this past week the committee conducted a transcribed interview with a key witness from the department of justice. john gordon -- who was involved in drafting the request for citizenship question. formertted that a transition fema official provided him on initial draft of a letter from the department of justice asking that a citizenship question be added. we have summarized this and other information from his interview in a supplemental memo that i am providing to members this morning. throughout this entire process the trump administration has obstructed and delayed our investigation. both of the department of commerce and the department of justice have withheld key documents and refused to answer legitimate questions. ross and i exchanged several letters last week. we accommodated some of his concerns and thankfully he accommodated some of ours. i appreciate that, mr. secretary. based on these agreements i expect secretary ross to fully answer all of our questions about the census and not avoid our questions based on the meritless claim that there is a separate litigation going on. and with tha

i'm pleased to be here to present the fiscal year 2020 budget for the department of justice. i'm joined here today by the department's chief financial officer, assistant attorney general for administration, lee lofthus. we look forward to discussing how it will protect the safety and rights of our constituents and your constituents. for two fiscal years in a row, the department has broken records for prosecuting violent crime. the department has also significantly increased prosecution of firearm offenses and in fiscal year 2018, prosecuted more firearm defendants than ever before. as prosecutions have gone up, crime has gone down. in 2017, after two years of increases, violent crime and homicide rates went down nationwide. the fbi's preliminary data for the first six months of 2018 show a 4.3% decline in violent crime overall and a 6.7% decline in murders and a 12% decline in robbery and burglary compared to the first six months of 2017. in order to continue this momentum, president trump has requested an additional $137 million for violent crime and trans-national organized

he indicated also that an appropriate investigation would not just be limited to the department of justice also suggested that one of the things that they would be looking at would be the intelligence apparatus that fed into the fbi's contributions here. so i don't think he's talking about just the fbi. it suggested to me that they're going to have a good, long look at where did this originate from. by whom? what were they asking for? who was supervising this? and i would also say, you know, the point of an investigation is not just simply when it ultimately is conducted to determine whether or not crimes were committed, but you're also, it's like best practices in any internal investigation anybody in the private sector's ever conducted. lawyers do this all the time, you know, really to find out were the procedures followed. if they weren't, why not. are the procedures correct. can the procedures for the future be enhanced. all of which is a concern about, again, being careful about whether politics played any role in the decision making -- gerry: we've got to take a break, and i want to

the department of justice never commented on that. the department of justice actually declined to meet with the census bureau people who wanted to meet about it. there was nothing before the secretary to say that this census information would be an improvement, and there was no comparison at all from the department of justice about whether this would be an appropriate or not. it seems to me that at least with so much question about whether this information would be better or worse than the use of modeling from administrative records, the secretary had an obligation to find out the answer to that question. >> what if the answer was uncertain? >> if the answer is uncertain, then it is hard to invoke that as a reason. now we get back to the cost in the enumeration. that is, if it's unclear -- we think it's worse, but if it's just unclear whether this question will improve voting rights enforcement, that is not sufficient to pay the cost of the steep decline in the enumeration because the enumeration is, after all, the primary purpose of t

given your unsolicited june 8 letter to the justice department regarding obstruction of justice, did you ever consider recusing yourself from making a conclusion about whether a charge of obstruction of justice should have been made? >> well, i consulted with the career ethics officials at the department. >> and they concluded that your memo on the topic did not require your recusement? >> that's correct. >>> senator graham, the chairman has been very consistent in saying he's not going to disclose anything until he's in frupt of your committ front of your committee. >> right, but you can't deny that without the president seeing it, he won't commit to anything. h >> did you pick a winning lottery ticket to be here with him? >> i can tell you the last time we had full sequestration in 2013, the department had $1.3 billion at risk. people at the fbi, the rest of our law enforcement agencies, the bureau of prisons, all those agencies had their funding impacted, their staffing impacted, people were at risk for furlough. we had to move several hundred million dollars into our s & e account

