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tv   The Rachel Maddow Show  MSNBC  July 19, 2018 6:00pm-7:00pm PDT

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we reported, there was a form given to a lot of parents who had to decide whether to deport with and without their parents. and they're worried that those parents were being forced to make a difficult decision before the case played out. these are now lawyers rushing to get to these parents before they're forced to make the decision without all the information. >> thank you for your great reporting. that that's" all in" this evening. >> thank you for joining us this hour. you should know we have a really big guest here for the interview. even if you don't like me, you might be interested in hearing from the person we're hosting for the interview. i'm just saying. stress out, bear with it through me. somebody better is coming up. >> i will admit that dan coats had already delivered to be what
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i will say, it wasn't something he said. it was for the gargantuan nine-second long pregnant pause that he made us all wait through, having no idea what was coming next before he finally gave his answer. >> have you talked about this issue with admiral rogers? [ silence ] >> that is something that i would like to withhold, that question at this particular point in time. >> one of the greatest trump era sound bites thus far. the director of national intelligence dan coats being asked of the senate about president trump putting pressure on him and pressure on the national security agency about
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the russia investigation. so that was senator richard blumenthal asking dan coats in an open hearing. so when you both got pressure on the russia issue, did you ever talk to each other about that? have you ever talked about this issue with admiral rogers? at which point the pause at the end of the question becomes pregnant, waits nine months, and then gives birth to, oh, my god, i can't talk about that here. one of my favorite sound bites of the trump era before today. now, national director dan coats has another hall of fame nominee. for the best sound bites of our insane era in american politics. it came in the context of a fairly edgy conversation that he had with our own andrea mitchell at a security conference today. i'm going to play a little of the back and forth. the first thing is them talking about the nerve agent, assassination and attempted
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assassination that's were carried out in britain that britain believes were carried out by russian military intelligence. >> today brits reporting that cctv cameras picked up possible suspects in that case. what is the risk that such action could be taken, such targeted killings could be taken against defectors or other assets in the u.s.? >> it is a risk. the russians do bold things, extraordinary things. it should have told the world, if you think the russians are trying to be good neighbors, this is the kind of thing they still do. by the way, the former director of the kgb is the one leading their nation. >> so again, we should be very wary around the former kgb leader who is leading their nation. >> a lot of things point to him.
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>> in helsinki, the president was alone with putin for two hours, more than two hours with only translators. basically, how do you know what happened? you were on the dark side of the moon. how do you have any idea what happened in that meeting? >> you're right. i don't know what happened in that meeting. he asked me how that ought to be conducted. i would have suggested a different way. that's not my role. that's not my job. so it is what it is. >> is there a risk that vladimir putin could have recorded it? >> that risk is always there. >> they're having that kind of a conversation. talking about some tough things. and then there is this moment where andrea mitchell has to interrupt her own interview to present some actual breaking news that is of relevance to her
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conversation with him in that moment. >> i do want to say we have some breaking news. the white house has announced on twitter that vladimir putin is coming to the white house in the fall. >> say that again? >> vladimir putin -- >> did i hear you? >> yeah, yeah. >> okay. >> that's gonna be special. >> the white house announcement andrea referenced earlier said putin was invited to washington this fall. were you aware of that, i want to clarify. >> based on my reaction, i wasn't aware of that. >> what do you think the agenda should be for that meeting? >> oh, goodness. first of all, they won't ask me. >> would you recommend there not
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be a one-on-one without note takers? >> if write asked that question, i would look for a different way of doing it. >> that is how they learned and that is how the director of national intelligence learned, surprise, russian president vladimir putin is coming to washington. soon. and that's how we learned that the dni does not believe the next conversation between trump and putin should take place without a note taker in the room. which is what happened between trump and putin earlier this week. today in the house, there was an effort by the democrats in that committee to actually subpoena testimony from the woman you see spot shadowed here. she was the translator. the only other american in the room during that trump/putin meeting this week. of course, she was busy translating. she had a job to do. a hard job. she was translatintranslating. she wasn't keeping an official record. you can see why it might be practically problem attic to
