but that's the position of the justice department, so, i leave you with that very, i hope, inciteful hypothetical. you have this anomaly that the great public interest in the enforcement of the criminal law is suspended , but the individual justice for one individual is not. seems odd. >> it's an honor to be here, to be at heritage, but on a panel with john and ken starr is a thrilling delight. i want to pick up where you left the baton though because i think the structure that we have is as faithful to the constitution as anything we've had and anything we probably could have. you could tinker with it here and there. and therein lies the difficult at the, which is we're trying to do something through the mechanisms of law that probably was not something that the framers intended in the first place. what the framers thought would happen, i think, is that congress would rein in presidential excess. and if you think about it, just, you know, we make some sort of casual assumptions about reining in the president now, right? because of what we have available to us. but until about 1870, t

of the justice department does and rightly so. they have been given the authority to go forward with the evidence. we are going to review that in washington d.c. if you shall going after congress person x in california. but where the law failed even when we would bring in these guardrails such as superindictment and one of the reasons i described in the book, we did not go forward with an indictment with hillary clinton even though we felt she committed crimes in arkansas. that is a pretty significant thing to conclude. this has not been made known until last month. well, why didn't you seek an indictment before it expired in 1988? because we went through a very elaborate review process and here is one of my guard rails. sam dash. the senate select committee. very hard for that to get out and to provide any kind of assurance that this is not, quote, a rogue prosecution that is politically inspired. >> i think what the dual sovereign doctrine could be involved . there has been speculation or fear in some quarte

but that's the position of the justice department. i leave you with that hypothetical. it gets suspended but the interest of one individual on achieving civil justice does not. seems odd. >> it's an honor to be here. it's always an honor to be here at heritage, but to be on a panel with john and judge star in particular is thrilling and a delight. i do want to pick up where you left the baton, though, because i do think that the structure we now have is as faithful to the constitution has anything we have had and anything we probably could have. i mean, you could tinker with it here and there. and there in lies the difficulty which is we're trying to do something through the mechanisms of law that was probably not something that the framers intended in the first place. what the framers thought would happen i think is that congress would reign in presidential excess. and if you think about it, we make some sort of casual assumptions about reigning in the president now because of what we have available to us. but until about 1870, there was no justice department as we unde

that's the support of the justice department prosecutors play. but it's not like in the criminal division where typically the fbi and the prosecutors will work together with an eye towards building what everybody assumes an equation is eventually going to be charges and an indictment. i counterintelligence investigation is essentially an information gathering episode. it's not intended to build a criminal case and, in fact, one of the big controversies that we had during the 1990s was the fact that the justice department interpose what was done as the wall between the law enforcement side of the fbi house and the counterintelligence site of the fbi's house, action and opposed this regulatory wall so that they had difficulty cooperating with each other for precisely the reason that the justice department was concerned about abuse if the fbi and the justice department were to use their counterintelligence powers as a pretext for conducting a criminal investigation. so seems to me that if you flash forward 20 years, what was scandals back in the '90

in court filings, cohn comred the department of justice to the nazis, alleging "gestapo-like" tactics. >> in a pattern we can recognize from trump's behavior to this day, attacking the accusers, attacking, indeed, thece department, as a way to sort of throw a smokescreen around the original crime. >> narrator: cohn's suit against the justice department was thrown out, trump forced t settle. they had lost. but in t press, trump and cohn declared victory. >> it was justike it didn't matter what the facts were, you know. this was a victory, we beat theo rnment. it had nothing to do withy. real >> he's a counter-puncher. you know-- boom, boom, boom! and admits nothing. never admit anything. never say you made a mistake. just keep coming. and if you lose, declare victory. and that's exactly what happened there. he lost as clearly as you can lose, but he loudly proclaimed his victory. >> narrator: cohn had givenrm trump a foa for survival and success. in lawsuits and lifetrump adopted cohn's method... (people talking in background).a ..lways be on the offensive. >> you can't say that i give

the same justice department with the other woes.he president should declassify the documents, give the americans the transparency we deserve and we'll learn a lot about whether there was the real conspiracy wasn't between russia and trump, it was the justice department and the democratic campaign to defraud the fisa court of america. lou: it's quite a mess to fix and quite a web. >> yes, sir, it is. lou: to unwind. john solomon, great to have you with us, thank you so much. opinion editor for the hill. >>> joining me dr. sebastian gorka, fox business national security strategist, former strategist to president trump, author of the brand-new book, where is that book? right here. why we fight, recovering america's will to win. available everywhere. here it is. seb, good to have you here. >> great to be here. lou: congratulations on the book. >> thank you. lou: let's start with first of all, the idea that suddenly astronaut scott kelly has to apologize for referencing winston churchill, one of the great leaders in his tweet he writes o

