mr. freedman: hello, everybody. i'm gordon freedman. [applause] mr. freedman: thank you.ths ago, we said maybe we should get some people together, and i thought that was a good idea. then i started trying to find people. it was a little difficult, and then some stuff started happening in d.c. that was

mr. freedman: hello, everybody. i'm gordon freedman. [applause] mr. freedman: thank you. three or four months ago, we said maybe we should get some people together, and i thought that was a good idea. then i started trying to find people. it was a little difficult, and then some stuff started happening in d.c. that was vaguely reminiscent to some of the stuff we worked on, and all of a sudden, everybody seemed to want to show up. this is just fantastic. on a personal level, raise your hands if you were on the committee staff. this is pretty amazing. we said goodbye to each other 43, 44 years ago, and when i got ready to do this, i called jim hamilton, who was my boss back then. i said, i mean it, i'll have it in tomorrow. he said, gordon, you better have it in tomorrow. it's like no time has passed. when we broke up -- i don't know how many of you remember this -- sam dash had a final meeting. he said this has been the most important thing that has happened in my life and i'm sure will ever happen in my life and will ever happen in yours. i'm thinking of 21, 22 years old.

mr. freedman: hello, everybody. i'

mr. freedman from the perspective of our own national security, would it not? >> i would basically say that any russian oligarchs that i would single out out the bank and include major russian oligarchs should be done with extreme caution because their wealth is totally dependent on their relationship with vladim vladimir. >> i asked the question because we have a man who wants to be the head of the criminal division of the department of justice who appeared before the committee recently who had alpha bank as a client after the election of donald trump and after he had served on the transition team, the landing team, i think they called it, when it came to the department of justice. it raised a lot of red flags from where i am sitting as to why he would make such a poor decision if he were seeking to be a part of our government. then it's completed by the fact that he said he would not disqualify or recuse himself from investigations into russian involvement and in the last campaign. the more i read about this mr. freeman, he apparently is one of the most -- we