thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. happy to have you with us. happy fourth of july weekend. i don't know if it's the rolling out tanks on the national mall thing, but i found myself stuck on a thing we have never had before in this country that we do have now from this president. >> it's just awfully good that someone with the temperament of donald trump is not in charge of the law in our country. >> because you would be in jail. >> because you'd be in jail.

part of the way this president ran for office is promising he would jail his political opponents. in response to that threat, the consternation was expressed by his opponents. on the right among trump supporters, the reaction was positive. i think there was a thrill at first at how transgressive that was, threatening to put hillary clinton in jail and threatening all of his opponents would be in jail. then ultimately it became a regular thing he said. it became part of the scenery. it became part of his presidency. it started at his rallies and continued through the rnc. thousands of the republican party at the republican national convention or even supposedly normal republicans like chris christie led thousands of republicans in yelling lock her up. now that trump is president, they still chant lock her up or lock him up at trump events, depending on which enemy the president is talking about at that moment.

so happy fourth of july. this is a thing we never had before in our country. now as the democratic party tries to figure out who they will nominate to beat trump and get him out of the oval office next year, i have been thinking about this threat to lock up his opponents thing in part because of what's about to happen right smack dab in the middle of the first two presidential debates of the campaign. the first democratic primary was last week and the second is at the end of this month, another two-day debate over the last two days of july. at the halfway point in between the debates, robert mueller will testify before congress about his investigation. his investigation into russia interfering in our election to help trump win and the trump campaign's involvement or complicity in that and the

findings detailed in mueller's report about president trump's efforts to obstruct justice. that's going to be july 17th. talk about the event of the summer. i think we can expect robert mueller's testimony and his report won't just provide material for the democratic candidates to talk about in their next debate at the end of july. i think this may also just be instructive in terms of what the eventual nominee will be up against when they go up against donald trump on one. there is no reason to think this lock her up, lock him up thing from donald trump and his supporter, no reason to think this was a passing fancy. honestly, we know it's not just a slogan. as much as it is tempting to look at the lock her up chants and the constant tweets from the president about hillary clinton's supposed crimes.

that's how he announced his campaign with a rally against hillary for her supposed crimes and that's why he is running for reelection? 2020? if you were inclined to dismiss all of that as donald trump letting off steam or trolling people or riling up the base, one of the things that ended up getting documented extensive lie in mueller's report is this is not just stuff donald trump has been saying for effect. trump indeed tried to get the justice department to go after his political enemies. the president calling the attorney general at home to tell him to direct the department of justice to investigate and prosecute hillary clinton. the president meeting privately and telling him that the justice department was not investigating individuals and events he thought they should investigate like hillary clinton's e-mails and pulling them aside after trump national security adviser mike flynn pled guilty for lying to the fbi and he said again he needed to open an investigation

of hillary clinton. telling the attorney general, you would be a hero. this wasn't just stuff he said for effect. trump in multiple instances documented by mueller and his report, he wanted to prosecute hillary clinton and he repeatedly told them to do it and expressed anger when that didn't happen because he expected it to happen. and we know why he was frustrated, too. as the mueller report makes clear, he viewed the attorney general and the justice department as his own lawyers. his own personal law enforcement apparatus. confronted with obstacles to that goal like rules prohibiting him from talking to the attorney general about specific investigations, confronted with the attorney general jeff sessions being recused from anything related to the 2016 campaign. the mueller report said the president complained to his aides about those barriers to

what he wanted to do by saying i don't have a lawyer. he wanted the attorney general to function as his own lawyer. the president brought up robert kennedy and eric holder and said they protected their presidents. they pushed back on the justice department contacts policy and said words to the effect of you areal telling me that bobby and jack didn't talk about investigations or obama didn't tell eric holder who to investigate. the president was as mad as bannon had ever seen him and he screamed about how weak jeff sessions was. sessions recalled that the president pulled him aside to speak to him alone and suggested that session should unrecuse from the russia investigation. the president contrasted sessions with attorneys general holder and kennedy who he said developed a strategy to help their presidents where sessions had not. according to notes written by sessions as chief of staff, the president said the attorney general is supposed to be the most important appointment. kennedy appointed his brother.

