if it is neutrality, it seems like director comey sort of does this weird performance art of neutrality,

which is, like, equally bashing both sides, undetermined intervals, he'll go after hillary clinton, but then after donald trump and then release her documents and then he'll say, oh, you know, somebody at doj better correct that trump tweet. and i think this spectacular show of bipartisanship or nonpartisanship is exactly the inverse of what we need right now, which is not performance art of neutrality, but neutrality and fact. i'm not sure what this is about. but i do think that in a very, very partisan climate, it doesn't make the fbi look above the fray, it makes it look as though it is absolutely in the fray up to its eyeballs. >> that is so well put, and speaks to the difference, charles, between trying to get a reputation for something, and doing something. and anyone who understands the media or washington knows that sometimes the people doing the thing best might not have the best clips.

dalla is putting forth the idea that james comey might be on the opposite end of that spectrum. >> i think james comey is -- has many great qualities and he was admired enough by barack obama to be appointed to this job. on the other hand, i think his performance last year demonstrates this is not the man you want to have in charge of a highly charged political investigation. the way he behaved last year was unconscionable, both in july and in the fall. even people like charles grassley said they were surprid by what he did in october. i just think everything he did last year is an argument for a special prosecutor to investigate what is going on between russia and the trump administration. >> i don't disagree with charlie about that. i do think one thing that we as media folk tend to really underestimate is that these are people who are running big multibillion dollar agencies that have lots and lots of people who work for them. he, first of all, thinks about how he's going to run the fbi and the people he works with have opinions about how he's

doing that, he's running that agency. i think what he did, which i think was uncoverageabnscionabl do with pressure from the inside and i think he refuted basically the fact that president has said that barack obama tapped him, also comes from internal pressure at the fbi. and i think we -- i guess we say, i think we discount for that. >> that's a great point. yet, jeremy, that's a point where i think rick might be right and that would still make jim comey potentially wrong. i heard from multiple law enforcement sources that he was never about swinging the election, but he was about trying to tamp down concerns from within his agency that they weren't hard enough on hillary. he wrote an e-mail that might have been -- excuse me, wrote a letter about e-mails before an election that may have been technically warranted given the open ended nature of his initially probably inappropriate senate testimony, that's house testimony, a mouthful, and yet in so doing was trying to show those people who were so mad, look, i can give it to her, and

at the time, like, i guess most of the western world, still expected she would prevail. the problem with that is, as soon as anyone admits he's doing that to make people in his agency happy and not to enforce the law, he's got a problem. >> no disagreement here, ari. i concur, why i think i said he stepped out way too far. the really operative question is would two wrongs make a right. would we want him out there in an -- >> i know thenswo tt. i learned that in law school, two wrongs don't make a right. >> i think we need the bureau involved. unless you can compel testimony and review documents, this investigation is really not going to go anywhere. i think to get to the bottom of the matter, to understand whether or not and to the extent russia was colluding with people in the trump organization, and how russia was interfering, we need the bureau involved. >> you're talking about -- you're talking about facts, the fbi is supposed to find facts. listen to white house press secretary spicer on this whole question about the facts on the

wiretapping. >> do you believe that president obama -- >> you know, i get that's a cute question to ask. my job is to represent the president and to talk about what he's doing and what he wants. >> not a cute question. it is the question. >> it is the question and pretty remarkable when you have a white house press secretary who absolutely refuses to confirm things said by his president over and over again as he did in that clip which makes it pretty obvious to the rest of us there is no evidence whatsoever for what trump was saying. >> dalla, briefly? >> just that there is no such thing as neutral anymore, ari. i think that the president has gone out of his way to really kind of terrorize the intelligence community, and i think that in many, many ways we're seeing responses to that that are just unlike anything we have ever seen before. this say really strange posture to be in. you're supposed to be aligned with the president, not constantly on defense. >> right. and not saying, like, how dare you ask me if the president's telling the truth. it is, like, yeah.

i want to thank you for joining "the point" this hour. in the next hour, we're talking health care, a story we haven't hit yet. the tough sell republicans are making for what might be called trump care. proponents preparing for a long fight. donald trump's presidential salary. on the campaign trail, he promised to forgo it. is the president keeping that promise? we have done an investigation and we'll tell you what we found. all that and much more on "point." stay with us. are your allergies holding you back or is it your allergy pills? break through your allergies. holding you back introducing flonase sensimist. more complete allergy relief in a gentle mist you may not even notice. using unique mistpro technology, new flonase sensimist delivers a gentle mist to help block six key inflammatory substances that cause your symptoms. most allergy pills only block one. and six is greater than one. break through your allergies. new flonase sensimist. ♪ ♪ everything your family touches sticks with them.

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welcome back to "the point." our special coverage of trump's first 100 days. we have an effort to find out. we have a report on the answer coming up. first, health care, a study claimed today by the head of hhs saying nobody will be financially worse off under the gop health care plan. >> i firmly believe that nobody