the evidence against flynn was shared across the street with the justice department. acting attorney general sally yates s read in to flynn's fbi interview. >> sally yates is a careerrt justice dent prosecutor. 27 years in the department, a tough cookie, but a genteel southernoman. >> she's saying, "we need to tell the white house. flynn has lied, and the russians know that those are lies. we need to mitigate the risk." >> nartor: yates would head to the office of the new white house counsel, don mcgahn. >> don mcgahn is a kind of stalwart conservative lawyer. not someone who has a record of serve within the department justice. not someone who's been schooled in exaly these kinds of questions. >> narrator: yates and her deputy, mary mccord, told mcgahn that michael fly had been lying. >> i think that, you know, for a person who'd bn in the office for six days, it was surprising information to learn and just took a little bit of time to process. >> what the acting attorney general was saying to the white hounsel, "you have someone working in this building, in this west

she's live at the justice department.e any more information since we last spoke with you? >> reporter: we're just a few minutes away. we anticipate some new york authorities will be here for that press conference. that may be an indicator that a criminal prosecution would proceed in a new york jurisdiction. three main things to be watching for during this news conference. one, what was the tip or piece of evidence that really broke the case wide open? number two, are they satisfied that this individual, cesar sayoc, acted alone or did he have help from others? and have they determined will there was any kind of motive involved in this? as we've been reporting for the last couple of hours, he was known to federal law enforcement, as well as state and local law enforcement. he had a history of making at least a couple of bomb threats. also battery, grand theft, number of traffic violations. so this was somebody who certainly on their radar and based on what was seen analyzing his social media facebook page, also what we cou

after all you're the guy running the justice department. lou: i've got to go back to the president on bruce ohr today tweeting this. to me, it's extraordinary. is it really possible that bruce ohr, who was used as -- was paid by simpson and gps fusion for work done on the fake dossier and who was used as a pawn in the whole scam witch hunt is still working if for department of justice? can this really be so? your reaction to the president's tweet. >> no. i'm like the president he's still working at doj. he's been demoted twice but he's still there. and remember his wife worked for glen simpson, they put together the dossier. the dossier was funneled to bruce ohr. he then took it to the fbi and the fbi can say wowr, we got a top justice official -- because at the time bruce ohr was one of the top officials in the justice department. he's giving the fbi the doses yay. that gives weight to the fraudulent document and again that's the basis for going to get the warrant to spy on carter page and spy on the trump campaign. lou: appearing before y

the justice department is paralyzed.s toxic, the corrupt leadership, the scum on the top of the cesspool that is the justice department has been moved aside. officials taken away including james comey. the list goes on but we haven't heard much about loretta lynch, have we? we haven't heard much of the holdovers from the obama administration. this is an intact justice department put in place principally by eric holder and president obama. >> right. i can't agree with you more. for all that the president has accomplished he could have accomplished more without the "a," distraction; "b," destruction from the job and people not doing their jobs. it's been a huge disappointment. i think it will be a while before that gets turned around. if it ever is. it's a critical failure in the government right now that we don't have a functioning department of justice to investigate antitrust issues with big tech, to investigate the russia stuff, punish the perjury and find out what really happened with a lot of issues in the hillary cl

>> there's only so much justice department lawyers can do in the context of litigation. they are duty-bound to advocate for their clients but the justice department has done so much more than litigate. for a long time, the justice department played a central role in studying issues of administrative law, writing reports. some reports are still cited today. i would just, given everything peter said, i would just add it would be great if the justice department in addition to what it's doing in litigation, would take a step back and start to resume the work of studying these things and looking at it systematically and criticizing some of these problems we're seeing in the context of reports. maybe that will help bolster congress's energy and acting itself. >> that's interesting. it reminds me of something that happened to me when i was at the treasury department because we had a major issue with the treasury department of regulation. we didn't go into it but i wanted to argue this case before the court of appeals, and before any general counsel of an agency can do that, you

happened completely inside the justice department. in 20 -- >> and several white house staffers. >> but it came out of oversight of the justice department. no one knew that issue even existed until the judiciary committee started exercising oversight on justice. that same thing could happen across this administration. you look at the caliber of people that are at these agencies, you can only imagine what they've been up to. >> i want to ask you, too, about this intersection of investigative journalism and what we have in there. we haven't had the democrats in power. there haven't been any government investigations. just thinking about your paper's coverage of scott pruitt. he's gone but no one has gone back and looked at his conduct. tactical pants and a phone booth and what else. where do you see some of the leads opened by investigative journalism going if democrats take over control of the house or senate? >> not only subpoena power again, maybe that's complied with, maybe it isn't, but the thing to look at is how the republicans u

