Page 46 - Intelligence Committees News Today

Youve covered them tonight. that limit what bill barr can do. >> right. >> a counterintelligence report by statute goes from the fbi to the director of national intelligence and must be shared with the intelligence committees. >> interesting. >> if its too sensitive, then it goes to the gang of eight which are the four heads of the intelligence committees and the four heads of the two chambers. >> yeah. >> they cannot block it. >> laura, when it comes to the white house, i mean, they -- the repo...

Painstaking review of classified information. i mean, coanswer some of the questions were talking about. mueller could travel some distance towards offering some of what his investigation bore out on the counterintelligence front but that information could simply go from one very opaque, very protective corner of the justice department to another, and what would that review look like, as someone you operated from the highest levels of the justice department? >> its really true. theres an extreme...

Reports, we will also look for evidence of crimes. so from the very first, this investigation was a counterintelligence report. not a criminal -- intelligence investigation, not a criminal one. why does that make a difference? because as garrett said, the way that a prosecutor lays out his case is through indictments, cases, guilty pleas. none of those things were designed to clearly tell a comprehensive story. a counterintelligence investigation, on the other hand, which is designed to find out...

Things get hairy and he is not transparent at all, the house will subpoena mueller himself and he will be asked to testify publicly, or partly publicly, is that not the ultimate fail safe here? >> i think mueller would be extremely forth coming with the intelligence committees. they would be private secret stuff in there, national intelligence information, and that national security data on one hand versus the public right to know, on the other hand the stakes are high. this is about why the rep...

Of the questions hes going to have to answer today. look, there are a couple of things related to obstruction of justice that this committee is clearly very interested in getting to the bottom of. one, there was a conversation between michael cohen and the president sometime after his house and his office were raided. he revealed that in his open testimony last week. number two, there were conversations between michael cohens attorney and rudy giuliani about a pardon. we dont know who initiated ...

Necessary, to obtain them. kevin, that sounds like theyre ready to rumble. >> they are. and frankly this is something that should have been done as soon as trump was sworn in. there was reason to question some of his financial dealing, some of his contacts with russia and some other improprieties i think that pelosis spokesperson laid it out perfectly, i think the democrats are doing what theyre supposed to do. they took an oath to the american people, not just the president. they just didnt loo...

Love with him, so close to him who would take a bullet from him, in the end, not so much. and i think thats a revelation for trump. and i think the closeness of this coming in, the legal stuff that joyce touches on, yes, the paper, the mounds of paper and the processes there. and he feels he can bat that back. but when it gets personal the way you saw it with cohen, thats when you realize he doesnt have as much control as he would like to have over this process. >> dovetail it with robert muelle...

Michael cohen. this is creating a factual record not just today, but yesterday and tomorrow before the intelligence committees. when we worked on the impea impeachment inquery many of time came from the previous if was not as partisan, were seeing democrats on one side asking a particular set of questions and trying to malign the credibility. >> right, it was not as openly partisan. it was partisan behind the scenes more than this is. it was partisan until a certain moment was reached, certainly

Information. i wanted to ask you about something that happened at the outset of the russian investigation. andrew mccabe said the gang of eight, the heads of both parties in both houses of congress and heads of the intelligence committees were briefed in detail about what was going on with russia and election interference. and that is something that we had known in broad strokes, i think andrew mccabe filled in details there that we didnt necessarily know before. what is distressing to people is...

And he clearly favored in the campaign, first in the primary, bernie sanders, who had a long history of being very favorable toward russia and then he favored trump who he had reason to believe would be also incredibly favorable. >> matt, i want your read on that, her coming out on that now. >> i think shes absolutely right, its very clear that putin had serious policy disagreements, had reason to worry about her becoming president. i think what differentiated trump from every other candidate, h...