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call on her to be america's official record of what happened at that summit. but it's an open question whether that's more problematic than us and everybody, including the national intelligence director, not having any idea what that in that room and what the president promised on behalf of all of us. so far we have no record of that. and it is not, it is not an esoteric concern. the russian government continued syria that ere is a big new was agreed to verbally between putin and trump at that summit. we have no idea what that might be. russia insists that it happened. the white house has given no indication of what that might be. the top u.s. military leadership at centcom explained on the record that centcom has no idea what that might be. so if the u.s. military is supposed to be doing something
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different now around syria, or if military conditions in syria are about to change materially when we have lots of americans there in the middle of it, so far, the u.s. military doesn't know what it is trump might have signed them up for. in terms of any such changes. russia says there's plenty coming. the republicans rejected the efforts to get testimony from the translator. so we will continue to have no record at all of what happened in that meeting. that that, as dan coats admitted, maybe there's a tape. maybe the russians taped trump in that meeting which the russians can use for their own purposes. they can even presumably doctor such a tape if they wanted to if they wanted to make it appear that trump said something in that meeting that he didn't say but they wanted to make it say that he said that. why not? there's no other american who can corroborate what happened. why wouldn't the russians make up something absolutely to their advantage. and maybe even put out a tape
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that proves it. we're at their mercy. we'll find out when we find out. anything could happen. as proof of also know from a die that this happened today in washington. this is what we tend to think of as mobley. your eyes do not deceive you. that is a 98-0 vote. that is the senate voting unanimously that the president may be shouldn't send former american diplomats and other u.s. officials and u.s. citizens over to russia to be interrogated by the russian government just because vladimir putin told trump that's what he wanted. it is still almost impossible to believe that the white house did really spend a few days thinking over that request from vladimir putin at the summit earlier this week. the white house acknowledged that yes, that's what putin asked. there was some conversation about that. the white house acknowledged that the president was meeting with his team and talking over that request from russia.
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incredibly, they could appear to have mulled over the possibility of doing. this they mulled it over for several days. but after a robust outcry and this 98-0 vote in the senate, the president apparently finally thought better about it. the white house put out a short complimentary statement about vladimir putin's sincerity in making this request to get his fangs into former ambassador michael mcfaul and other officials here wanted to turn over on a platter. despite the sincerity, the white house announced they have finally concluded, at least this time, that we won't be sending anybody to them. i do want to point out one thing about that demand from the russian government. for a lot of good reason, the focus has mostly been on former u.s. ambassador michael mcfaul
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whom vladimir putin has seen as an enemy for years. for all the same reasons that putin hated hillary clinton with a passion, he hated mcfaul every day and twice on sundays. but he delivered a pretty substantial list of a bunch of americans whom they wanted trump to produce and hand over to putin alongside michael mcfaul. a whole bunch of merge citizens who are associated with other things russia doesn't like like sanctions against russia. but also these two guys. these two guys were both on the list. and both of these guys, so you know, are associated with the russia scandal. and specifically, they are associated with the christopher steele dossier of intelligence memorandum bows the trump campaign's alleged links to russia in its campaign to influence the election. david kramer is on the left. he was sent by john mccain right after the election to go collect
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a copy of the steele dossier. kramer went and got it. took to it mccain who then took a one-on-one meeg with james comey. and the guy on the right, jonathan winer, september of 2016, so before the election, winer prepared a two-page summary of the content of christopher steele's intel. and he gave that little summary of what steele had found to senior leadership at the state department who have since said that they too like mccain then handed that information over to the fbi. so they are certainly not central figures in the russia scandal and the expose of the russia scandal that was related to the christopher steele memos. but they do have a role to play in that part of the scandal. they both had small key roles to play and they were on russia's list this week, too.
