jeff toobin, how big a deal is this? >> it's an enormous deal. you know, remember, the whole idea of a special prosecutor is to see if there are any crimes to be prosecuted. robert mueller has decided there are at least one defendant with one -- you know with a crime. we will see whether he can make his case in court. we will see whether it leads to other people, but the fact is, this is an investigation of russia and collusion and now the prosecutor has brought some charges. >> david gergen, how do you rank this in terms of the magnitude? >> i think we're going to be held in suspense until the documents are unsealed, the indictments are unsealed. until then we can't really measure it. what we do know is the dam is breaking. we do know the mueller investigation, there were some speculations, and the trump white house was trying to make us believe there was nothing here. we do know there's something here. we do know that mueller has probable cause to believe that crimes were committed by at least one person. and that's significant, but how signifi

if you wouldn't mind standing by for me, i want to bring in jeff toobin, the chief legal analyst to talk about this. jeff, what is your reaction? >> reporter: well, this is a continuing saga of the travel ban. what is interesting about this ruling is that travel ban 2.0 was supposed to be addressed by the supreme court this month. but the court dismissed that case because it was moved, the travel ban 2.0 was no longer in effect. but what i think is almost certain now is that this ruling about travel ban 3.0 will be on a rocket ride to the supreme court. and we will get a resolution one way or another. i think each time the trump administration has revised the travel ban, it has become more likely to be upheld. it is more narrowly tailored. there's more explanation for the basis for it. obviously, the federal district judge in hawaii was not persuaded this was constitutional. but i think, the trump administration is in better shape depending travel ban 3.0 in the supreme court rather than the two earlier versions. and i expect they'll have the chance sooner rather than later. >> jeff, by

. >> but jeff toobin, if it is some past crime, financial crime from some years ago, david saying, youite house will say, look there's nothing about collusion, this is reaching back in history years. is it possible those kind of charges are brought to your point in order to get them to flip and kind of a smaller fish, charge them with something from the past to get them to flip on what they may know? >> right, people flip because they know they're going to be convicted and looking at serious jail time. it doesn't necessarily mean they have to flip on precisely the issue that they will testify against higher up. i know we are in a position here of speculating and that's not ideal, but, you know, i think the precise nature of the charges against whoever this is, one or more persons, doesn't necessarily tell you about the future investigation, the future course of the investigation. all it means is that the mueller team has found probable cause against somebody or some person, and that they are going to try to win that case or get a guilty plea and a conviction and/or testimony. i think t

john dean, what about the idea that jeff toobin was talking about earlier, that the first indictmentsally are the smaller fish. in this case, though, i mean, could it be more advantageous if they're concerned about the politics of this, concerned about being attacked for having larger charges? >> the politics of it were the mistakes in watergate. we wrote the book of what not to do. one of the things is to not overreact, or take actions that are going to jeopardize your case or your situation. and so an unknown, or unexpected indictment could be more problem than an expected indictment. manafort is sort of expected. something that they're not anticipating, they may well overreact to. so i think it's a good time to look at the history book, in how they handle this politically. >> carl? >> watergate is particularly relevant because republicans took a principled stand about richard nixon above party. and we haven't seen that happen yet, and hopefully we will during this investigation. the other point to make is that mueller, like the congressional committees, has 20, 21,000 e-mails from

. >> gloria, i'm with jeff toobin. it's a weak case, and you're grandstanding for politics. >> i appreciate him saying my name over and over again. i enjoy that part a lot. but i said it's a question about whether a judge would dismiss it or not. >> you said it was bootstrapped, meaning he didn't have a case, right? >> you know what, i think we should speak one at a time. but we're out of time now. >> and i don't think jeffrey toobin, that's what he said at all. >> thank you all. appreciate it. this is "cnn tonight." i'm don lemon. a little bit past 11:00 on the east coast, and we're live with new developments. >>> president trump in the rose garden today seemed to have an awful lot on his predecessor blasting him on health care and saying he didn't call the families of fallen troops. >> if you look at president obama and other presidents, most of them didn't make calls, a lot of them didn't make calls. i like to call when it's appropriate. president obama after a long period of time was finally able to push it through

. >> you agree with jeff toobin.ou think the big question here is whether george papadopoulos has been wearing a wire. >> i think it gives not enough significance to say that he was just wearing a wire. proactive to me means that he was actively trying to have discussions with people, in some ways make mueller's team aware of what had happened over the months prior to that. there are a number of people he could have had conversations with. remember, washington, d.c. is one of those one party consent jurisdictions meaning you can actually wire tap and have conversations and include both parties with only one party agreeing to it. you could have tapes of conversations. for over three months this person escaped the scrutiny of the media and also escaped the probably the key players who probably conversed with him, e-mailed, spoke casually and you don't have any idea what this man was able to accomplish before it went public. >> we've got to take a quick break. right after we come back from the break we'll continue the c

jeff toobin, to you first. what jumps out at you is the fact that they're under house arrest, yeah?y, and the enormously high bail. they don't have to put up that much money, but they're agreeing to forfeit that much if they disappear. in a white-collar case like this this is an unusually severe bail conditions. usually, the only condition would be you'd have to surrender your passport, but you would be released on your own recognizance. obviously, the -- the mueller investigation and the mueller team made the case to the judge that both of these gentlemen are flight risks and they are flight risks to leave the country where they can't be retrieved. so the judge agreed at least enough to impose really onerous bail conditions just short of locking them up. house arrest, you know, it sounds -- >> what does that entail exactly? >> it means you stay in your apartment other than sanctioned trips to a doctor, to a lawyer's office -- >> for the foreseeable future. >> until the trial is resolved, and the trial in this case, as we were discussing earlier is months away. so that is a -- and i

