obviously the guy on the right samuel alito, don mcgann is the white house counsel.is job is to advise the president. in the hours after the president sent that saturday morning tweet that got everybody so upset, don mcgahn was according to the white house already on the case. a senior white house official telling the "new york times" that day that don mcgahn w "working to secure access to what mr. mcgann believed to be an order issued by the foreign intelligence surveillance court authorizing some form of surveillance related to mr. trump and his associates. stop right there. regardless of what anybody is claiming, you can't do that. warrants from the foreign intelligence surveillance court, fisa warrants, those are some of the most sensitive top-secret business we've got as a country. whether such a warrant exists or not, a white house official can't ask the department of justice, can't ask the court to hand over that administration. you've got something about the president, i want to see it. that's not the way that works. especially when the information being soug

and we now know from what we've understood here that mcgann told the president about this.yates would have testified next week in effect i gave the president through his counsel a heads-up about mike flynn and that would have put nunes and the white house and their allies in a very uncomfortable position next week. that's i think why they canceled the hearing. > you feel no one's going to inadvertently blurt out secrets that shouldn't be bes in closed session. you feel generally sunshine and fresh air are best for an investigation. this elemental to a new administration and this vast. >> yeah, these are professional people who have testified many times on classified and unclassified topics. they're well trained. you need both. you probably need much of it done in an unclassified format and some of it done in a classified format. it should probably be that those weighting, if you will. but you got to have both but something of this magnitude, the public needs to understand what the committee is doing. the committee is the eyes and ears of the american public. if they don't d

to what mcgann believed to be an order issued by the foreign intelligence surveillance court. >> the white house, people potentially in the white house, certainly people from the campaign are what the fbi is looking at, trying to figure out whether people from trump's campaign were colluding with the russians to swing the election for now president trump. for them to pressure the fbi, justice department to turn over that if it exists, even to go and ask whether it exists is completely inappropriate and i would hope that people at the department of justice -- let me put it this way. the career people i worked with when i was at the department of justice would strongly push back on that type of behavior. i think the political people i worked with at the department of justice felt very strongly about the independence of doj and the separation between doj and the white house and would have pushed back and i hope the people running the justice department now, jeff sessions and the other people that came in with president trump, will feel the same way. of course, sessions would be recused

but mcgann said there might not be a fisa warrant. don't be making these accusations. we've got to be careful here, sensitive to ongoing investigations. >> final question here. i thought this was such a fascinating -- two details. one is bannon and miller attempt to cheer the president up by going over his revised executive order, which i thought was an interesting window into that relationship. and also this. reince priebus interrupted his friday afternoon schedule to dedicate more than an hour to calling reporters off the record to deny the outburst the one that you reported that many people witnessed had actually happen. what are we to make of that? >> priebus is certainly following his own coverage closely. he thinks that also perhaps has some kind of implication for the administration. and you do see the white house very sensitive to priebus, because there are all these articles coming out about the knives out for priebus and politico. it's kind of a rung theme there is a lot of rivals in washington who think maybe i'd be a better chief of staff they say to report

and we now know from what we've understood here that mcgann told the president about this.nd so yates would have testified next week in effect i gave the president through his counsel a heads-up about mike flynn and that would have put nunes and the white house and their allies in a very uncomfortable position next week. that's i think why they canceled the hearing. > you feel no one's going to inadvertently blurt out secrets that shouldn't be bes in closed session. you feel generally sunshine and fresh air are best for an investigation. this elemental to a new administration and this vast. >> yeah, these are professional people who have testified many times on classified and unclassified topics. they're well trained. you need both. you probably need much of it done in unclassified format and some of it done in a classified format. it should probably be that those waiting, if you will. but you got to have both but something of this magnitude, the public needs to understand what the committee is doing. the committee is the eyes and ears of the american public. if they don't

we have the new york times, also reporting that conspiracy theory or not, white house counsel don mcgann pursuing this, senior white house official said mcgann, the president's counsel, working to secure access to what he believed to be an order issued by that fisa court authorizing some form of surveillance related to mr. trump and his associates. earlier this hour, david, doj official said that sounds appropriate. what do you make of it? >> would be highly inappropriate if a white house counsel is asking questions about an ongoing fbi investigation, one that was either criminal, counterintelligence that might concern somebody in the white house. certainly not offering information. the bottom line here is, it sounds hyperbollic a what point do we start using the word deranged? the president made what is a tremendously, tremendously significant charge about the past president. last night i managed to see sean spicer at an event in washington and i said, don't you guys have to back this up at all? don't you feel any compulsion to do that? are you going to do it tomorrow, monday, tuesday?

