Page 3 - Counterintelligence Side News Today

You know, on the plus side, wray is coming in and he can really just focus on the fbi. in terms of the russia investigation, most of it is going to fall to the mueller team. so hes got an opportunity to really sort of focus on his troops. really sort of build and restore some confidence in the agency about where the direction is going to be and how it moves forward. on the minus, hes now the third fbi director we are going to be talking about almost simultaneously. youve got mueller. comey is st...

Time and, you know, theyre -- obviously theres politics involved in a lot of this, but these guys have been doing this work for quite a while and it doesnt help, of course, that the trump administration came in with a lot of disparaging remarks about the intelligence community and those people who are taking a look at the counterintelligence side of this. these folks have served under both administrations and professionals and they will do their jobs and at the end of the day we will get to the ...

Smarter legal minds, i think, are going to be battling it out. >> youre plenty smart, but carrie is a legal mind. i want to bring in carrie on this. i heard lot yesterday that the legal landscape for jeff sessions became more bleak after comeys testimony yesterday because comey seemed very aware of whatever it was that precipitated the recusal from the russia investigation. whats your take? >> well, it was clear that former director comey when he testified yesterday, he indicated that theres mor...

Allegation by elijah cummings that they have evidence he lied to the people interviewing him when he was getting a security clearance review. how big a deal is that? >> its a big deal for two reasons. the first one is the pragmatic one. its potentially a crime. if he did this knowingly and there was an intent to sort of cover something up here. the second one is, on the counterintelligence side. when someone purposefully misleads something in regards to an sf-86, this form that is a security bac...

>> the first question theyre probably looking at is how far back do we have to go. its not right to think this started in 2017. the russian involvement started in 2017. >> 2016. >> the fbi is trying to think, how far back do we have to go? theres this interesting case with this russian bank and jared kushner n his failure to disclose that connection on his security forms. its a wide net and the fbi is probably going to go back a lot farther than 2017. >> they are now looking at financial crimes....

Kushner n his failure to disclose that connection on his security forms. its a wide net and the fbi is probably going to go back a lot farther than 2017. >> they are now looking at financial crimes. your point is the portfolio of what investigators can look at is, you think that the signals are being sent and the reporting is fairly broad? >> yes, i think that, you know, when it com to this, if there was collusion, which i tend to not think is the case, but this nex nexus, it probably didnt occu...

Independent counsel? theres so much going on in the world. we still live in a dangerous and chaotic environment. im afraid in some cases, we havent had the time to devote to some of those other concerns. theres this, and that is that the politics of this have become so partisan. i think many of us are relieved now, where we can put it to an independent counsel. mr. mueller has, i think, great confidence from both republicans and democr i think its going to be good for us,o just let him take it n...

Thats not been the only focus, but it should be the primary focus on the house side, that counterintelligence side and how do we protect ourselves? some of the more detailed subpoenas, thats best left now to mr. mueller. >> julie: i want to ask you one thing and it comes down to conflict of interest. chairman jason chaffetz has demanded records. he revealed yesterday that he is leaving at the end of june. my question to you is is there a conflict of interest here? as robert mueller must dig now ...

Person of legal mind and authority knows what a big deal that is. >> well, lets bring in the "hardball" roundtable. ayesha. ruth marcus, and howard fineman. i think weve got all the bases covered tonight. i guess the question is what hasnt been said today. howard, you were telling me something. i want you to get first shot at this. >> i think one of the motivating factors here is there is a grand jury involved now, and i think the basic strategy -- >> for flynn? >> yes. and the basic strategy he...

Operator to ask yourself, under what conditions would members of the campaign be in touch with, i believe the allegations are the intelligence operatives but russians on the other side. raises a lot of questions and be with everybody else, only way to get to the bottom of this is serious investigation. having spent time on the counterintelligence side of things, you have to look at it. under what conditions have contacts. >> you said two scenarios. what are they? >> if youre talking about -- let...