obama appointed holder. i appointed you and you recused yourself? you left me on an island. i can't do anything. in a nut shell, this is what the entire obstruction section of mueller's report boils down to. we get the plot about russia attacking russia and the trump campaign welcomed their help in that election and opening an investigation into the attack including whether there was coordination between russia and the trump campaign. in volume two, the other plot of trump as president, once trump became president, him doing everything he could to stymie the investigation into what russia did and the involvement of his campaign in it including repeatedly trying to get his attorney general to not just stop the investigation, but to redirect justice department attentions away from trump and toward trump's political enemies. i mean, the president's campaign

chairman was perp walked to the start of his next trial on the day of the first democratic debate and the chair and his national security adviser are convicted and awaiting federal sentencing. his long time personal lawyer is in prison for among other things, crimes that prosecutors say the president directed him to commit. it is a fascinating thing in itself that the various democratic candidates are not making that a central part of their competition for the democratic nomination to run against him. but whether or not they are making an issue, an issue the president is running on, the president is making this an issue in his campaign not just because he is the subject of this, but he is trying to run specifically on what's happened in the wake of the russia scandal by trying to turn it inside out. to try to turn it to his own

advantage. the loudest complain of the pro trump conservative media machine now and for the past two years, donald trump's loudest complain since becoming president, a complain he continues to lodge on twitter most days even now, the russia investigation was not real and the russia investigation was a coup against him and the real scandal is not being investigated by which he means he didn't have the kind of attorney general who investigated the people he wanted investigated and he didn't have an attorney general who would turn the power against his enemies and of course against the people who investigated donald trump and what it was that russia did to help him. he didn't have that with jeff sessions. now he does have that and that's what he wanted all along. that's what he was promising the crowds since the campaign. >> if i had one do-over, i would not have appointed jeff sessions to be attorney general. that would be my one. >> that's your one. is bill barr -- >> he's a very talented. >> you said he's your roy cohn.

>> he's a fine man. the job he's done is incredible. he loves the department of justice. he saw what was happening. he has done a spectacular job. now he's in the process of doing something and i stay away from it. i stay away from it. but i think he feels that what's happened in this country was a bad thing and bad for our country. >> he saw what was happening and feels it was a bad thing for our country and he's in the process of doing something about it. what was the thing happening in the justice department? if president trump's two qualifications are one, protect the president and go after the president's enemies, we have seen attorney general bill barr do a bang up job on number one,

absolving the president of obstruction of justice upon receiving the report that did not ab solve the president of obstruction of justice and keeping it under wraps for weeks while he described the contents in a way that did not reflect the real content. for weeks he selectively quoted it to paint a picture as an exoneration of the president, which was not what it was. he has been launching the kinds of investigations that trump wanted for so long. the kind premised on the idea that the investigators and the investigators are the real bad guys. why should that have been looked into in the first place? >> news just broke today that you have a special team looking into why the fbi opened an investigation into russian interference in the 2016 elections. i wonder if you can share with the committee who is on that

team why you felt the need to form that kind of a team and what you intend to be the scope of their investigation. >> yeah, as i said in my confirmation hearing, i am going to be reviewing both the genesis and conduct of intelligence activity directed at the trump campaign in 2016. i think spying on a political campaign is a big deal. >> you are not suggesting that spying occurred? >> i don't -- well -- i -- i guess you can -- i think spying did occur. yes, i think spying did occur. >> finally an attorney general giving donald trump material he can work with. you can feel flee in the twitter feet in the days and weeks following that testimony. all caps, they spied on my campaign.