you're saying it would be within the justice department or the fbi.do with this because your wife's involved on the other side. >> oh yes. it's not just common sense. we're not talking about punishing people who, couples, both of whom are working in washington, d.c. we're not saying mrs. ohr has to quit her job or mr. ohr has to quit his job. there are plenty of things at the justice department. there are bad guys to catch. why isn't bruce ohr working on other cases? he doesn't have to be involved in fusion gps. hand it off to an impartial official who doesn't have to be hired by the clinton campaign to feed political intelligence. >> melissa: what if he was the back channel into the fbi? that's the way it's been characterized by some who they say are privy to the records. that this is all largely discredited. that fusion had been shopping it around to bunch of different people. it took bruce ohr back channelling it into the fbi that he was working, this work product that it took that in order to get it in. i mean, then what does that mean? is there a

it is the first criminal charge by the justice department against a russian for interference in this year's elections. prosecutors say that elena -- that's the best i can do on that particular reading waged, quote, information warfare against the united states of america. according to the criminal complaint russia continues using fake accounts on social media to quote, sew division and discord in the u.s. political system including by creating social and political polarization, undermining faith in democratic institutions and influencing u.s. elections including the upcoming 2018 mid-term election. these federal criminal charges were not brought by special prosecutor robert mueller who has been investigating russian interference in the 2016 election. the case is being handled by the cyber division of the u.s. attorney's office in the eastern district of virginia and the justice department national security division's counter intelligence and expert control section. the woman in charge is believed to be in russia now, and so has not been apprehended by u.s. authorities. prosecutors sa

my name is mary daly and i serve as the department of justice's opioid coordinator. i work in the office of the deputy attorney general and assist departments leadership and components with opioid related initiatives, policies, grants, and programs. attorney general sessions and deputy attorney general rosenstein have made ending our national opioid epidemic a top priority. our leadership measures the department's performance in this area by whether we help bring the death toll down. our attorney general and deputy attorney general have set the tone. and it's been inspiring to witness the hard work and dedication of our employees across the department of justice. today, we're here to discuss the role of federal law enforcement in reversing this epidemic. this summit brings together united states attorneys, federal, state, and local tribal law enforcement officials, government and public health officials, policy leaders, and most importantly, families who have lost their loved ones to this vicious epidemic. we hope you enjoy the summit. before i introduce the deputy at

he's looking for a protector at the justice department. thank you all for spending the top of the show with us. >>> when we come back -- love and loetathing in the time of trump. we'll show you the political marriage made in heaven. >>> and with the wall that donald trump promised during the 2016 election on hold for now, donald trump rails against democrats, immigrants n s and am seekers to rally his base. >>> and jared kushner says the u.s. kills people, too. kushner today speaking out about all the deception in the middle east saying there's plenty of deception here in the states as well. i'll say. all those stories coming up. managing my type 2 diabetes wasn't my top priority. until i held her. i found my tresiba® reason. now i'm doing more to lower my a1c. once daily tresiba® controls blood sugar for 24 hours for powerful a1c reduction. tresiba® is a long-acting insulin used to control high blood sugar in adults with diabetes. don't use tresiba® to treat diabetic ketoacidosis, during episodes of low blood sugar, or if you are allergic

>> well, i think that's good news the justice department is actually attacking this.let's not forget exactly what we were talking about here. this was a $35 million operation, incredibly sophisticated. these are people in st. petersburg, russia, and they had a very sophisticated understanding of american politics, where the fault lines, nfl protesters, lgbt rights, gun rights. and we're already divided. they're just throwing a match on dry tinder here, and it's very effective. and i'm not sure we have any defense for it at this moment. >> the woman is apparently in russia. so there's not going to be extradition. we're probably not going to get to a trial in this. so what was their point in putting this out today? >> to send a message to the russians that they have exposed this conduct and build public awareness about it. and frankly, we're not sure, why did they only charge her and not other people? does she have a villa somewhere where she cannot travel to a country where the fbi can snatch her. there's somewhat of a penalty to be paid here, but also a naming and sha