mcgann told me the transition would be done in an orderly fashion to preserve continuity. this is not the case, i'm very concerned about this unexpected decision in federal law enforcement. they previously said they wouldn't do this but tonight they decided to. part of what remains here as a question is whether this applies to preet bharara, too. because he kind of had a special deal he was asked to stay on by the president, by the attorney general. he accepted. tonight nbc news asked the justice department if this new order applies to preet bharara, if they want him to stay on or leave and the justice department told nbc "ask the white house." nbc called the white house to ask about preet bharara's situation and the white house said "ask the justice department." so somewhere between the white house and the justice department maybe somebody knows but we don't know for sure either way. i mean, the president has the power to fire preet bharara if he wants to. he's allowed to do that. but it would be a strange and dramatic decision if he did it because there was an overt pers

ross and his wife, along with aides, steven miller and steven bannon, and white house counsel don mcgann. all of that taking place in the coming hours at mar-a-lago. all closed-press, but these are additions. this is interesting coming in light of the fact that we're hearing that the new travel ban, the new revised travel ban will be coming next week, going to be signed next week. that of course has been, delayed, a delay process as they work to put out a revised ban that could better with stand legal scrutiny. >> athena jones, thank you so much for that. >>> i want to bring in my panel. cnn's justice producer, josh rogen. and cnn political analyst and "washington post" columnist. david barrenhold, and cnn contributor "washington post" and sarah westwood, white house correspondent for the "washington examiner." >> your reporting is crucial, you spoke with a former u.s. official about the wire-tapping allegations. tell us about that allegation. >> the former senior white house official who had direct knowledge of the investigation surrounding trump associates, meddling in the election, an

don mcgann, the council, is trying to be the key person. they doesn't want to get involved montana f involved with the fbi. they've had discussions saying let the congressional committees handle it. the problem is that the president himself is still driving these discussions. he wants to talk about possible surveillance and even if the staff wants to move on and talk about the executive order and health care, it the president himself who wants to keep coming back to the obama administration and what steve bannon is telling the president is the deep state, this idea that there are many bedded bureaucrats in the intelligence community working against the president. that's a mentality that's pervasive. >> let me ask you, bob. in my conversations with administration officials, it seems as though the president, the foundation for a lot of this, his real fury is at leaks coming out of the intelligence community. the relationship between the president and the fbi seems to be in real trouble. what's your sense of where that relationship goes? >> it

mcgann told me the transition would be done in an orderly fashion to preserve continuity.his is not the case, i'm very concerned about this unexpected decision in federal law enforcement. they previously said they wouldn't do this but tonight they decided to. part of what remains here as a question is whether this applies to preet bharara, too. because he kind of had a special deal he was asked to stay on by the president, by the attorney general. he accepted. tonight nbc news asked the justice department if this new order applies to preet bharara, if they want him to stay on or leave and the justice department told nbc "ask the white house." nbc called the white house to ask about preet bharara's situation and the white house said "ask the justice department." so somewhere between the white house and the justice department maybe somebody knows but we don't know for sure either way. i mean, the president has the power to fire preet bharara if he wants to. he's allowed to do that. but it would be a strange and dramatic decision if he did it because there was an overt person

including reince priebus, chief of staff, steven bannon, don mcgann. i'm told he went ballistic. infuriated that the attorney general, jeff sessions, recused himself from this investigation. trump, the president saw this as emboldening his democratic critics. he said, we never should have given ground. there's no reason for him to recuse. nobody's done anything wrong. he left that meeting, went to florida, didn't take his senior staff with him. i'm told by two sources that reince priebus and steven bannon both said we'll stay behind and work on this. >> and then came the tweets. >>> as jon just mentioned, the white house has not appeared before cameras to explain what let's bring in live white house spokes person sarah huckabee sanders. thank you for joining us. >> good morning. >> these are extremely serious charges the president is making. where is he getting this information? >> look, i think there have been quite a few reports. jon than and others earlier in the program said it's all conservative media preside. that's not true. the new york times and bsh bc talked about this.

in response, don mcgann said, offering money to planned parenthood to abandon our patients and our valuess not a deal that we will ever accept. providing critical health care services for millions of american women is nonnegotiable. >>> and switching to overseas, the united states launched an anti-missile system into place to south korea. the faad system really isn't without controversy. it's certainly going to upset one or two countries in asia. >> reporter: well, ayman, tension is escalating across asia today with the beginning of delivery of the controversial u.s.-made missile defense system coming just after north korea's latest missile test. four missiles fired toward japan in what the regime's news agency said today was practice for striking at u.s. military bases there. so increasingly, this is becoming a big security challenge for president trump and the u.s. has pledged support to allies in the region. the problem is that china is strongly opposed to this missile defense system. they say it does nothing more than upset the strategic balance in the region. and chinese officials vo