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we learned today, finally, thursday afternoon that the united states will not be handing over any americans to russia. the fact they even considered it, which they did for days, just, don't let that get down played. the fact they considered it for days is mind-boggling. even to the appointment that it eclipsed partisanship in washington which is in itself quite something. will vladimir putin be mad at our president for rejecting that request? to hand over americans so putin can interrogate them? it seems like the white house was bending over backward to not make putin mad about that. president trump praised this demand from putin as an incredible offer when they first discussed it on monday in helsinki. then the degrees sit on it and openly consider it for four straight days. when they did have to announce today that, oh, sorry, it will
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be a no, they made sure to praise putin for the nature in which his demand was made, even though they had to say no to it. in case that wasn't enough sugar to coat this particular decision, the white house then immediately follow one that surprise announcement vladimir putin is coming to the white house. so maybe that made it go down easier. now we all await this visit to the white house which will be timed to the mid terms. the white house is saying this fall. but you know, early november is washington in washington. while this terrible new series of a man in the high castle plays out in our real lives now, and we await this new visit, we are waiting for some other shoes to drop with some of the legal cases around the russia attack and the question of american cooperation. and some of what we're waiting
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for is fairly straightforward. the fell criminal child is due to start in less than a week. potential jurors are expected to show up for the paul manafort case, starting on tuesday. also the bombshell indictment. we don't expect the military agents to show up any time soon but we are waiting some revv plagss we expect to derive if that indictment. for example, it also says bluntly, or or about august 15, 2016, the conspirators, posing as goosifer 2.0, received a request for stolen documents from a candidate for the u.s. congress. based on the timing, this means it was a general election, congressional candidate in 2016
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who solicited and sent the candidate stolen documents ahead of the 2016 election. that american congressional candidate who may or may not be a serving member of congress hampton yet been named. clearly that's someone known to the justice department. and so we're waiting for that shoe to drop whenever the justice department chooses to drop it. and then there's the unnamed american who plays a starring, if somewhat romantically tragic role. in the maria butina case. these only russian who has been arrested and held in u.s. custody. we expect to see her back this court in a few days. since her indictment, the "washington post" has added some reporting about u.s. person one who was described as a co-conspirator with her in that indictment. she's charged in that indictment with operating as a secret agent
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of the russian federation in this country. u.s. person one has been identified in multiple news reports. he is paul ericson, a conservative political activist for the strongest story in republican politics. he was described in court by the defense lawyer as her boyfriend. that said, prosecutors have alleged in their court filings that it might not actually be true love. that they have documentation that at least from her perspective, their relationship, their living together was not a sincere love affair. it was something she was doing somewhat resentfully as part of her covert russian operation for the russian government. according to the "washington post" reporting, on u.s. person one, check this out. ericson lobbied for a role in trump's transition team and
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complained after the election when he ran into a problem with his security clearance. since we know he was sleeping with a russian spy, i'm kind of happy about the security clearance process in that case. just as an aside. even without official credentials though, eriksson pressed trump donors and former campaign officials pushing for top positions for people he thought especially qualified. one person recalled his lobbying to get k.t. mcfarland named as an adviser to michael flynn. he was named as cohabitating with and being a co-conspirator with this accused russian secret agent who is now being held if jail awaiting flil washington. according to the "washington post's" reporting, this guy who was very personally involved in her and potentially in on her scheme, he recommended that the new deputy national security
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adviser should be k.t. mcfarland? that was an unusual choice. she had been involved in american politics. she had worked in earlier white houses but when i say earlier, i mean way, way, way earlier. she's been an occasional contributor to fox news but barely on the periphery of even weird trump politics. not a high profile figure. not a heavyweight figure by any stretch of the imagination. nonetheless, after the recommendations in part from maria butina's fake boyfriend, k.t. mcfarland was troemd a very high level job. deputy security adviser, essentially runs the national security process in the white house. it is the operations office here runs the whole national security council and runs intelligence through national security process. it is hundreds of people.
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it is the kind of job where you work 30 hours a day. she always seemed like an odd fit for that job. they gave merry job. we now know on the recommendation of maria butina's boyfriend. she didn't last long. she left in the back wash after mike flynn was fired and then criminally charged in conjunction with the mueller investigation related to his contacts with the russian government. so this opened a whole new thing now. remember how the flynn disaster unfolded, right? just a few days after the trump inauguration. not even a week into the new inauguration. flynn was enter sbrud contacts we had the russian government. two days after that fbi interview, the acting attorney general of the united states, sally yates, called the white house counsel's office and expressed with some urgency that there was a matter some national security concern. she needed to discuss in person with the white house counsel.