you cannot have the department of justice, the head of the department of justice, the attorney generalp saying people in my organization, my agency are spying, but i don't know how and i don't know why and i have no facts, but they're spying. hold on a second, guys. you can't even in a normal context if it's your job have the boss come out and accusing people of crimes and have no facts. so part of what's going on here is i do think the democrats are going to have a hard time holding the line against the kind of stuff that we're seeing, but i do see nancy pelosi's up to the fight and i see other democrats who are ready to fight. look, i wish we could focus just on basic issues. people say, you know, the voters have moved on. they want to talk about other stuff. history has not moved on, though, and history is going to hold everybody accountable for what's going on here and getting to the facts. >> van, scott, thank you very much. certainly to be continued. all right. let's keep with the theme of coordinated attempts to protect this president by people who are supposed to be protecting

the department of justice you know getting. a scalp you know you know from somebody that they can you know show around the justice in this case again with her circumstances she didn't know about she says she didn't know about the statute she was acting in good faith she sought the funding because she needed it. and it was a very short time period which she was doing this in the in the sentencing brief that the government you know provided that there were people who violated the statutes who got sentenced because they were they work at the f.b.i. that's a big difference and this woman there were people who were who you know who did this for thirty years secretly. she did nothing of the sort she was caught up in the euphoria of the trompe campaign and in somebody like trump winning and she wanted to try to better relations between the two countries which i you know i think is something that should be encouraged not opt out just based really appreciate you coming on to give us your analysis of this story bruce marks is my guest int

but that's generally how the department of justice works. generally grand juries are to investigate crimes and a prosecutor's role at the end of the day is binary. are there charges or no charges, or is this a crime or not a crime. i've had some experience in the field. >> i know. let me say that i don't feel -- i'm looking forward to explaining my decision that briefly outlined in the march 24th letter, but i don't feel i can do it until the report is out because i think the report contains a lot of the information that would give meaning and content to the discussion and i really can't do it in the absence of getting it out. so i'm anxious to get it out. that's what i've been working toward. i said i'd come up to the hill as soon as the hill will have me which i guess is at the end of the month to testify about that. >> to follow up on something senator moran asked and the attorney wants to be redacted, have you overruled mr. mueller or his team on any redaction question? >> no. >> one way or the other? >> no. >> have you discussed any spec

all his attacks on the department of justice and gives the president license to keep doing it. this wasn't the only investigation into the president. he's now just gotten the green light to keep attacking the justice department. i thought that was an abdication of an attorney general's job to protect the department, its independence and stand up for the men and women who work there. >> which is really important if you're a career member of this government. >> it's really important. it's a great reminder. "the new york times" had sort of an obstruction opus at the beginning of the year. donald trump's efforts to obstruct the investigation are not the only attempts at obstruction. they reported that donald trump had explored through matt whittaker getting his appointed u.s. attorney in the southern district of new york to unrecuse. unrecusal a trumpian thing to get someone who has recused himself from overseeing an investigation to get back involved, to stick their hands back into the soup if you will. he wanted his u.s. attorney in the southern district of new york to unrecuse fr

and i also believe that there are hard working people at the department of justice. the judiciary has worked the department of justice personnel for a long time including law enforcement. i am very concerned that general barr did this before, some years back under george w. bush's administration with reporting that got altered. so i'm not interested in general barr's press conference. i'm not interested in his subsequent interpretations. we want the raw data and the summary that's were provided as well by director mueller that we never received. i wonder why those were never produced. we will see general barr on may 2nd before the house judiciary committee. we have subpoenas out to 81 different persons. some of them may be mentioned in this report. and at some point we'll hear from mueller. what the conclusions and the basis is. that's all we need to be consistent with the rule of law. we won't spend time on what director, attorney general barr will be saying tomorrow. we are certainly frustrated that there's a press congress before the members of congress receive it.

getting your unsolicited june 8 letter to the justice department regarding obstruction of justice, didyou ever consider a weereducing your self from makia conclusion about whether a charge of obstruction of justice should have been made? >> i consulted with the career ethics officials at the department. >> and debate concluded your men on the topic did not require -- stacthe neck that is correct. >> chairman graeme the attorney general has been very faithful to his insistence that he not disclose anything of significance until he's in front of your committee. >> great. but you cannot possibly be surprised he would claim exoneration without having read anything. [laughter] so, anyway, i hate to talk about appropriations in the committee, but i will. >> if sequestration goes back into effect and its to do that, how would it affect the fbi in your ability to defend the nation? >> these are some of the hard ones. i can tell you the last time we had sequestration in 2013, the department had $1.3 billion at risk and people at the fbi, the rest of our law enforcement agencies, the bureau of p