mcgann or in the justice department, whoever is the now ranking attorney general there, advising him stay out of this investigation. this is in some way about you and you shouldn't be commenting on it. >> you're nodding no? >> joel has to realize we are used to, you know, president obama sending tweets. we are used to this -- [ overlapping speakers ] >> but this is an investigation, in fairness, into president trump -- >> you're not comparing president obama's tweets to president trump's tweets? >> no, i'm not comparing the two twitter accounts. no, no, no. but what i am saying, we should be used to president trump doing these tweets. >> should we be used to it? >> the people that supported donald trump and voted for donald trump, they want these eets. they want this transparency. they depend on it, because they think the rest of the news is either fake news or -- >> karen, go ahead. >> here's why there is not transparency. we saw it yesterday and we've seen sean spicer say it a number of times. when asked in a briefing, a fair question, president trump tweeted x and the phrase i thi

so a letter was sent to the white house counsel at the white house, don mcgann, and a reply was requested by monday, march 27th. no reply came, so that's why sean spicer is saying the white house didn't do anything. no reply came. but then sally yates was canceled by devin nunes. so the next question is, why did devin nunes cancel sally yates? and did anybody tell him to do it. >> the suspicion is that this hearing, like last monday's hearing, was going to be negative as far as the trump administration is concerned. let's step back. sally yates was the acting attorney general. she was the one who notified the white house that michael flynn, the then national security adviser, had misled top officials including the vice president of the united states about his contacts with the russian ambassador and other russians and as a result of that he was eventually fired. >> let's remember who sally yates was the acting a.g. who was a deputy under the obama administration who was a hold over until they could get jeff sessions in place. so this is not someone who at all is friendly to donald trump.

well, it's funny you ask that question because yesterday a senior white house official said that don mcgann, who is white house counsel was going to try to facea order. there was enormous blowback to that and then hours later a second white house official said, well, no, we're going to try to figure out what is going on here, but we went have him go and search for a fisa warrant. why is that? because the white house counsel can't go to doj and demand a fisa order. that's not how it works. that would be breaking enormous precedent in terms of, you know, separation of powers. so that is the ongoing question is are the white house aides basically trying to clean up/make trump feel good, by pretending that they will get to the bottom of this when actually they are just trying to figure out how to pretend like they are for his sake, or are they actually doing some kind of an internal investigation to actually figure out what happened last year in this investigation? >> a lot of conflicting information on certain information, because, again, the president went to florida. most of his senior staff

anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly disclose the memo from white house counsel don mcgann as it was reported that the obama administration rushed information across agencies to preserve the intelligence. today devin nunes agreed with ranking member congressman adam schiff to include possible links between russia and trump campaign associates as part of the scope of that intelligence committee's investigation. on the house judiciary committee, republicans took advantage of the hoopla to very quietly on a party line vote kill a resolution of inquiry which had been proposed by congressman jerry nadler. that resolution of inquiry is a tool that can be used by the minority party when the majority is stonewalling. this particular resolution asked the justice department to provide any documents related to any criminal or counterintelligence investigation targeting president donald j. trump, michael flynn, paul manafort, roger stone. in other words, anything related to the interference in the election and the trump campaign's possible ties to russia. it asked for documents relatin

, who is the president president's chief counsel, was working to secure access to what mcgann believedligence surveillance court offering some kind of surveillance to president trump. this is the fisa court, the highly secretive court. so far, radio silence from the white house communications staff though a deputy press secretary is expected to be on another sunday show this morning. so hopefully we'll get some answers later today. abby: chris, kristen, you've been working all hours of the day. nice work. >> david bossie is the former deputy director of the trump transition team. you've been involved with the trump campaign and transitions, and from the inside. what do you make of the last 24 hours starting with the president's tweets, the reaction to it in the media, and your take on where this goes from here? >> well, i think the president's pushing back because the democrats in this permanent campaign of obstruction. they can't get over the election defeat in november. this is just a continuation of their permanent campaign against president trump to delegitimize him and to really a

their bosses, john eisenberg and white house counsel john mcgann were likely also aware.es nunes' refusal to share information has raised eyebrows. paul ryan told "cbs this morning" he had full confidence in him. >> he told me that like a whistle-blower type person had given him some information that was new. >> our goal is to be as forth right as possible. >> reporter: the white house invited senate and intelligence committee leaders to preview the documents relevant to the investigation. >> they can present it to the white house staff or the president himself at any time. so why all the cloak and dagger stuff? >> reporter: the white house and flynn's lawyer maintain that all of this is just a political witch-hunt. >> thank you, margaret. john dickerson is with us. he's also the new chief washington correspondent for cbs news. congratulations. >> thank you. >> let me begin with michael flynn. how do we assess this? what might he tell the committees or anyone else that might be damming to the president? >> what does it mean to ask for protection? i think it could be a law