nothing like this ever happened in american politics. treason! month after allowing a redacted version of the mueller report to become public, bill barr assigned the u.s. attorney in connecticut to in fact investigate the origins of the russia investigation. to investigate the investigation. barr began giving soft focus, casual in front of a roaring fireplace interviews, describing his concerns that people in law enforcement might have been out to get the trump campaign and that's the only reason anybody looked into what russia was doing. president trump announced he was handing bill barr the authority to declassify any information he wants about the origins of the russia investigation. he can go through the files and release anything he wants, which i'm sure will be totally fine because it's not that he is known by selectively releasing

investigations to make president trump look good. as the contents have started to come into focus, it looks like he is training his sights on the central underlying premises of the entire russia scandal and the mueller investigation. that russia and putin attacked the election to help trump win the oval office. the reason it news to be investigated is because they are recognizing that and investigating that while it was happening was the wrong thing to do. they should have just let that go. mr. barr has been in how the cia drew the conclusions, particularly the judgment that mr. putin ordered on hillary clinton according to former officials. mr. barr wants to know more about the cia sources who helped inform the details of the russia interference campaign. william barr looking into the u.s. finding that russia wanted trump to win. officials expressed concern that the attorney general will challenge the assessment. mr. barr's review will look in

particular at whether there were disagreements among analysts to produce the findings. they are likely to look into whether they were motivated to mr. trump. they privately expressed concern that the justice department plans to red team or challenge the finding of russian interference on trump's behalf. from cbs news, a mix of concern, confusion and defiance spread through elements and in particular the current officials are questioning the purpose and propriety of scrutinizing that led a group of agencies to

conclude that vladimir putin ordered an influence campaign to boost candidate trump's electability. according to the director, any analyst asked to submit to an interview with the investigators will want to have their own personal attorney at their side. imagine needing an attorney to explain an analytic judgment while you are working for the agency. this will be watched closely in the intelligence community and the protect that the prosecutors may ask questions about how an analyst came to a conclusion could lead analysts. in other words, if you are a u.s. intelligence analyst and looking at evidence of foreign interference in an american election and democracy and your analysis brings you to the conclusion that they insert a candidate into the white house to serve the purposes of that foreign power, are you sure you want to put it in writing? that candidate might become president and send the justice department to interrogate you and send prosecutors after you because the president doesn't

like the way your analysis made him look. if you are an analyst and find yourself coming to the conclusion that a foreign power is helping the sitting president, maybe you ought to think about what you will do with that conclusion too and where you might put that conclusion and who you might tell about it and what you might say about it. or do you just let it ride? it's a shame if anything were to happen to it. so yes, president trump said he finally has the attorney general he always wanted as the 2020 campaign gets fully under way. lock her up!

lock her up! as mueller prepares to testify for the first time right between the two democratic debates. one other factor that trump and his attorney general don't control. that is that people who were in this country's key intelligence and law enforcement positions in the 2016 campaign when the investigation was launched into the russian attack on the election and the trump campaign's possible complicity in it, those human beings are alive and well despite the intimidation. they are capable of speaking about what they in fact saw and what they did and analyzed as importance and why it was both important and proper. many of the people have been driven out of their jobs and attacked by the president and his supporters in particular by conservative media and put under investigation themselves. one of the pop official who is oversaw the investigation into russia and the trump campaign has only recently begun telling his story. our interview with him is just ahead. stay with us.

