then the fbi agents go out and do that work and if necessary, even make preliminary reports back to the white house council s office. isn t that the problem, greg? the president didn t want the additional background check in the first place. well, that is the problem, and let me suggest that had the background investigation was it if it was reopened, let s say a week ago, and it was conducted in a way that democrats on the committee thought was fair, then likely, the democrats would not have had that particular process foul to call to throw a flag on today and we d likely be looking at a vote with democrats voting no if they oppose the nominee, but not because they thought the process was unfair. so i think in retrospect, it looks like the misstep was not reopening last week when it could have been done. kate, the misstep was that the democrats sat on this for six weeks. that s the misstep. but i m starting to wonder
and superviseed release. i m joined by greg brower. back with me, politico s anna palmer. greg, to you, what do you make of what papadopoulos had to say and is he reliable? he s all over the place. it s hard to take him seriously. he shared information with the trump campaign about what the russians may have had on hillary clinton. on the other hand, he says he doesn t remember if he did or not. i suspect the mueller team drilled down on this and compared it to documents and e-mails. it s hard to make sense of this. if you are a member of the legal team, are you concerned? i think they should be very concerned despite what papadopoulos is saying publicly. he is all over the place. i assume the mueller team as a
to mueller about evidence by calling out the camp david meeting. if this happened, it could have been one more piece of the puzzle that convinced him of that. greg, thanks for coming on. after the break, the assignment a lot of us wish we had. heading to a football tailgate. why? president trump slamming player protests as the season gets started. politics and sports harder to separate. we are live in one of the biggest midterm battleground states to see what fans have to say. stick around. an energy company helping cars emit less. making cars lighter, it s a good place to start, advanced oils for those hard-working parts. fuels that go further so drivers pump less. improving efficiency is what we do best. energy lives here.
immune? finally, canada s globe and mail newspaper had a carton of uncle sam cringing as he reeds bob woodward s new book. jeff sessions should investigate the times op-ed and today kellyanne conway wouldn t rule that out. should the attorney general take it as an order. ? if they feel they have oversight over a matter like this, they will make that decision. joining me now, justice reporter for the new york times, greg brower, former assistant director for the office of congressional affairs at the fbi. and christopherdicy, msnbc contributor and world news editor at the daily beast. great to have you with us. katy let me begin with you. is there any indication that there is an investigation that is going to take place at the justice department into this
op-ed? what are you hearing behind the scenes? there s no indication that an investigation is going to take place. it would be very difficult because there s no indication that any crime was committed in writing an anonymous op-ed. no classified information was shared, no national security secrets were broken. it would be up to the justice department to make the argument they should investigate the identity of the person who wrote the op-ed. we know, greg, this white house demands and expects loyalty from its employees. kellyanne conway spent this morning trying to explain the president s contention that the op-ed itself did, in fact, commit a crime and that crime, treason. watch this. he called it treason. why is it treason the writer? it depends. if this is who has access to national security information and the president s made clear he doesn t want to be in a meeting who s dealing with russia, china, north korea, who has access to that type of