Simpson Memo News Today

True. in this case, we have the spectacle of inevitably dueling views on something of extraordinary national importance, which is protection of the american people, which is what the fisa act is all about, created in the 1970s for precisely that purpose, and they have now turned this thing on its head. >> more on that point, chuck todd, here you have an echo chamber where people who go to one news organization or another are going to be reaffirmed, the president will watch fox news and say you s...

Republicans, something which would have been unthinkable just a short time ago. rank and file are great people. matt miller, this is completely out of context. >> yeah. look, andrea, motive matters here. the president has been clear for weeks now privately with friends, with allies and aides, what his motive is in both releasing this memo, declassifying it, and with interviewing at the justice department to try to get them to back down when they were opposing its release. that is he wants to und...

Itself. we are going to be putting it up onscreen as well. we are going to start going through this point by point. we are talking about first of all, a white house cover letter written by don mcgahn, white house counsel, and he points out that the constitution does vest in the president the authority to protect national security secrets from disclosure but he has the responsibility also to as well as classifying, he can declassify so its very clear he has taken this step today to declassify thi...

Judge decides theres probable cause, the warrant is granted. so by just demeaning some of these people and saying that they are biased and who paid for the dossier, even though carter page was under surveillance before the dossier was even written or presented, this does not diminish the factual basis for a warrant on carter page. >> three points. one is, the central thesis of the memo is that the fisa court should have been told about the questions about carter steele, that a lot of his work ha...

Fbi, was in fact for hillary. look at the way he wrote it. he said the application does not mention steele was ultimately working on behalf of and paid by the dnc ultimately. in other words, they are continuing to be the parents of this whole investigation. it just makes it look scurrilous. i think its a political document. i think that i have great questions whether it was actually a document that you could argue is even sourced from the legislative branch. i am very suspicious that this is a s...

Ken, lets talk about the background here as we wait for the memo, the full memo, to be released, not just the sections of this cherry-picked memo that have been selectively released to a couple of media outlets around town. your concerns, talking to all of your sources about how the intelligence community is responding to this now. >> well, one of my long-time sources, former cia officer, called it soul crushing. the way john mcloughlin described what this could do to the congressional oversight...

Parties to comment on it more freely. and one last point on carter page. carter page sat before the house intelligence committee in november. he spoke on the record. theres a transcript of that interview for hours. and through the course of questioning from democrats on that committee, he detailed his interactions with russians, travels to russia and said he has a moscow sim card which would be able to use when traveling overseas. so the idea that carter page -- that theres no evidence beyond th...

Answer that question. so that is a question without an answer right now. what role did the white house play in the production of this memo. we know how it played out several months ago when devin nunes made that midnight run to the white house and was getting help from people inside the white house. i think thats critical. another point i would make is how striking it has been for me covering this story over the course of this week. speaking to those officials here at the white house and how hap...

From a separate reporter from the associated press was very simply, do you still have confidence in the deputy attorney general rod rosenstein. to which he responded you figure that one out, which would appear to be an indication that he doesnt have much confidence in rosenstein given what is a part of this memo. rosenstein was not a part of the justice department in the current position as deputy attorney general, obviously, in 2016 but did play some role obviously according to this memo in ext...

Mission. so the fbi agents association is reiterating that they are determined not to be caught up in politics. >> yeah. its ridiculous to think that they would be. this is an organization that if it was between the two, its more conservative than liberal but i never once saw peoples political biases, whether it was the doj, fbi, department of defense, any of the intel agencies, move in when it was about the greater good of the american people. the fbi always works in collaboration. theres lots ...