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the top lawyer at the fbi from 2014 through 2017 was this man, james baker who was general counsel during the 2016 election. he was there, the top lawyer at the fbi, when the country first started to realize with law enforcement that russia was intervening in the 2016 presidential election and specifically for the purpose of trying to get donald trump elected president. they were simultaneously becomes aware that there were also numerous numerous inexplicable contacts between a particular campaign, that happened to be the trump campaign, and people associated with the kremlin at the same time that russian attack was going on. that must have been a remarkable thing to recognize and confront in 2016 as it was happening. inside the fbi and the intelligence community and seeing the evidence of that and

recognizing that's what was happening and deciding what to do about it. a remarkable moment for this country. a remarkable challenge for those individual leaders, right? what is more remarkable since then is how basically all of those people in all of the senior leadership roles of the fbi and intelligence community, all of the people in senior leadership law enforcement and intelligence roles at that time have just one by one been systematically attacked and destroyed by the trump administration ever since. the cia director was john brennan. seized his security clearance. susan rice. go after hers, too. the director of national intelligence and the fbi director, fire him and denounce him as the traitor and the leaker. after comey got fired, andy mccabe and try to prosecute him. the intelligence leaders at the

justice department. they must be destroy disciplined denounced and call out the dogs on them. all of these people with all of these decades of leadership experience, the specific leaders who were trying to understand and assess the attack by russia and thwart it on behalf of the united states, the subject matter experts in a best place to recognize what's happening, trying to elect trump. these are the people who have paid the price for it in the 2.5 years since. that includes james baker who was the top legal official at the fbi. the president attacked him by name repeatedly for his role in this terrible witch hunt in the russia hoax. fox news and other conservative media repeatedly accused him of being a traitor for the crime of serving in fbi leadership when russia helped trump win and the fbi decided they needed to look into that. james baker stayed on at the fbi

for the first year of the trump presidency. he left the fbi a year after james comey was fired as the director. all of that time of being a punching bag for the president and his supporters, particularly in their right wing media, all of that time james baker couldn't speak publicly about what he did during the russian attack. that did change with the mueller report completed and released to the public and with james baker's testimony to the judiciary committee getting released to the public, the mueller report and then publicizing his testimony, his closed door testimony, that sort of freed former fbi council james baker so he is now able to speak on the matters. my interview with james baker about what it was like to be at the top of the fbi during this remarkable period in our history and what it has been like to be targeted since then, that

interview with james baker is next.

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the man who is here for the interview tonight is the former general counsel for the fbi as

the agency's top lawyer from january of 2014 to december of 2017. as that top fbi lawyer, james baker was in the room for many of the major decisions made for the investigation into russian interference in the 2016 election and the issue of potential coordination of people associated with the trump campaign. baker is currently the director of national security and cyber security in a nonprofit research organization. mr. baker, thank you very much for being here. an honor for having you here. you spring more than 20 years at the justice department and the fbi. since you left last year, you have been under investigation by the inspector general for handling of the investigation of the president's campaign and subject of a criminal investigation over alleged leaks to the media and the president made a sport out of suggesting that you personally acted treasonously and attempted a coup and you have been a star on

conservative media. just as a human being, the transition in your life before to your life after feels precipitous. how are you? >> i'm fine, thank you for asking. it has been horrible, basically. i used the word trauma to describe what happened with respect to starting with the clinton investigation all the way through starting the russia investigation and the transition and the comey firing and the kinds of things you outlined with andrew mccabe. these were people i worked with every day. he is my friend and care about him and he's a fantastic leader and he got fired in a way that was terrible. very humiliating way. that was really hard. it was a traumatic experience to go through and quite frankly, having talked about it endlessly in the media doesn't help. you have to relive it every day and there is no escape.

it's on everywhere. it has been challenging. >> i did a podcast last year about spero agnew. it struck me that one of the sign that is the end was nye is when in speeches he named individual justice department officials and prosecutors who he believed should not just be blamed for what he was going through, but he wanted his supporters to go after them. he wanted to train national ire on people who individually and by name and title he would call out. it sort of seemed like the point at which people realized he would be over and he is forced to plead in court. he has to resign and the whole thing. it's now common not only from the president himself, but from the president's supporters and the conservative media and republicans in congress to not just name people like you individually and take you on by title and as a person, but to