they subpoenaed, on friday, the department of justice for that information. the doj is pushing back. they issued a statement which they say in the issue of transparency t attorney general released the confidential report with only minimal redactions. the department of justice made arrangements for chairman nadler and others to review the report with fewer redactions. in light of this, the subpoena is premature and unnecessary. the department will continue to work with congress to accommodate the requests consistent with the law and long recognized executive branch interest. chairman nadler is jerry nadler, who issued the subpoena. if they are unable to reach an agreement between the democrats and the department of justice, it is likely this could end up in court. fred? >> in your article out titled "post white house criminal exposure for trump" what can you tell us about those possibilities? >> fred, when robert mueller issued the report, he said because of department of justice guidelines, procolludes them from indicting a sitting president. they didn't answe

i would hope the department of justice will be giving these referrals appropriate and prompt consideration. my question is, now that president trump has been exonerated of russia collusion, is the justice department investigating how it came to be that your agency used a salacious and unverified dossier as a predicate for a fisa order on a u.s. citizen. >> the office of the inspector general has a pending investigation of the fisa process in the russia investigation. i expect that will be complete in probably may or june, i am told. so hopefully we'll have some answers from inspector general horowitz on the issue of the fisa warrants. more generally, i am reviewing the conduct of the investigation and trying to get my arms around all the aspects of the counter intelligence investigation that was conducted during the summer of 2016. >> are you investigating who leaked the existence of the fisa order against carter page? >> who what? >> are you investigating who leaked the existence of a fisa order against carter page? >> i haven't seen the referrals yet from congressman nunes, but obviously

the department of justice the rule of law that he did take that extra step to use that language about the president yes it's very inappropriate and it makes me doubt the sincerity of some of the redactions although hopefully the the congress will see most of what has been redacted the information on the grand jury by the way he says it's impossible to release that and that's actually not true in the watergate special counsel's report judges allow that information to be released and so members of congress will be moving forward to get that information as well he said also that he would not would not step and stand in the way of. testifying before congress do you think that that will happen how do you think that that will go democrats are going to subpoena him right away there will be a public part of that hearing and then they'll be classified part when they talk about counterintelligence matters which appropriately enough will not be done in the public eye will find out right i mean what i tell my students is you have to read the book is a four hundred page book a little bit one other

i would hope the department of justice will be giving these referrals appropriate and prompt consideration. my question is, now that president trump has been exonerated of russia collusion, is the justice department investigating how it came to be that your agency used a salacious and unverified dossier as a predicate for a fisa order on a u.s. citizen? >> the office of the inspector general has a pending investigation of the fisa process in the russian investigation. and i expect that that will be complete in probably may or june, i am told. so hopefully we'll have some answers from inspector general horowits on the issue of the fisa warrants. >> go ahead. >> more generally, i am reviewing the conduct of the investigation. and trying to get my arms around all of the aspects of the counterintelligence investigation that was conducted during the summer of 2016. >> are you investigating who leaked the existence of the fisa order against carter page? >> who what? >> are you investigating who leaked the existence of a fisa order against carter page? >> i haven't seen the referrals yet from con

, would you have expected that somebody in the justice department would have played a bit ofekeeper role here? would have tried to say this is inappropriate and in keeping with justice department principle as you described, isn't there somebody in the justice department who would have tried to stop this or would have raised the alarm about doing this? >> i would have hoped so. but this justice department would have purged anyone who thinks independently or frankly who is consistent with the traditions of the department. and look, i guess i could have imagined an argument, rachel, that says something like this. this report is going to be so damaging to the president, we need to give him a heads up. but the weird thing is that trump himself took that off the table. he said the report totally exonerates him. so either that's wrong and the report doesn't exonerate him, or he is just willing to trash decades of doj precedent for nothing. either way, it stinks to high heaven. >> neal, the other decision that william barr apparently has made today that's received a lot of criticism