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she went in person to the white house. she met with the white house down and she delivered serious concerns about mike flynn related to his contacts with the russian government and most urgently, the jarell's belief that he, while serving in that incredibly sensitive job with access to the highest parts of the government, the justice department believed he was at that moment compromised by the russian government. they had leverage that they could potentially use to compel him to do, take your pick. take action against the national security interests of the united states. whatever the russians might want him to do. they had leverage. he was compromised. sally yates goes with that urgent warning and even to this day we don't have much clarity why they kept him on as national security adviser for another 18 days. it's been 18 months since then. we still don't know why they
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did. and sally yates explained both in testimony to the senate and in public interviews that she was somewhat flummoxed by that white house decision to keep him on. >> we were very concerned that the underlying conduct and explained the compromising situation the russians and told him specifically that we were giving him this information so they could act. >> it was a national. >> you had no doubt about that. >> you wanted that. >> we expected the white house to act. >> do you expect them on act quickly? >> yes. >> there was urgency to the situation. >> do you think he should have been fired? >> whether he is fired is a decision for the president of the united states to make but it doesn't seem like that's a person who should be sitting in the national security adviser position. >> if you almost been fired and
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you hadn't seen any action over the course of the 18 days, was there more your role as acting attorney general would have permitted you to do? >> i would have gone back to the white house. >> you were still the acting attorney general, you would have been at the white house. >> i would have been knocking on the door again. i would have been concerned that we have a national security adviser who was compromised. i couldn't have controlled it but i would have gone back to him. >> what sort of questions have you asked? >> what have you done? >> it's been a mystery all along. clearly a miss toy had her. why the white house didn't act for more than two weeks after this very urgent national security threat was brought to their attention. but now 18 months later, another part of this is up folding. we learned that despite assurances that flynn acted alone, they said he was a rogue official. nobody knew what he was doing.
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we learned in december that he aktd hadn't acted alone. his dem, k.t. mcfarland, had known about flynn's secret contacts with the russian government before, during and after those contacts happened. those were the same contacts that he pled guilty to lying to the fbi about. k.t. mcfarland would also later bligh her knowledge of flynn's contact with the russian government when she was questioned about it by the u.s. senate. one of the weird long tales of this story is that after she got ousted as the national security adviser, following the flynn debacle, the administration tried to name her as an ambassador as part of the process, she appears to have lied to the u.s. senate and denied any knowledge of flynn's contact with the u.s. senate. her e-mails show in fact she was in on it. flynn was not acting alone. he was not even alone in lying about it. k.t. mcfarland at this time too.
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and as of now, based on this reporting, we know that u.s. person one, reportedly paul erickson, maria butina's fake boyfriend that prosecutors say she was romantically involved with, just for the sake of spying boyfriend, according to the "washington post," he's the one who recommended k.t. mcfarland for the job in the first place which is a job you might not have ever expected her to get. sally yates was acting attorney general when she tried to warn the white house with urgency about a senior official in the white house being compromised by the russian government. she was driven by the urgency of needing to get that official out of there because of the danger that represented to our country. the white house we know at the time didn't see that it same way. how does it change the story? how does it affect our understanding of the lack of urgency to now know that flynn
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wasn't alone. that flynn's deception around this was not something that he was alone, and there appears to be a connection which the justice department apparently just broke up. sally yates is the first frern whom we americans got the news about the people in the highest levels of the administration being compromised by the russian government while they served as u.s. officials. today that warning has a whole new resonance. sally yates joins us for the interview. next. ♪
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i am very happy to say that joining us for the interview is sally yates, the former deputy of the united states, a career prosecutors and justice department official with nearly 30 years service at justice before she was fired by the president in january 2017. miss yates, i have really been looking forward to talking to you. i know you don't do a ton of interviews so i realize it is an act of trust and i appreciate it.
