woe don't yet know, joining us, michael mukasey, former u.s.ral in bush administration, former chie district judge, great to have you withs. >> great to be with us. lou: let's start with this -- in the clear. these are statements reports, and also by "new york times" when was basically trying to knock down president trump's claims that he was being wiretapped, but their own reporting declaring just that. >> their own reporting speaks about broadly about electronic surveillance. i don't know that it is wiretapping in conventional sense of phones or tapping into e-mails or other documents. but their report clearly says in summer they applied from foreign intelligence surveillance court, they not get it they came back in october, and applied again, this time they did. and october, of course, was the campaign. lou: fisa court, its role in this, in june, denying a fisa warrant to surveil donald trump with -- again with this nonsense about russia, i say nonsense it has been 10 months and fbi declaring there is nothing to this. various agencies. >> no

lou: michael mukasey joins me next.'s our little differences, that can make a world of difference. expedia, everything in one place, so you can travel the world better. this is one gorgeous truck. special edition. oh, did i say there's only one special edition? because, actually there's five. ooohh!! aaaahh!! uh! hooooly mackerel. wow. nice. strength and style. it's truck month. get 0% financing for 60 months plus find your tag and get $5500 on select you finance with gm financial. find new roads at your local chevy dealer. we asked people to write down 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. lou: the national left wing media today ignoring a lengthy trail of previous reporting on the obama administration's effort to target no

michael mukasey, former attorney general, u.s. district court judge, it great to have you here. >> great to be here. lou: our judicial system is front and center again in the days evens. this is dominating, gorsuch, a man who has been so -- he has received so much applaud, i don't think that bloomenthal or sure. schumer become up with a the reason to destruction. >> they define -- i think that part of the problem that it has become, over the last several decades, highly relevant to the judges are because of the increasing tendency of supreme court to take cases that used to be settled politically, and the willingness of the politicians to let them do it. lou: gorsuch saying that judiciary must be independent. we have little who know about supreme court, it is locked up 4 to 4, and the -- we're about to see whic which way the balance will be tilted. he is supposed to be a conservative, but other nominees are supposedly conservative. >> i think that you can't judge him by what happened with the other nominees. he has a strong, and l

on abc, sean spicer reacted to what former attorney general michael mukasey says, saying i think the president -- i think the president is right that there was surveillance from the obama department of justice. reminded that they run on new and beginning on c-span radio. one more call from scott in arizona. good morning. caller: good morning. i am a retired military officer, and one of the things about when you move into the command chain in the military is the first rule is you accept what you inherit. but the other guy has begun, you improve the fighter position and you don't complain. donald trump, president donald trump is my commander. i accept that, but one of the things that we seem to be missing is if he is going to spend all at his time talking about what he inherited, then he is never going to have an opportunity to do what you can do, and i would also like to you are going to have sophia nelson on tonight, that is a great author and i bought her book today. another great author is about bill gates senior, and those two books kind of provide when you say, i wonder be your p

lou: joining us, michael mukasey, former u.s. attorney general under george w. bush. former president judge, and judge it great to have you here with us. >> great to be with us. lou: it happened on march 2, no one picked it up until today. what is your reaction to what a former defense official said. >> i would have to go over it parse the words a little bit, it sounds as if see was said there was surveillance conducted of the incoming team and that it may not have been unlawful, it may have been in the normal course, but the focus was on the incoming team, that idea was to disseminate it widely as possible to people on the hill. lou: that urgency that attaches to preserving the intelligence that has been gathered, it is peculiar, as if she is accusing the trump administration at that point, transition then, of having the ability to control whether that is let out to the public. it is the obama administration that made it possible to disseminate. >> you mary tha marry that with two weeks before he left wa presint oma expanded the dferen distribution of raw intelligenc

michael mukasey joining us.a: welcome back here we are learning more about the terrorist behind the deadly rampage outside the british parliament. the saudi embassy in london said khalid massoud visited 12 times to teach english. investigators now trying to determine how he became radicalized. peter king is on the house homeland security and intel coittee and jos us n. commerce men, good to see you. thank you for joining us. do you have a sense of those questions? can you take us behind the current events? >> what we are dealing with is what we been dealing with in the united states. san bernardino, or they know. now san bernardino, or they know. now you have a situation in london for a person seems that spontaneous. you look into the background and find out in each of the cases they've been investigated by police in the past. not enough was found in the investigations are defended. what this shows us is that where there's smoke, there's fire. and democratic society we can't arrest people on suspicion. we have t