hunt, about president's statement that it was a witch hunt, and instead of standing by the department of justice, he said, well, people who are investigated don't like it. i mean, the whole purpose of the rule of law is that it's not about the individual's feeling. it's about the institution of whether it stands for the rule of law or not, and the fact that he would not defend the mueller investigation at least as an independent investigation again speaks to the degree to which the republican party, as personified by donald trump and now william barr has changed from how it used to be, even back in the '80s and '90s. >> barr offered no evidence to back up the spying claim today. he said he has questions about it. it does seem to lend credibility to what is essentially a made up point by the president and his allies that they've been pushing for a long time. the amount of gravitas it puts on that particular statement from the attorney general who has all the access to the information. he offers unsolicited advice and commentary without knowing the facts. the 18 or 19-page memo we had no informati

z>> as you said, he has access to, he's the attorney general, all the information at the department of justice off the turnip truck yesterday. he's already been the attorney general. it's not like he had to walk in the department of justice, say what's this outfit do? he knew that. coeasily hit the ground running. >> is this to appeal to the president? >> if he had concerns about the conduct of the counter intelligence investigation he could find out about it his first week on the job and not publicly muse about it in a hearing as he did today. >> do you think one option is that he's sending a message to the president or trying to appeal to the president to show he is the president's guy? >> well, yeah, but that's not the -- we're not into abiding by traditional norms. what you expect from the attorney general is some independence and objectivity, not reciting talking points that he's heard from the president and other of his supporters. >> in terms of russian activity and the trump campaign i don't know what you can reveal who knew about that, cnn reports candidate trump was alerted about tha

so here now is what the department of justice is saying. somewhat pushing back on those reports that we saw today, earlier today from "the new york times" and "washington post." here it is. every page of the confidential report provided to attorney general barr on march 22nd, 2019, was marked may contain material protected under federal rule of criminal procedure 6-e, a law that protects confidential grand jury information. and therefore could not be publicly released. so the department of justice saying there that a lot of this report was filled with this confidential information that they had to be careful with. then they said given the extraordinary public interest in the matter, the attorney general decided to release the report's bottom line findings in his conclusions immediately without attempting to summarize the report. with the understanding that the report itself would be released after the redaction process. then this note, as the attorney general stated in his march 29th letter to chairman graham and chairman nadler, he does not

in fact the tradition at the department of justice is quite the opposite. many of us here are professional journalists and we go to press conferences. the way press conferences work everywhere is they hand you a document, whether it's an indictment or a report, and then the public official speaks about it. here, there's no -- the reporters in the room will have no access to what he's talking about. so it seems to be a transparent attempt to spin the report, to again, like he said on that sunday, to characterize it in a way that is favorable to the president without just showing us the report. >> but the other thing is if you really want people to understand something, what you usually do is you embargo it so you get it ahead of time and say you can't discuss it until the press conference so people actually have time to pore over it, understand it, ask questions and be informed and write their stories quickly with time to process it. this is intentionally being done so people will not have time to process it. >> if you look at barr's history, he's kind of pos

you do not need the department of justice in a position where the justice is being dispensed in a politicalot as a blind rule of law. hearing the things out of the state department seeing this previous administration, they were just again, everything was politicized toward what they wanted to do and the spend they wanted to give. what we need to have here is a continued investigation that bill barr is willing to take and in doing so he drew the eye of the democrats who don't want those things exposed or want the things we've been talking about for a long time and am attorney general who met with a former president whose wife was being investigated on a tarmac at an airport, where they supposedly discussed their grandkids and other things that's just not right. now we're seeing also the pressure from loretta lynch saying it was not an investigation, it's just a matter. you know, anything they could do to play down this but it all goes back to really what we're seeing is a politicization which is work because it gets into our fisa court, fisa application which were really when you get to it t

and we're not going to seek accountability in the department of justice. , the constitution would say you should at least begin the process of studying whether the president committed enough high crime and misdemeanor to warrant removal. so, you know, the constitution would suggest that we start that investigative process, that deliberative process. here is the problem, anderson. there is at least in my mind absolutely no question about how that ends, and that ends with the senate not convicting. so, again, i don't think there is a crime that this president could commit that would cause the republican party to turn on him. so i say with great certainty that we would get to a point after a lot of time, energy and resources only to have the senate turn around and acquit him as happened in the clinton administration. and then what do we have to show for it? the president will have claimed to a martyr. we will be distracted from the other oversight tasks and will not address issues we all ran on, transportation, education, health care. i wish i could tell you i