pursue you. to say that you are the scandal and you and the other colleagues involved in this investigation, you are the problem in the country. i feel like this is unprecedented. the only thing i have ever seen like this before is agnew. do you feel like this ever snaps back and it's now normalized the way we do it from here on out? >> i'm concerned about that. it seems like it's become normalize and that's part of the reason i wanted to start to speak out more now. it shouldn't be and people who disagree with some of these views need to speak out and try do to do the best they can. it could have a significant negative impact in the long run. people are worried about their

careers and their reputations and when the president of the united states goes at you on twitter and it's an out of body experience as i described it. it's unnerving. if you are concerned about your reputation or long-term career, you are going to be, i think, more likely to be hesitant to do things that will attract that ire. >> do you believe the actions of this type or indeed the specific allegations of obstructive conduct described in the mueller report have materially affected the behavior of the justice department or the fbi? do you know of investigations being curtailed or delayed or kiboshed or not taken up because of the types of worries you are describing? >> not that i can confirm. i heard rumors to that effect, but i can't confirm it. the fbi and the justice department and the career officials are a highly resilient

professional organization. both of the organizations. they are going to resist that as much as they can. to think that it won't have some effect as they pursue certain types of investigations and as they touch the political system or leaders, that's what you have to worry about. the fbi really is a specialist in dealing with public corruption in government. if they are intimidated, that's dangerous. they are professional and i think they will resist that, but it's a risk. >> when you heard rumors that dynamic may be at work, you mean currently? >> yes. >> can you say anything else about that? >> no. it's speculations and rumors i heard. i don't want to go further than that. whether it's true or not. it's something to worry about. >> the other side of the coin, there was an awkward moment in the senate judiciary committee when kamala harris of california was asking questions of attorney general barr and asked if the president or the white house had

ever put pressure on the justice department and the attorney general to initiative an investigation against the president's enemies for political purposes. attorney general barr wouldn't answer directly. since then we have seen the president openly call for former secretary of state john kerry to be prosecuted and he talked to people about that. we have seen republican allies in congress say they want to at least pursue congressional investigations of fbi and justice department personnel involved in the russia investigation. that side of it, not just getting shy about things they may otherwise pursue, but being used as a weapon, that seems so far-fetched and the attorney general is denying that possibility. are you worried about that too? >> i have great respect for the attorney general. i worked with him in the past when he was general counsel at verizon and he hired me there.

i always viewed him as a person of integrity. obviously this conduct is outside of the norm of what we are used to where the president is recommending criminal investigations and or prosecutions of individual citizens. that's alarming. it would require the department of justice to resist that kind of thing if they didn't think it was warranted. it's just not normal for this country to have political leaders, especially the president of the united states singling out individual people and saying they should be investigated. he has done it consistently over time. >> i try to imagine you talk about somebody with integrity in the justice department stopping that from happening. i try to imagine what that would look like and a person stepping forward to be given an improper order and i'm an employee and i know it's wrong. imagine what happens to that person.

>> you have to be willing to resign or go to congress. you have to be willing to give up your career. i think i thought about this a lot. the only way to be successful as a national security lawyer in particular is to be willing to have your career destroyed. if you fear it, if you are afraid that will happen, you won't be able to have the courage to do the things you need to do and say the things you need to say. if you are afraid of sacrificing and your career will be messed up. you have to take it as a given is what i'm trying to say. >> were you afraid of the effect on your career before you took the actions? >> absolutely. sure. >> you did it anyway. >> i did it anyway because it seemed like i was being entrusted by the american people and i owed a duty to them to do what i thought was right and

they would expect me to do and what i was being paid for. honestly in the long run to do things i thought my children and my family would be proud of me doing when it came out because all of this stuff comes out. i think you have to think of the long-term interest of yourself and the country and not your short-term career interests. >> former fbi general counsel james baker is our guest. we'll be right back after this. cake in the conference room! showing 'em you're ready to be your own boss.