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let me start by talking a little about mike flynn. he's awaiting sentencing nowful he has pled guilty of lying to the fbi. you've testified to the senate and you've done several public interviews and you've talked about the circumstances in which you brought the warning to the white house. right at the start of the trump administration. is there anything you can tell us now, or even just remind us now, about the urgency with which you warned the white house about him? for me, i'm asking because of this persistent mystery about why the white house waited so long, waited 18 days before they took any action in response to your warning. is there anything you can tell us that might shed light on why that happened? >> i can't figure it out myself as to why they took all that time. i came knocking on the door telling them they had a serious problem with their national security adviser. that their national security adviser could be compromised with the russians. and i came back the next day to give them even more information about that and made it really
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clear to them that we were telling them this so they could act. this was not a casual heads up. not an fyi. we're giving you this information so that you can act. and then nothing happened. >> when you say compromised by the russians, i have read enough spy novels and watched enough bad television about these sorts of things, to imagine a real sort of underworld mafia connotation to that. like wove got something on you. we will expose that thing in some way that you're so averse to that we can make do you things you would otherwise never do. is that, that's like the raw movie style version of compromise. how does it work in the real world? what are the potentially practical consequences of the kind of compromise you were worried about with flynn? >> well, the russians are pretty crafty with this. they can do the overt threats like you just described there but also the more subtle forms.
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they can just let you know that they have evidence that would be embarrassing and troubling to you. and here, were this to become a big public thing about whether or not general flynn had been talking with the russians about sanctions, it had become such a big public thing and there were denials out there about various members of the white house, all the way to the vice president, saying this had not happened. then when the russians had what we expected were recordings that would prove that it did, that's the kind of thing you can hang over someone's head. and no administration should want their national security adviser to be in a position where he or she is compromised with the russians. >> what they can do the w the russians is get him theoretically to hand over intelligence they shouldn't have, the names of spies we have in moscow working for u.s. intelligence. >> any number of things. or even more subtly, not necessarily a specific quid pro quo but they could put the
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national security adviser in a position where he never wants to get crosswise with the russians. >> so he inclines himself toward the russian point of view as a matter of course rather than an individual transactional thing. >> right. >> reason this has resonance, i have things to ask you. i would be remiss if i didn't mention the political environment we're in this week in which i think a lot of people in the country have been shaken by the president's interactions with president putin in helsinki. and people are now quite openly discussing the prospect and what it might mean for us as a country and the imperative as a country if president trump is compromised by the russian government. i've been trying to talk about what that might mean for a national security adviser and you opened our eyes to that prospect. if the president were compromised, that's an open concern right now, how much worse is the risk? >> well, to state the obvious, exponentially worse.
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you don't want any of your high level officials but certainly not the president. i think all of us were really shaken by the events that took place in helsinki. wasn't really just a rhetorical smantic faux pas that we were talking about. it was what his words reflected. they revealed what our president is thinking, how he feels and where his loyalties lie. so i think the startling reality is that we are faced with a situation where our president, the person with whom we have entrusted to lead this country isn't all in for our nation. >> do you believe we will ever know whether the president is not just in love, but he is compromised? do you believe that truth will ever be known? >> i don't know what the status of the investigation is.
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that special counsel mueller is conducting now so it is hard to know. >> as a citizen? as an observer of these processes? not asking about any special information you might have come across in your role. you're a private citizen. you have the feelings watching helsinki. do you feel optimistic that this will come to light? if there is something to come to light? >> sure, if there is something to come to light, i think all americans, republicans, democrats, everything in between, ought to want it to come to light. you know, this is about the russians stealing, or attempting to steal our democracy. this is not a partisan thing. this is core american stuff. and all of us should want to get to the bottom of that. >> wanting and expecting are two different things and i understand how you just maneuvered around that. >> i'm a lawyer. >> a very good one, too. we'll be back sally yates, former acting attorney general
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back with us is sally yates. thank you for being here. last month we got to see a letter that was sent from the president's lawyers and ended up getting published in the "new york times" and that letter included references to you. references to memos that the white house counsel don mcafghan had written about his interviews
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about mike flynn. in those memos, according to the president's lawyers, he says, when you came to the white house to warn, you never said that flynn was under investigation. the lawyer letter cites the white house understanding that there was no fbi investigation of flynn. and that seems like maybe a fine point. the reason it ends up being important and the reason the president's lawyers are writing about it to the special counsel's office, there is an idea that it may look more like obstruction of justice on the part of the president if when he went to the fbi director and lay off flynn, he knew there was an open investigation into michael flynn. so the white house counsel is saying, you never indicated that flynn was the subject of an investigation. can you shed any light on that? >> well, yeah. when i testified before the senate judiciary committee, i talked about the two different meetings witness mr. mcigan.