that the president was completely cleared on the obstruction issue, it may be now that the department of justice is like, you know what, we need to paint a fuller picture of exactly what was going on during this time. >> yes. shimon, thank you. asha, good to see you. thank you very much. >>> and now to another huge story involving president trump. he is doing a big about-face on his threat to close the u.s./mexico border. now he said he still plans to go after mexico if it doesn't stop drugs coming across the border. but just not yet. >> we're going to give them a one-year warning and if the drugs don't stop, or largely stop, we're going to put tariffs on mexico and products and in particular cars. the whole ball game is cars. it is the big ball game. with many countries it is cars. and if that doesn't stop the drugs, we close the border. >> cnn's white house correspondent abby phillip is with me. and so we go from close the border to you get a warning. >> reporter: close the border this week. specifically is what trump said last week. and now he's punting that entire year into the future and sa

the department of justice has made arrangements for chairman nadler and other congressional leaders to review the report with even fewer redactions. in light of this, nadler's subpoena is premature and unnecessary. the department will work with congress to accommodate its legitimate requests consistent with the law and long recognized executive branch interests. if these talks don't reach an agreement, it's very likely, fred, this issue lands in court. >> and you have a new article out, right, titled "mueller's report, leaving open the possibility of post white house criminal exposure for trump," what more can you tell us about that? >> in robert mueller, he says he doesn't reach a conclusion on whether the president obstructed justice in part because of department of justice policy, mueller kind of went out of his way to make some additional points there. he said that the president does not have immunity after he leaves office and he noted that the team conduct this had investigation ordered to preserve evidence while the memories were fresh and documentary materials were available. c

simple, easy, awesome. >>> tonight we are fielding multiple breaking news stories ahead of the justice department'snned release of some version or versions of robert mueller's report tomorrow morning. at the top of the list is this provocative new story from the "new york times" saying that justice department officials have had extensive discussions about mueller's findings with the white house ahead of tomorrow's planned release. there have been quote, numerous conversations with white house lawyers well ahead of the report's release. is that what you're supposed to do with the special counsel report on alleged criminal acts by the president? you're just supposed to give that to the president before you show any version of it to anyone else? is that how this was supposed to go. >> joining us is the former act k solicitor general in the obama department. neil is joining us on the phone about 30 seconds before he has to get onto a plane. neil, thank you for making time for us. >> thank you. >> first, let me just ask you about this report from the times that justice department officials have been bri

the department of justice the u.s. department of justice has just fishley made a connection between june and chelsea manning when it comes to the case against we can leaks what do you make of the timing of julian assange his arrest in the u.k. given the fact that chelsea manning is right now and u.s. jail. i mean it's all of the asleep court needed i think this has been planned for a long time and the government was just looking and making excuses to put him into the hands of the united states government. where he's definitely not going to get a fair trial. i don't think be a rest of judas phones means the press free to me on the largest scale of things that do you think this is a watershed moment. yes i think that this is. a really really dark day for press freedom. julian assange has done more for for free.

of hours. my sources are telling me it could be any minute now. what the subpoena will do is to ask the justice department to turn over to congress the entire unredacted mueller report, and not just that report but all of its underlying documents, evidence supporting materials. and in fact, we now understand that that subpoena has been issued. this is a subpoena that was voted on by the house judiciary committee on april 3rd, now being issued by jerry nadler himself. what this is now going to do in the longer term is set up a protracted legal battle between the congress and the justice department. we know that in the past subpoenas have been much more effective as a political tool than as a legal tool and so what we have in the justice department here is an argument that they are being fully come plin pliant -- compliant. they are going to make available to lawmakers the gang of eight and the fully unredacted report. we have heard from speaker nancy pelosi saying she would not participate in a limited briefing with that. the other thing that's going to happen when congress returns on april 28th is a ramp

this is his department of justice. i don't know if that's what the american public thinks, but that's the theory being issued here. i think it's inconsistent with what we expected from the department of justice and the insulation of the department of justice from partisan politics. >> barr has a history here that just came out recently. ryan goodman has shown that barr issues a summary about a legal opinion and told congress what he thought was going to be the important things. that turned out to be deceptive. he left out the critical parts. the thing we have to look at is not only how barr will spin this, but we have to look at the fact that i believe there are going to be redactions of very inflammatory material that is going to be damaging to the president of the united states. that's a big problem we have to confront. >> two things on the redactions. one is that the justice department in a filing the u.s. attorney said there will be redactions about roger stone. that makes sense because that's a case that will go in