the justice department has added some immigration judges. would you like to see that process continue, add more judges? would that help? why or why not? and short of rescinding the quota, is there any halfway measure that would satisfy? thanks. >> i think you know when something is fundamentally flawed at its corps then everything that's born out of it is going to come back to that fundamental flaw. so we have had the court as i said neglected for decades. when the -- when the budgets for law enforcement was ballooning. we would get this mass influx of cases but we didn't have the budget to be able to keep up with it because we weren't considered priority enough. we weren't law enforcement with respect to the department. then when we came on the radar the department want towed use us as messages. every way the court has been used has been from the perspe perspective of law enforcement. when you have a backlog one solution is to look for more judges. if you continue the treat the court as an extension of law enforcement policy when you are co

tom dupree is a former justice department official.er cia station chief at fox news contributor. in former washington, d.c., police detective ted williams. of see you have someone at every level of looking at this investigation, thank you for joining me. i want to start with you because we are expected to hear from the justice department. had you look at this legally, the charges that could be pending? >> they certainly have a bunch of federal statutes they could bring here. it certainly appears to be from what we have seen initial reports an instance of domestic terrorism. there's no shortage of federal status of the doj could prosecute under. i think 100 interesting question is where the prosecution would occur. the southern district of new york, u.s. attorney's office has been in charge of this investigation to date. it has a history of prosecuting these types of cases. so i suspect the justice department will ultimately transfer the responsibility of the matter to new york for prosecution. >> harris: we have learned that authoritie

in his capacity in rises and assist the attorney general in formulating and implementing department of justice policies and programs and providing overall supervision to all organizational unit at the department of justice. he spent over 27 years in government service and began his career with the department as an attorney with the attorney general program. he previously served as u.s. attorney for the district of maryland and started his legal career as a law clerk to judge douglas h. ginsburg of the united states court of appeals for the district of columbia circuit after graduating from the wharton school of business at harvard law school. please join me in welcoming deputy attorney general. [applause] >> thank you very much for the kind introduction. i want to think america's health insurance plans for inviting us to speak here today. their member companies provide health insurance to millions of american families to rely on the organizations in difficult times. i know some of you were here in march when i spoke at the national health policy conference. that was only seven months ago but a

the justice department is basically paralyzed. it is toxic corrupt leadership, the scum on the top of the cesspool that is the justice department has been moved aside. seven officials taken away including james comey, the list goes on. we haven't heard much about loretta lynch, have way. we haven't heard much about the holdovers of the obama administration. this is an intact justice department that was put in place principally by eric holder and president obama. >> it writes. i can't agree with you more. for all that the president has accomplished she could have accomplished more without the distraction and obstruction from people not doing their jobs. it's been a disappointment. it will be a while before that gets turned around, if it ever days. it's a critical failure. the big tech to look at perjury and look at what happened with the issues in the hillary clinton behavior and her foundation and so forth. it's a big step back. hopefully the president will continue on course and appoint the right people once the top people clear

this is the justice department.same one that -- there may have been some connotatisultatih mueller's prosecution because of the overlap. it says she was an accountant for a company called concord. concord is a company that has robustly decided to defend itself against those charges unlike the other russians that were named in that july indictment. this is a separate criminal case and the reason it's brought in the eastern district of virginia is a lot of internet traffic flowed through. virginia is a huge sort of internet connection point and some of these things popped up here for the first time in virginia. >> okay pete williams outside the courthouse there. thank you for that. joining me msnbc legal analyst danny savallas and nbc news investigation tom winter. tom, let me start with you. again just trying to piece this together and i'm saying in the reporting here from pete among the politicians attacked in these online messages. john mccain, paul ryan, marco rubio, mitch mcconnell, former president obama. i thin

so it's weird that the justice department wrote a press release about who was replacing him and then that leaked to the press. that was weird. also weird, matt whittaker is not in the line of succession at the justice department to take over the deputy attorney general job. so inserting him into the rosenstein job, had rosenstein been fired, that would have been strange. that would have been the white house inserting itself into the justice department to hand pick the person to take over that important job. the fact that matt whittaker, until recently, was a cable news pundit, whose main gig on tv was attacking the robert mueller investigation, that made it seem clear to a lot of people why the white house might have wanted to pick him exactly to insert into the rod rosenstein job, presumably so whittaker could hamstring the mueller investigation he's been so critical of and protect the president from that high post at the justice department. well, tonight, what "the washington post" is reporting that whittaker is in talks with the president to replace a high ranking justice departme

