flynn investigation thing. he said that that was actually confidential and so that s what comey s zero in on in his response that he is not someone who should be criminally prosecuted, and he was let off the hook. but this report does not let james comey off the hoochdget it s very scathing. and one quote i d like to read for you. it says former director comey failed to live up to his responsibility by not safeguarding sensitive information obtained during the course of his fbi employment. he used it to create public pressure for official action. he set a dangerous precedent for over 35,000 current fbi employees. comey should not have taken it upon himself to leak this to the media because it was his intention to try to get a bigger investigation going after he had been fired from his role as director. shortly after that robert mueller was appointed to oversee this investigation. so it did have that desired
committees and now they are really starting the work that they have planned to do. yeah. understood. listen, it is a lot to keep track of. ann, let s zero in on the president s taxes. by political tradition this should have been settled years ago, before the president was even elected. legally, what is your best understanding of the law here? is it on the democrats side here and, if so, the president can challenge this in court, i imagine, and drag this out. right. that s right. so the first thing, congress does have an oversight function. this is about accountability. let s put the president and his tax returns squarely within the ambit of what congress wants to know is he has not relinquished ties to his business. there is a real question of whether or not the president is benefitting financially right now from his businesses, whether it s a hotel or a golf course. so congress asking for this information is basically saying, look, we need to know where your
of that spirit, of that good faith, as lawyers might say, with a president who has insisted for the first time in u.s. history on controlling and owning a business and putting his family in charge so they can profit while in government and installing other members of his family in government who have been flouting e-mail rules among other things. it s one thing, ari, if it s just straight corruption. that should be dealt with ideally, criminally. but it s another thing if the president s financial interests are driving u.s. foreign policy. that s what we re seeing with saudi arabia, and with russia. i think that s what we want to really zero in on, and make sure that we can intervene where we can, and where we weren t able to in the last two years. jason, before i let you go, what is the feeling of your view in washington here, as we get past the holiday, as we have the bombshell report i m going to deal with more tonight, regarding the targeting of trying to jail james comey and h
crime. there is no investigation of a crime. if there was and this was something that was being probed or as glenn pointed out, purported victim wanted to come out like anita hill and present in public to this alleged perpetrator what her complaints are and what her allegations are. this is a single and unique process being out for supreme court justice position. and the idea that anyone would be able to survive a process like this with conduct like this by the democrats, i think, is just impossible. they knew about it reportedly for months. they waited unit ilttil the las minute and this is something that is not being investigated and no matter what you think of his background or policy positions or anything else, i think it will boom rang. let s zero in on the timing. you have the new yorker reporting the sources and
does that speak to does that give you an inkling into the strength or weakness of the prosecution s case here? i think it gives us a strong clue as to what the defense thinks of the strength. i mean i think that they feel they scored some good points on cross and they have enough to work with. as renato said, there s a limited amount you can usually present on the defense side unless you are going to put your client on and they weren t going to do that. they think they ve got enough to go on. look for them also, not necessarily in this instance to do the sort of shotgun approach, you can get some senses of what they re going to zero in on. a strong point was we told you that gates stole money and everyone agrees he did. that helps their credibility. two, they ll also point to the same fact showing that he was able to hide something from manafort. i think they ll look to build on that, as well as a couple other small points about the documents and witnesses. i don t think they ll tr