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-[ scoffs ] if you say so. ♪ -i'm sorry? -what teach here isn't telling you is that snapshot rewards safe drivers with discounts on car insurance. -what? ♪ -or maybe he didn't know. ♪ [ chuckles ] i'm done with this class. -you're not even enrolled in this class. -i know. i'm supposed to be in ceramics. do you know -- -room 303. -oh. thank you. -yeah. -good luck, everybody. we are joined again by james baker. mr. baker is able to talk to us in part because the mueller report has been publish and that frees you to speak about matters

you otherwise couldn't talk about. i have questions about the mueller report and about what it doesn't say that i was expecting it to say. i have a parallel here. one issue is mike flynn getting fired which unfolded while you were general counsel. he publicly lies about it and ultimately he lies to the fbi about it. that's interesting and becomes part of a guilty plea in court. another thing we came to learn about his case. sally yates is acting attorney general and goes up to the white house in the administration to tell them not just that mike flynn has been in contact with the russians, but there is a problem because flynn had that contact and the russians know he had that contact and flynn is lying about it publicly and the russians have something on flynn. they know about his contacts with them and they can leverage that against him. he's in a compromised position with regard to the russian government which is dangerous when he is national security adviser.

that countered. we learned the criminal part of what flynn did, including lying to the fbi. that counter intelligence concern is what leads us, the american people, to understand why it was so important that he had to go. i feel like we have a similar situation with trump tower moscow. the mueller report describes all this factual detail about the contacts between the kremlin and the trump organization about trying to do that russia deal and the president was lying about it at the time. nothing in the mueller report about whether or not that reflects any compromise or effort to gain leverage over that presidential candidate and that campaign and ultimately our government. that's the missing piece. was that investigation not done? >> well, i think the mueller report makes clear that what they focused on were the criminal aspects of the counter

intelligence investigation that was being conducted. when the fbi investigates something, it comes to it with all of its authorities, which include counter intelligence authorities and criminal authorities and foreign intelligence collection authorities. all the authorities under law and under attorney general guidelines, it brings to the problem. certain aspects of a situation could be criminal and some might be counter intelligence. whey think is missing in large part from the report is an analysis of the counter intelligence aspects of what it is they found. i think it's the reporters and collateral document where is they make quite clear, we are not talking about that here. we had embedded fbi agents with us to deal with the counter intelligence investigation and that's some other file, some other thing that may or may not be in the report. >> in that part of the report where they describe having other fbi agents sitting in and gleaning and passing it on to the fbi, those agents were not part of mueller's investigation.

does that mean mueller did not do the counter intelligence investigation? was there an assessment to gain leverage over that campaign? >> i don't think i can confirm or deny that, but mueller is like and he said in the report he was like a u.s. attorney. he's a prosecutor. the fbi can investigate crimes, but it's part of the intelligence community and has different authorities result of that under a different structure. mueller i don't think it's fair to think he was tasked with conducting a purely counter intelligence investigation. he was tasked with as i thought about it, dealing with the criminal aspects of the larger counter intelligence investigation. does that make sense? >> does anybody have to tell we the american people or the intelligence committees in

congress whether there was russian leverage over the campaign and whether those contacts and for example the trump tower moscow deal amounted to perhaps a successful or even an unsuccessful effort to gain that leverage. the chairman, adam schiff has not had a on the intelligence findings of any information since comey was fired. >> so, i can say how i used to handle it and i used to handle it thinking that the intelligence committees were an integral part of how the united states conducts intelligence and how we the community maintain the trust and confidence. they need to know their representatives get access to critical information so they can understand it. one of the things is, the reality is that the intelligence community is under the command of the president. so at the end of the day, it's the president's job to deal with the intelligence threats that we

face as a country. >> they implicate him? >> so we haven't had to deal with this kind of thing before. that's tricky and how you do that is very difficult. i think this is a place where, for example, the director of national intelligence can step in and try to handle these things in a certain way. i'm not going to say it's a recusal by the president, but it will be safer and advisable to stay out of this part of it unless he has to and delegate that authority to the dni. >> so chilling to think this is a black box to us. i have more questions for you on this matter and others. james baker is the former fbi special counsel. we'll be right back. ♪ limu emu & doug look limu. a civilian buying a new car. let's go.

