errol lewis, lynn sweet, always appreciate your perspectives. thank you for being here. >>> the next big item on the president's agenda. tax reform. house speaker ryan telling the country that the gop health care laws will make changing the tax code much more difficult, but not impossible. >>> also, more drama on capitol hill over the trump/russia investigation. the house intel chair cancels next week's public hearing and the top democrat calling for an the top democrat calling for an independent commission now. the things they love to do most on these balloons. travel with my daughter. roller derby. ♪ now give up half of 'em. do i have to? this is a tough financial choice we could face when we retire. but, if we start saving even just 1% more of our annual income... we could keep doing all the things we love. prudential. bring your challenges. today, unlimited gets the network it deserves. verizon. (mic thuds) uh, sorry. it's unlimited without compromising reliability, on the largest, most advanced 4g lte network in america. (thud) uh... sorry,

mark preston and errol lewis and we have jackie kucinich. the entve interviews were cance. it is unclear about sally yates. if she was being blocked from giving her testimony by the white house or if they went silent and let her hang out there not knowing if they were giving her approval or needed approval. where are we with this, mark? >> sean spicer said he hopes she testifies. door is open. whether it is before the house or before the senate remains to be seen. with the house in disarray, it looks like the senate will have to step up and very well might and probably will. they will have a news conference later today. to talk about the next steps. >> here is what spicer said about it. >> i hope she testifies. i look forward to it. let's be honest. the hearing was never notified. if they choose to move forward, great. we have most problem with her testifying. >> they have timing issues here. this was a little bit of a convaluted process. yates' attorney went to the white house and there is a question of privileged communication. the attorney informed the white house that s

joining us now, mary katharine hamm, errol lewis. nice to have you both here, we appreciate it. errol, let me begin with you. so jeff sessions recuses himself. the white house saying nothing to see here, folks, time to turn the page. interestingly, sessions went farther than the president even wanted him to. now we're learning about all of these undisclosed meetings, jared kushner, carter page, did all these other people around the president have, during the campaign and the transition with the russian ambassador, how can they turn the page? >> it sounds like we need an investigation. it is troubling to hear about all these additional names. let's keep in mind that jeff sessions was in charge of the national security sort of policy formation and political development side of the campaign. >> he was the chairman of the campaign committee doing this. >> this raises then questions about what did you folks talk about, to what extent did you sort of bounce any of these ideas off of the russian ambassador, what did you think russia was going to be? were they going to be treated as an a

joining me now, cnn political reporter tom and errol lewis. welcome to both of you. jeff sessions says he will amend his testimony on monday. that's expected. he will not be asked to testify again before the committee. that's despite loud cries from democrats, to face questioning once again. the right move? is it the right move? why not face the committee again? otherwise you're just going to have this back and forth? >> well, jeff sessions knows as a long-time member of the senate that his democratic colleagues would like nothing better than to get him under the hot seat and essentially torture him and take him back through his prior inconsistent testimony, ask him why he didn't tell the truth, why he wasn't more accurate and forthcoming the first time around. from the point of view of jeff sessions to clarify matters, it's simply better to do it in written testimony. the fact, martin, some democrats have been calling for his resignation, others have been throwing the "p" word around, perjury, as if he deliberately misled them under oath, means he has to be very, ve

joining me now errol lewis, betsy woodroof fuff for the dai beast. and cedric, i'm going to start with you, not only does he have the evidence against him and members of both parties in the u.s. congress against him but it's the british who say the claims coming from the white house just aren't true and white house forced to apologize. >> that's right, this is where you meet the limits of presidential power. it's fine to sort of blow off members of congress and you can certainly brow beat your own employees and sean spicer being directed to say whatever he has to try to make true something that is clearly false, namely the president's tweet and his outrageous accusation that he still won't back down from. you can do that with all of those folks but now a different sphere, you have an independently elected head of a sovereign nation with her own set of concerns, not just the diplomatic ones, but we have ongoing operations in which british and american forces have to work together, intelligence agencies have to cooperate, trust has to be established an

analyst david gergen who is also a former presidential adviser to nixon, ford, clinton and reagan and errol lewisis an editor with spectrum news. was there a rush to let preet bharara go along with the other u.s. attorneys in part because of bharara's relations with democrat chuck schumer or possibly to impact or potentially slow down ongoing investigations involving trump tower, trump associates and aides? >> that's a lot of speculation, fredricka, that he was possibly going to get his hands on or get close to some very sensitive matters that the white house didn't want looked into. we don't know. there's been pretty much silence out of the white house, so it's really just speculation. it is true, in fact, though, that the reagan administration replaced 89 out of 93 u.s. attorneys, the clinton administration fired all of his on the same day, and this is, in fact, not all that unusual. what's different here is that preet went before the cameras in the lobby of trump tower and said, i just spoke with jeff sessions, i just spoke with the then-president-elect and they told me that i can stay. someth

you know, white house sources, people that work in the white house, errol lewis, are these whistleblowersteresting. as a legal category if they should resort to that -- i would classify them as political operatives who found an easy mark, who picked up one of the most distasteful political chores the white house was looking for somebody to pull it off. sean spicer couldn't pull it off. the intelligence agencies wouldn't play ball. they wanted nothing to do with it, to conduct a real investigation. devin nunes was there for the plucking and two operatives went after him and succeeded. >> sean spicer directly, alex burns, said the idea that the white house coordinated this information with devin nunes doesn't pass the smell test. what does it smell like now? >> well, interestingly, i think it was the same briefing sean spicer repeatedly cited devin nunes' own words in saying that his source was not a member of the white house staff, but spicer himself did not make that claim, right? so it is sort of a denial that appears now not to hold up, that was sort of -- you know, laundered through th