michael mukasey joining us. the demand behind the terrorist attack in london.will talk with congressman peter king next. ♪ ♪ what we do every night is like something out of a strange dream except that the next morning it all makes sense. to power global e-commerce fedex networks are massive far-reaching and, yes a little magical. ♪ maria: welcome back here we are learning more about the terrorist behind the deadly rampage outside the british parliament. the saudi embassy in london said khalid massoud visited 12 times to teach english. investigators now trying to determine how he became radicalized. peter king is on the house homeland security and intel committee and joins us now. commerce men, good to see you. thank you for joining us. do you have a sense of those questions? can you take us behind the current events? >> what we are dealing with is what we been dealing with in the united states. san bernardino, or they know. now san bernardino, or they know. now you have a situation in london for a person seems that spontaneous. you look into the background and

. >>> we want to put this together now with michael mukasey. he was former attorney general under george w. bush and knows the federal wiretap laws and the courts inside and out. now we have the president himself saying he was the target of surveillance. ordered up by his predecessor. thank you for joining us, mr. mukasey. your reaction to the tweets and the explanation from the white house? >> i don't do tweets. >> you heard about them. >> i don't do tweets. it's not the' deal medium. this is the difference between being correct and right. the president was not correct in saying president obama ordered a tap on a server in trump tower. however, think he's right in and that it was conducted at the behest of the attorney -- of the squis tis department through the fisa. >> what do you base that on? >> on news reports that you mentioned in the last -- i also base it on kind of inadvertent blurting out by adam schiff that his committee wants to talk to the counterintelligence agency at the fbi involved in this. that means this is part not of a crim

allegations made by president trump is the former attorney general of the united states, judge michael mukasey. i'm going to ask you some very general questions. now, there are reports there were two applications made to a fisa court. one was denied and the second was granted. one denied in june. would you agree with me that applications to the fisa courts are according to everything that i have read and former attorneys who applied for these are almost always granted so a denial must be based on a real lack of any facts? would you agree with that? >> yeah, statistically they are always granted for the simple reason that the justice department is pretty conservative about what it puts in. tries to create as much of -- to establish as much probable cause as they can. the fact that it was denied, there was very little there. what's interesting is that application mentioned the name trump, though it's not clear in what connection. and that application was denied. judge jeanine: so they go back, the obama administration goes back, whether it's the f.b.i. other nsa. >> it has got to be the fine bec

lou: back with steve hilton and michael mukasey. good to have you here. if we could, get your reaction to what is just sort of a confounding order from another district judge. mike: it's hard to come up with a respectful way to describe this opinion. it is sort of the dirty mind theory of statutory or executive order interpretation. if the judge decides you have a dirty mind, then everything you do is the work of a dirty mind. it doesn'ter what you do -- it doesn't matter what you do baits emanates from a dirty mind. lou: this is from district judge derek watson. because a reasonable objective observer from the public statement and specific sequence of events would lead you to believe it was its ring ridge purpose. mike: justice scalia described a statute as applesauce. i think that's about as close as it gets. it's stunning. lou: steve, your thoughts. we are talking about round two in executive orders. under 212-f of the u.s. code it's clear the president has the power to do it. >> it was appropriate and helpful for the president to read that out. so cle

lou: back with steve hilton and michael mukasey. good to have you here.e could, get your reaction to what is just sort of a confounding order from another district judge. mike: it's hard to come up with a respectful way to describe this opinion. it is sort of the dirty mind theory of statutory or executive order interpretation. if the judge decides you have a dirty mind, then everything you do is the work of a dirty mind. it doesn'ter what you do -- it doesn't matter what you do baits emanates from a dirty mind. lou: this is from district judge derek watson. because a reasonable objective observer from the public statement and specific sequence of events would lead you to believe it was its ring ridge purpose. mike: justice scalia described a statute as applesauce. i think that's about as close as it gets. it's stunning. lou: steve, your thoughts. we are talking about round two in executive orders. under 212-f of the u.s. code it's clear the president has the power to do it. >> it was appropriate and helpful for the president to read that out. so clearly

joining us tonight, michael mukasey, former u.s. attorney general in the bush administration, also the former chief district judge in the u.s. district court for the southern district of new york. great to have you here. >> good to be with you. lou: let's start with first the recusal of the attorney general. do you think it's appropriate? >> i think it's appropriate, but not because there's any appearance of impropriety. there is a clear rule, i think, that if you participated in a -- in an election campaign and that campaign is under investigation, then you can't participate in that investigation. you've got to recuse yourself, no question. lou: he did so, did so forthrightly, and he even, with my compliments to the attorney general, he did so keeping the bright twinkle in his eye as he upheld his principles as well as the regulations of the department of justice. now where do we go? and there doesn't seem to be any convincing evidence of an investigation. there doesn't seem to be any evidence of anything improper having occurred.