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and he asked me whether or not the investigation was criminal or whether or not it was a counter intelligence investigation. i testified that tt follow-up meeting, he wanted to know whether if they took any action, it would impact the investigation. they didn't want to impact anything in the investigation. so he and i talked back and forth in both meetings about impact on investigation. >> and if the president in that context, having been advised presumably by his white house counsel that there was an investigation concerning the national security adviser, if the president then went to the director of the fbi and said ease up on mike flynn who he knows is the subject of an investigation, how much legal wiggle room is there?
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>> i'm not going to get into a legal definition of obstruction. that's up to bob mueller in his investigation. certainfully what we know, it sounds like there was an effort to influence the investigation. >> i mentioned at the top of the show that there's been some new reporting related to a new indictment handed down, not by the special counsel's office about maria butina and this u.s. person who has been identified circumstancely in press reports. what has been reported by the "washington post," that person involved with this alleged russian agent recommended the deputy national security adviser for her post, k.t. mcfarland. cynic the flynn affair and your role in it, we have learned that mr. flynn doesn't appear to have been alone when he contacted the russian government.
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when he made the contacts that he leader pled guilty to lying to the fbi about, in setting those up, she appears to have not been truthful with the senate when she was asked about those. if flynn wasn't acting alone, does that change anything materially? does that make the case about flynn resonate in any more or less worrying way? if there was somebody involved with him and he wasn't on his own? >> i don't know if it is more or less worrying. if there are other people involved in this, then our justice department ought to want to find that out. to get to the bottom of it. it sounds like that's what's going on with special counsel mueller's investigation on this and general flynn's cooperation this. >> he is awaiting sentencing. his sentencing has been pushed back few times. what should we read into that? >> that's common when someone is continuing to provide evidence or cooperate. that you put off their
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sentencing until all the cooperation is complete so the judge when he or she is sentencing the defendant, has the benefit of knowing everything that they did in an effort to assist in the investigation. >> so the longer it goes on, the more cooperation we can infer. >> yes. >> okay. i'll be right back with sally yates. need a change of scenery?
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the kayak explore tool shows you the places you can fly on your budget. so you can be confident you're getting the most bang for your buck. alo-ha. kayak. search one and done. we are back with sally yates, acting attorney general of the united states and before that she was the deputy acting attorney general of the united states which we have a better understanding of. do you feel that rod rosenstein who is deputy attorney general because of jeff sessions being recused from the russia matter, he is overseeing the russia matter and other things, do you feel like he is insulated enough in his position in terms of undue influence? if you were still in his shoes,
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what kind of protections would you want people pushing for? >> that's one of the things has worried me. that so many people are worried about bob mueller isn't fired. we need to be equally sure that rod rosenstein isn't fired either. he really has the ability to control the special counsel's investigation in terms of significant step that's are taken. he has to approve those. in terms of information that might to go congress. in terms of information that could be publicly released. so if you want a back doorway to try to choke the life out of the special counsel's investigation, would you replace rod rosenstein with someone whom you can control. and i think he has done a very good job so far of ensuring that this investigation is going where it needs to go. that they're going to follow the facts and the evidence and that bob mueller has the running room that he has to be able to get to the bottom of this really important questions. >> people need to focus on making sure that he isn't fired.