. >> but, jeff toobin, in front of a grand jury, there's no defense, correct?it doesn't even look like a courtroom. a grand jury room tends to look like a classroom. where there is a witness stand, but the prosecutor runs the show and the jurors sit classroom style and are allowed to ask questions often, sometimes directly, sometimes through the prosecutor. it is something that is very much controlled by the prosecution. there is no defense attorney. the witnesses are not allowed to have a defense attorney in the room. and a grand jury does not have to be unanimous to issue an indictment the way a jury has to be unanimous to reach a conviction. they need only to have a majority. the -- so an indictment is not, you know, tantamount to conviction, i think people should be very much aware of that. just because somebody is indicted doesn't mean they're guilty of anything. but, obviously, it is not a step that responsible prosecutors take unless they feel like the case ultimately will end in a conviction and certainly the very experienced group that robert mueller h

jeff tie toobin said this could be done by lower level players at dnc and hillary's campaign and topg about it. is is that possible? >> i don't know how the dnc money, hillary clinton campaign money going into the pockets of russians without anybody from either organizations knowing built. next week will yield potentially more bombshells than this one did, because the fbi is sending over all the documentation it supposedly has to congress, finally next week. in those documents we may find some interesting stuff. also the bank records from fusion gp could s on the way, once we get those a whole new bag of worms. cheryl: when you have payments and transactions on paper that could get you. this fbi informant had the gag order lifted on him or her the lawyer was actually on fox news this morning and the lawyer said she is shocked none of the other networks reached out to her to get the side of the fbi informant. this person seems to be a big key in uncovering this investigation and uncovering what was really happening? >> yes and this informant we know is scared for his life because of o

let bring in our chief legal analyst jeffrey toobin. jeff, we've seen two major moves today, a pair of indictments and a guilty plea. which is the most damning? >> the papadopoulos case, because for one thing it's a guilty plea. the case is over, but if you look halt what he admitted to and the e-mails described, there are explicit references to thousands of e-mails, hillary clinton e-mails, that will apparently in the possession of the russians. this is the first time that we know that there is any direct or indirect connection between the trump campaign and the eat mails which turned out to be so important in this case that. alone is extremely provocative information that -- that certainly investigators are following up on. >> yes, they, and what else stands out to you in those court documents? we've all read them thoroughly relating to this former national security advisers george papadopoulos? >> you know, there was something that our legal eagles on our team discovered late in the afternoon. not in the original document but in the -- in

joining the conversation, jeffrey toobin. jeffers tell their employees not to do something which they feel expresses their right to free speech? >> yes. the constitution, the 1st amendment, only applies to the government. the government cannot pun issue. they can't throw you in jail for expressing your opinions. the 1st amendment does not apply to public employers. just today an espn analyst was suspended for two weeks for expressing her views about the current situation. >> jemele hill. >> you and i could be fired from cnn if we start endorsing candidates. that is a -- you know, a power that employers have. in the united states. the only issue in the nfl situation is there's a collective bargaining agreement between the union and the nfl. and there may be some provisions in there that the players could argue that it would be an unfair act by the employer, but i think by in large, it is clear here that jerry jones, if ehe wants to, could fire or suspend players who wouldn't stand up. >> van, there's a chapter in your new book, and

joining us now is kirsten powers, scott jennings, and jeff r -- jeffrey toobin. the idea the president was joking in the realm of possibility, but when you look back at the number of times the president has gone to that oez chestnut of his amazingly huge iq, i mean he wasn't joking before. he talks about going to an ivy league school, about how smart he is, how he uses the best words and he brings up the iq an awful lot. >> it would be better if it was a joke obviously because it's a bizarre thing to do over and over. it's not usually people who are secure in their intelligence and their education don't talk about -- >> i've known really smart people. none of them have said to me, i'm really smart. >> i think it's a tell on his part he's insecure about it and he was obviously angry about what was said about him. >> jeffrey toobin, you went to an ivy league school? >> my iq is four digits. you know, i just -- you know, i don't know anyone after junior high school who talks about their iq. i mean it's just so surreally juvenile. >> i think the mensa meeting people

dana bash is here, paul begala, ed martin, bryce allen, al stewart, and jeffrey toobin. jeff, from a legal standpoint, is it okay for the president to do something like this? >> it's not against the law, as far as i know, but it is against justice department policy. i mean, this is the classic example of why, you know, a president should not get involved in these sorts of details. look, let's be clear, this case is a fox news obsession. it's constantly on fox news. the president watches fox news all the time. he wants to stir the pot on this case. that is exactly not how the system is supposed to work. it's not a crime, it's not illegal, but it is just not appropriate under any circumstances. >> ed, you see it differently? >> well, i think, jeffrey, and you might know this better, but the rule is -- the rule from the justice department is if there's contact with the white house and the justice department, it must go through the white house counsel's office. so that is the step that they took to send this message. so again, you said it, you're right, it's not illegal. it's als