>> as an alumnae of the department of justice, for me the damage has been done. as much as the mueller report was about the findings of the investigation, the rollout shows the credibility of the department of justice is at stake. you have the head of the department of justice, the attorney general rolling out in such a way that it makes people question not whether the president is above the law, but whether the doj disregards the law and another coequal branch of government's right to see the information and the public as well. this is a missed opportunity for the redemption of the department of justice. i wonder why the attorney general would manipulate, delay the disclosure of the report knowing for the better part of 22 months the american people based on the president's statements have already questioned the fbi, the intelligence community, the doj's independence of things. that's part of the issue for me. i think barr is compromising the future credibility of the department of justice. just be transparent. it wasn't meant to be the ceiling. it was meant to b

and this is a big deal, and we need to talk to other departments, including and especially department of justice's also interesting the letter comes from the treasury secretary, steve mnuchin, who was asked about this very issue yesterday on capitol hill because he, of course, department of treasury oversees the irs, so the fact that he is saying, that he is not only responding but making clear in the letter he is going to oversee it is interesting and noteworthy. obviously he's somebody who is one of the president's oldest and earliest supporters, but he's taken it upon himself, i don't think he has much choice, but saying this in black and white that he's going to navigate the waters so far. >> jeffrey, he says in the letter i intend, steve mnuchin. i intend to supervise the department's review of the request to ensure taxpayer protection and applicable laws are skrup yusly observed consistent with my statutory responsibility. >> i made a flip response a couple of minutes ago and i was wrong. this is a serious response. it is not this is a serious response. i think the tip-off is the word of t

testing been reporting we are keeping an eye to the department of justice for any moment we expect the u.s. attorney general william barr to comment address the media ahead of or to act at an edited version of the smaller report russian interference in the in the election so we're going to bring you that when it happens in the meantime of course you have a team of journalists covering this alan fisher is live for us at the white house and allan three weeks ago when the attorney general first released his summary of the reports the white house donald trump kept saying he was exonerated he was exonerated his tone has changed considerably since then this morning he's been tweeting a lot of things talking about presidential harassment what are we hearing from the white house now. well we'll also know that rudy giuliani who is of course donald trump's personal attorney is going to issue a rebuttal that lawyers for donald trump and for the white house have been speaking to the department of justice over the last twelve twenty four hours to get a sense of what is in that document of course it

i would hope the department of justice will be giving these referrals appropriate and prompt considerationrump has been exonerated of russia collusion, is the justice department investigating how it came to be that your agency used a salacious and unverified dossier as a predicate for a fisa order on a u.s. citizen? >> the office of the inspector general has ang

department resource needs. the presence of why budget request over $30 billion for the department of justice. because you indicated yesterday he will report to congress on the mueller investigation next week it is my hope that the budget request will remain the major focus of today's hearing. i am not naÏve but i hope that is the case. i would like to begin by asking you a question about your testimony yesterday and i would like for you to respond that during your time in regard to clarifying an issue related to the mueller report. when we met before your confirmation, you and i met, i told you i would like to see the mueller report released to the butt public as quick as possible in the fullest extent allowed by law. will you, as i hope, release the redacted version of the actual report special counsel mueller submitted to you or did you intend to indicate in your testimony comments yesterday that you will only provide a report of your own findings that are derived from the mueller report? the focus of this hearing president fiscal year 2020 request. the fy 20 request is not based off the dep

counsel's articulated reason for not reaching a decision on obstruction of justice, and if it had anything to do with the department's longstanding guidance on not indicting a sitting president and you say you disagree with some of his legal theories. what did you disagree with him on? >> i'd leave it to his description in the report, the special counsel's own articulation of why he did not want to make a determination as to whether or not there was an obstruction offense. but i will say that when we met with him, deputy attorney general rosenstein and i met with him, along with ed o'callaghan, the principal associate deputy, on march 5th, we specifically asked him about the olc opinion and whether or not he was taking the position that he would have found a crime but for the existence of the olc opinion, and he made it very clear several times that that was not his position. he was not saying that, but for the olc opinion, he would have found a crime. he made it clear he had not made the determination that there was a crime. >> what did you disagree with him on? >> given that, why did you and mr. rosenstein feel you