michael mukasey said donald trump has a good case. >> i think he has a good case there was surveillanceaint was conducted at the behest of the justice department. >> the bottom line is it's starting to look like the obama administration was running opposition research for hillary clinton's campaign and looking at a lot of trump's associates in ways they are not suppose to. the whole denials coming out seem to be based on the idea that obama didn't order someone to target trump. no, he didn't. but his justice department and f.b.i. ordered surveillance and that's a serious thing. char rr you said he actually set up barack obama. he set up a trap, hasn't he? any time you talk about russia. anything that goes on, everything has to come out on both sides. maybed the democrats won't be too happy about it. >> donald trump is clever by half. this an interesting trap. he's suggesting, that justice department did engage in a fisa request. see there is some surveillance. whether it was obama that was responsible is beside the point it's his justice department engaged in this. if obama says there i

with us, michael mukasey.e weekend, i thought it was on msnbc, you said you thought there was probably surveillance at the behest of the attorney through the fisa court but that president obama himself would not have ordered it. that's not the way it works. >> that's not the way it works. >> so what do you make of the president of the united states tweeting that, accusing the former president of doing that. >> i'm not clinically trained, so i can't make anything of it. >> you think it has to do with -- >> no. what i'm saying is i don't know, i don't communicate by tweet. and maybe that's, maybe it's the medium that becomes the message, but there is a core of truth in the sense that there was an intercept of some kind, i believe, because the times had it. number of other news sources had it. your prior segment, it was acknowledged that there was in fact an intercept of some kind going on, and apparently, it had to do initially with illegality of a russian bank, that didn't go anywhere, and they continued it as

and michael mukasey replaces them. and now his son, who is worked for giuliani -- >> formemer u.s. attorney for te general didistrict, supposedly going to be the guy who fills that role. it is in a credible set of full circled of elements. amy: explain more about preet bharara plus investigation into fox. what exactly the allegations are. >> we don't know. there is reportedly a grand jury impaneled. what is been reported by myself and others is that the sec and preet's office are looking into their covering up payments that effectively hiding from shareholders whether or doing to pay off employees who had it used leadership of sexual harassment and other things. but at the same time, the fox, which is an it firstly paranoid culture, you know, did all sorts of things to listen in on their employees also phone calls from a males, stuff like that. reportedly, bharara's office was looking into that and now he is gone. the funny thing is, the supposed explanation is trump said a bunch of stuff in nnovember. had no idea whatat he was talkig about. jeff sessions was reluctantly on board.

that caveat to his assertion to his denial that there were any wiretaps because if you listen to michael mukaseyform attorney general under then george w. bush. he actually said seeing these news reports that it was likely that there had been a wiretap, and he said this would have been done under the attorney general, not president obama and the reason that there would have been a wiretap because there were suspicion that someone in the trump campaign organization was acting as a russian agent. not saying that that's true or not, but the one issue that comes up on capitol hill especially regarding the fisa warrants is that everything is so secretive, and they don't get the real answers to what is going on? wouldn't they know? that was attorney general loretta lynch. wouldn't the administration know? >> one would think that, but at the same time the question that keeps coming up that's been going on since 9/11 is these various agencies are still locked in their stovepipes and even though we do have this director of national intelligence, you know, sometimes these thing don't get to everybody, and

in november there was some speculation that mark mukasey, the son of former attorney general michael mukasey, might be on the short list for people to be u.s. attorney in manhattan. he's represented roger ailes. there was some feeling some people in the justice department that the president might have been influenced by a commentary by sean hannity of fox news on thursday who said the president should get rid of all the holdover political appointees, including all 93 u.s. attorneys. >> and peter alexander who is waiting patiently in the briefing room we can see you on our screen as we're watching. >> still here. >> we can see you twice now in a double shot on our screen. talk to us about how the german chancellor angela merkel will be coming to the u.s. tomorrow and coming to the white house to visit. what is on the agenda for that? >> reporter: weather permitting she'll be here and the president's claims about wiretapping our first opportunity perhaps to ask him specifically what if any evidence he has or whether he will imcyst the department of justice turn over whatever information it has