Page 129 - Mbs News Today

Lets bring in former fbi special agents and cnn legal and national security analyst asha. good morning to you. >> good morning. >> lets start with the conversations we learned between the president of the united states and president putin of russia, the president and saudi crown prince, mbs, mohammad bin salman. there will undoubtedly be people who want to know what was discussed that warranted a tighter-than-normal control over these conversations. are you comfortable with the declassification ...

Cnn has learned conversations with world leaders, including russian president vladimir putin and saudi crown prince mohammad bin salman, were given tighter-than-normal restrictions. >> cnn reports some of the transcripts were not even circulated to officials who typically have access to that kind of information. >> weve learned the white house efforts to limit access to president trumps conversations with foreign leaders extended a phone call with saudi crown prince mohammad bin salman and russi...

On impeachment. >> okay. >> the critical thing here is to get all of the facts ute, however or short that might take. given the obstructionism of the trump administration, i dont think its going to be quite as quick as the democrats say. >> right. >> also, they say its focused on the ukrainian matter, but the whistle-blower complaint revealed something that may be far more significant, and that is that trump put in this top-secret system conversations with two murderous dictators mbs of saudi ar...

Trump has had with leaders like putin, like mbs, might the release of those transcripts cause damage to the u.s.? isnt there a danger to releasing these transcripts publicly? >> well, there is. leaders talk to the president. they believe the conversations are confidential. to see them exposed has got to be difficult and embarrassing. at the same time that cannot be enough to keep the wrongdoing of anyone including certainly the president, from being exposed. i think as we learn what other tapes,...

>> its an ongoing cover-up, john. we have reason to believe its happening right now. the inspector general told us that the urgent and credible concern persists right now, as much as it did a month ago. so what we can do is we can seek to find if, indeed, calls with putin, calls with mbs of saudi arabia, calls with erdogan of turkey have been moved into this top-secret server to protect the president, but, again, we have to be laser-like in our focus here. and the only way to protect the future ...

Theres long been speculation about exactly what the nature is of the relationship that the president has with vladimir putin. and so again, calls with putin or mohammed bin salman after the murder of the journalist, what sort of dialogue was there there between the president and mbs? so is this a reflection of masking potential criminal activity? >> so the whistle-blower said that there is concern and concern among officials that he or she has spoken to that they witness him abuse his office for...

Multiple white house officials also told the whistleblower that this was quote not the first time the trump white house placed a transcript of one of president trumps calls quote into this code word level system, solely for the purpose of protecting politically sensitive rather than national security sensitive information. >> the acting director of national intelligence joe maguire appeared before the house intel committee moments after the whistleblower complaint was released and he was asked a...

Calls a hotline. and he is providing an important tip and expecting that the police who are receiving the tip are going to do the right thing. and instead you see that the acting director of national intelligence, he receives this information, and the first person that he goes to are the white house lawyers who are trying to cover up for the president these transcripts. and so you just see what were up against here. what was so concerning was the fact that there are other transcripts in this sys...

And once again, this is an allegation that has been made. it does not necessarily mean that that is a true statement. >> the allegation was determined to be urgent and credible by the inspector general. is that right? >> yes, it was. >> would you also want to know considering that you are the director of national intelligence and transcripts are being moved to a secret intelligence system, whether other transcripts, perhaps the presidents phone calls with vladimir putin, with mbs of vapor erdoga...

If anything, does the administration do next? and what do the saudis do? what are the conversations that pompeo is having with mbs? we dont know. >> how do you think the intelligence community is reacting to this? >> pretty simple. you can hope that what he said never comes to pass. i assume that everybody does. hope is not a plan. you have to look at somebody and say there may be a presumption that what hes saying is true, that the iranians are going to go down a path with us, at least a confli...