they lied to jeff sessions about the pakistani -- lou: well, they played the whole justice department for fools. and by the way, it appears that way but let's not forget, the democratic party has been politically corrupt now for what, 20 years. and at the same time, their connection to the democratic party and the democratic national committee and democratic administrations are documented and will be more so before we're through. >> they might as well raise their forearm and raise their hands and yell. the way they're headed. there are enough americans who say we need decency, we need to follow the constitution and we need to stop this destructive policy that they've been on. lou: right. >> look at kavanaugh, people criticizing for how he reacted? lou: you and i both know that is thee yatheatrics. >> yeah. if he came in and said i'm not guilty, i didn't do any of this and no emotion, then they would have been after him that he didn't have any emotion. he wasn't going to win either way. it's tes powe the power of persl destruction. lou: they weren't there to interview the man for a job

if the department of justice or fbi has another peac piece of evidence that goes against that they wouldresent both sides of the coin to evaluate the weight and sufficiency of the evidence. instead, what happened here, the department of justice and fbi officials in october of 2016 only presented to the court the evidence that made the government's case get a warrant to spy on a trump campaign associate. declassification would corroborate what i just related to you. >>reporter: how is that investigation having any credibility if he's not actually looking at who did collude or work with the russian? >> that issue, i would advocate for the appointment of a special council to look at teasish -- these issues. >> i want to know where the mueller investigation is going. >> where it's going is it's winding down. i've watched closely what's been happening. if you look at what the office is doing it's staffing down. folks working are leaving and going back to the offices from which they were detailed. they are out sourcing and delegating matters back to component agency or compartments within the

people can still go to the justice department. the justice department itself can still bring claims to challenge these, but that's where politics comes in. the trump justice department will not go to court against a republican secretary of state in georgia to get this exact match law thrown out. >> ron, i know you're on this. will you please do us the favor of coming back on and updating us on the story between now and the midterms? >> i will, brian. one more thing, everyone should check to see if they are registered to vote. go to vote.org. go to vote save america.com. in most states, there is still time to reregister if you're been wrongly kicked off the rolls. >> ron klain returning to our broadcast tonight. thank you so much for coming on, ron. >> thanks, brian. >>> coming up, the history lesson trump gave the folks at his ohio rally tonight. we're going to run it past presidential historian michael beschloss. this ought to be interesting. cancer ... it's very personal. each of us is different. and each cancer is different. ho

i guess that is what it is, in oversight over the justice department. you all to go to hell, time and time again, why gets mad -- only now. >> some of us have been, have you been leading cheers on that appropriately. i am glad someone is joining us in being upset that will allow to us do something. you remember, lois lerner, eric holder, loretta lynch, hillary clinton, so many people come up and lie. you are talking with andy biggs, until someone is held a coupible they will keep doing it. i believe rod rosenstein lied to congress. you know what, it is not going to be mueller that does the investigation, to the take a special counsel to investigate rod rosenstein. whether we do subpoena him, and let's face it he has been obstructing the investigation into what went on for a long, long time. but he and mueller, a number of them were involved in the previous russia investigation. mueller needs to be investigating himself and rod rosenstein. that does not work out so well. we need someone else to look into them. what can we do? we should hold people in con

, my supervisor and mentor and friend when i was a trial attorney at the department of justice, represented the united states for 48 years at the department of justice and trained and mentored many young trial attorneys and i had the good fortune to be one of them. watching from arizona my wonderful staff, judicial assistant alan weber and courtroom deputy ln. leon make my job possible and i thank them for all they have done, for their friendship and support. thank you for your consideration of my nomination and thank you senator hatch and i look forward to answer their questions. >> thank you very much. we not only welcome you and your family members present but those who are watching carefully. i am sure they are all proud and have smiles on their face right now. mister miller, you may proceed. >> good morning and thank you very much for chairing this hearing. it is an honor of to appear before you today. i would like to thank the president for this nomination and chairman grassley and ranking member feinstein for scheduling the hearing, and those who represent my home state

the justice department did its job.this russian woman for meddling in the most ugly divisive messages that the russians could imagine. but they're not going to win any from this president from doing it. we're getting this green light essentially from our security advis advisor. and the only real deterrent is the russians have what they want in president trump. picking on our allies and giving them cover. why mess with that? why cross a red line that would force the congress to override the president when they have everything they want with donald trump? so that may be the only deterrent we be in terms of election meddling, and we have to hope that's going to be powerful enough. >> congressman adam schiff, top democrat on the intelligence committee and house. thank you, sir. >>> we've got a very exciting announcement actually coming up next. stay with us. >>> before we go tonight i have a small personal note, something i want you to know. i'm about to launch a new thing. we're about -- there's a new thing. i did a podcas