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thinking hard about it won't help. what can be done to protect him? >> well, folks in congress seem to be making movement and trying to do this work as well. >> trying to make a public enemy out of them. >> absolutely. and some talking about impeachment articles. on what basis, i have no idea how you would be impeaching him. but i think the white house and members of the congress respond to public pressure and respond to a focus. and i think that most people have come to realize now that it's absolutely essential that mueller stay in his place. but there needs to be that same public focus on rod rosenstein as well. >> were you ever pressured in the way that he has been by republicans in congress? were you ever pressured by anybody to hand over law ens forceme -- enforcement sensitive documents in the middle of an investigation? >> no. that has long been a firm
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provision that you don't turn over materials of ongoing investigations to congress. >> i understand the justice department felt that. were members of congress pushing for this kind of stuff before or is this new and specific to this investigation? >> i can't say they never asked. but they didn't make a big fuss about it when we said no. >> can i ask you about paul manafort for a moment? he is due to go on trial. the fbi began investigating him years ago in 2014. you became deputy attorney general in 2015. was the justice department cognizant of focussed on the fact that there was an ongoing investigation of paul manafort at the time when he was chosen to be a major party candidate's presidential campaign chairman? did that put the justice department in an awkward
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position. what's the right way to respond given that? >> you know, i really can't answer. i can't talk about what i knew when i was there that hasn't been public. >> his defense team has repeatedly raised the claim that because a lot of investigation of manafort long -- is about matters that long precede the campaign, that indicates that the prosecution is somehow improper. because if those things were so egregious when they happened, if the justice department was investigating for years, why didn't they bring charges then? that suggests that they're only going after him because of his association with the trump campaign. how should we understand the have lilty of the gravity of that charge? >> there is lots of different reasons why prosecutors bring charges when they do? mr. manafort filed a whole lot of motions. so far i don't think he's prevailed on any of them. this is the kind of issue he would be raising pretrial.
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if he had a good argument on this, i would expect he's made it and that the court has rejected it. >> sally yates, the former acting attorney general of the united states. 27 years at the justice department before relieved of her job there by president trump. not two weeks into the trump administration. i imagine that i'm not going to get to talk to you all that often in the future, but any time you want to come back and talk about things going on in the law and in policy and in matters of the day, let us know. i'd love to talk to you more than you'd want to. >> thank you. >> we'll be right back. stay with us. there's so many opinions out there, it's hard to make sense of it all. well, victor, do you have something for him? >>check this out. td ameritrade aggregates thousands of earnings estimates into a single data point. that way you can keep your eyes on the big picture. >>huh. feel better? >>much better. yeah, me too. wow, you really did a number on this thing. >>sorry about that. that's alright. i got a box of 'em. thousands of opinions.
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last night, across the street from the white house, an 18 person mariachi band and more than a thousand people making noise to try to i think you recollect the guy who lives across the street in the white house. that was in lafayette park. this is in new york city. hundreds of people in time square chanting you're fired! you're fired! this is what it's been like. there's been protests akrs the street from the white house every night. they wanted to disrupt the jet lagged president's sleep patterns and give people a place to express their opinions about that meeting with putin. just that first night, more than
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500 people were there. the second night there was about 1,000 people. the musical performance started last night and well over a thousand people. tonight they apparently tried opera singers belting out the high notes. good evening, mr. president. we heard they are thinking about bag pipers for the next one. stay tuned. this is not a screensaver. this is the destruction of a cancer cell by the body's own immune system, thanks to medicine that didn't exist until now. and today can save your life. ♪ ♪
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you might or joints.hing for your heart... but do you take something for your brain. with an ingredient originally discovered in jellyfish, prevagen has been shown in clinical trials to improve short-term memory. prevagen. healthier brain. better life. it's time now for "the last word" with lawrence o'donnell. >> don't surprise me like that. >> i'm sorry! >> i'm used to one of those kinds of things. so, rachel, last night i had this news to break for you. >> yeah. >> about the president's briefing that he got on january 6th, and it has changed everything about what we have been hearing the president say for the last year and a half since then. i am going to show