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we are back with james baker. thank you again for being here. >> my pleasure. >> part of the ways the conservative media have come after you and your colleagues is to try to problemitize the idea that people during the campaign who came across information that they believed was worrying on national security terms related to russia and the russian attack and the trump campaign. they brought that information to the fbi. that itself is being defined as a scandal and you as an official received that and passed on to investigators and readership -- leadership roles were given information and passed it on. what do you make of that becoming the source of scandal? i worry they are trying to say nobody should try to bring

information to the fbi if they find something they are worried about. >> the fbi depends on the trust and confidence on the american people and people coming forward with all kinds of threatening information, especially in counterterrorism, but with respect to all types of violations of federal criminal law and intelligence threats and whatever they think poses a threat to the country or as a violation of law. they should bring it forward to the fbi. they should feel comfortable doing that. >> do you think that you or anybody in the fbi or the justice department mishandled a tip or proffered intelligence or the steele dossier or any meetings or anything in terms of the receipt of information which has been problemitized by republicans and the conservative media? do you think that was mishandled? >> i don't think >> i can't talk about that, but the information i took in that became the subject of discussions when i was being interviewed, i felt as though it was lawful for me to obtain that

information. it was authorized under fbi policies and procedures and fbi employees are authorized to accept information from the public. i thought it was okay. one of the things with respect to all of this that has gotten me is that, look, we have taken this information, but we don't swallow it hook, line, and sinker. we have a jaundiced eye with respect to the information we get. we take it seriously, but we vet it and don't just assume it is correct. just because somebody's proffering it to us. we do question on a regular basis why is this person bringing me this information. what is snit how let's scrutinize it and not ignore it. let's take it seriously, but vet it. thoroughly. >> in terms of sources of information, the fbi has tip lines and opens themselves up to public information. >> tip lines and online and many ways to submit the information.

people should if they have it. >> the idea that opposition research was funded by one side of a political campaign might have turned up something they gave to the fbi because they were concerned or hoping for an fbi investigation that would turn up something damning. is that an improper source of information? it seems like opposition researchers opposing campaigns might at any time turn up something they were concerned about. i'm worried at this point that that itself has been defined as a scandal and those won't go to the authorities. >> with respect to this information that came to us, my recollection is that we knew that it was coming from that type of source and we had to be skeptical about it. we should have been squekeptica about it, but it didn't mean it was wrong. it had to be vetted and analyzed, but with the origin in mind. we didn't ignore that.

>> james baker, former general counsel at the fbi who has been through a hell of a couple of years and an amazing career. but really a hell of a couple years. thank you for coming in and talking to us tonight. i appreciate the trust level that needed to happen for you to be able to do it. >> thank you. i appreciate it. thanks for the time. >> i don't know how things are going to go, but when you want to talk about things, come back and talk about it here. >> thank you. >> we'll be right back, stay with us. with us. we'd love some help with laundry. spray and scrub anything with a stain. wash the really dirty clothes separately. new tide pods with upgraded 4-in-1 technology

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thanks for being with us. that's going to do it for us for this fourth of july weekend. i will see you again monday. the last word with lawrence o'donnell starts right now. good evening and welcome to our special fourth of july weekend edition of the last word. what did the founders consider the most important job in american government? here's a hint. the president of the united states is the 6th job mentioned in the constitution. the first job? the first job described in the constitution is member of the house of representatives and the second job specified in the constitution is speaker of the house of representatives. the power of the house of representatives is something donald trump has been painfully discovering since the new democratic house majority was sworn in six months ago after