brett kav gnaw. and i want to bring in ben, and what are you making of this comment from kav gnaw. >> well, that is why the president likes the cut of his jib, and he may some day face the same kind of dilemma, and when the supreme court declared in u.s. v nixon that no man is above the law, maybe mr. trump feels otherwise. >> and now, kavanaugh did get appointed, and so what questions would you have for him? >> with a person dually appointed by the attorney general with the restrictions that he has has the authority to seek evidence wherever he can find it. and to assure the american public of a full, fair and open
these issues. richard ben-veniste who worked in the special counsel's office back then, and john dean, who was the white house counsel to president nixon. both of them said there's a real concern here that the president is weaponizing the tools of government to undermine the mueller investigation for his own benefit. you know, dean actually said there are echos of watergate here. you know, i think there's a lot of deep, deep concern among institutionalists, and i don't mean this in an establishment way. i just mean people who care about the institutions of our government, about what's going on with president trump right now. >> i've heard some of their analysis. i mean where are they today? you know, if you've talked to them this week, where do they think the president has delivered us with this fake scandal, this manufactured tale of a spy which was never true? there was a counterintelligence investigation under way because there were people in the trump campaign who were so close to russians that they were under surveillance ostensibly to protect the company, to protect
to the oval office. >> joining us now, jeremy peters, political reporter for "the new york times," and jonathan allen, nbc news national political reporter. it's a pleasure to have you both. do you agree with that? he's going to burn everything to the ground that threatens him? he's making some progress. >> steve, as usual, has totally understated. but i think, you know, it's interesting. i spoke to some veterans of the watergate era this week about these issues. richard ben-veniste who worked in the special counsel's office back then, and john dean, who was the white house counsel to president nixon. both of them said there's a real concern here that the president is weaponizing the tools of
>> so you think this charge, this indictment, is going to lead to that? >> i believe that this is the st. petersburg, if you could call it that, group of russians. what's very important about it is that quite clearly they were directed at the very top by putin or his closest aides to do what they did. what else did they do at the direction of putin? and that remains to be seen. that will be the subject of further inquiry and perhaps indictments, further conspiracies or in addition to the conspiracy that's already been returned. that conspiracy talks about conspirators known and unknown to the grand jury. >> thank you for coming on, richard ben-veniste. >> thank you. some students think it's
arc's, mafia related people spend tens of millions in access of the value of true properties they bought from trump. why did they do that? because they're foolish and didn't understand what the real estate values were of the property, or was it connected to something involving putin? >> richard ben-veniste, we know you're very busy. we're always asking you to come on because your perspective is second to none. you've lived it and understand it so well. thank you. >> thank you. after the president's big speech. the punch lines followed. late night hosts and humor next. new year, new phones for the family. join t-mobile, and when you buy one of the latest samsung galaxy phones get a samsung galaxy s8 free.
as you're learning every day, sometimes it's important to hear what questions people won't answer, what they don't mention. for example, last night only one brief mention of russia in the state of the union. president trump is growing impatient with the russia investigation. a source close to trump tells cnn it's still possible the president would fire special counsel bob mueller. joining us now, cnn legal analyst richard ben veniste, the former special prosecutor in the watergate investigation. always a pleasure to be in your presence, sir. >> thank you. >> everybody knows he can move on the special counsel. everybody seems to agree it would be a disaster politically. let's put politics to the side. let me hit you with a number of propositions and you tell me what matters and what doesn't matter to this special prosecutor. the latest information that there are documents delivered to the special prosecutor by the
richard, how concerned should president trump be about what don mcgahn knows and whom he has or will talk to? >> well, i think the president has to be concerned that his counsel is now going to be caught up in the investigation. sending his counsel over to the department of justice to try to countermand a decision which was recommended by the -- as far as we know without dissent, all of the professionals at the senior levels of the justice department who looked at the facts and said to the attorney general, look, you have got to recuse yourself from supervising an investigation in which you are a witness and possibly more seriously have involved yourself in giving testimony that is
saturday nice massacre? >> well, it doesn't because i think he knows his history which maybe many of the others in the white house don't. he certainly understands that. i think that was good advice. somebody in the counsel's office didn't tell him all the facts with the hope that he wouldn't fire the attorney general. so there are lots of problems here. i think one of the things -- one of the points carl made, i'd like to re-enforce, and that is how little we know. because i know how much we knew inside the white house when carl was reporting and it looked like they had the story but they were months behind what was actually happening. >> and do you think that's the case today? for all the reporting that's gone on, you think possibly we're all months behind where robert mueller is? >> i do think that, yes. >> wow. richard, how concerned should president trump be about what don mcgahn knows and whom he has or will talk to? >> well, i think the president has to be concerned that his
and why on earth we cannot allow and why the members of the congress of the united states cannot allow this investigation to continue. so that we can find out what has happened here. there is plenty of time when mueller is finished to look at all of these sideshows. that's the time to do it. but let's get on with this investigation. let's find out what this president did, did not do. he may be exonerated by mueller. give him a chance to be exonerated, but let this investigation proceed. it's lawful. it's methodical. we have no evidence whatsoever that bob mueller is anything but a straight up public servant and let's cut the nonsense already because it's a real failure of our democratic institutions if this investigation is stymied any further. >> richard, a, do you believe that grassley and graham are attempting to run interference, just as i asked carl, and, b, was there similar political pushback during watergate? >> it looks like they're going
reaction. wolff describes the president as a, quote, john dean freak, who, quote, ben bananas whenever you were on tv comparing the situation to watergate. and the president doing a talk-back monologue to the screen about loyalty. if the president is watching you right now, i guess what is your message to him? >> well, my message tonight would be that this is another red herring, his sideshow that the senate is putting on him for, and i'm not sure that there is any criminal case there. as richard would know, and just mentioned, the relevancy of the question of whether he talked to the media versus whether he's talking to the fbi about his sources and things like that is so out of the main of the investigation that it's irrelevant. and i can't believe a prosecutor would ever pursue this as some sort of false statement to the fbi. >> it looks like the president -- it looks like the president is channelling his