Want to know. Its very powerful, the origins of literature. Mr. Lewis is the author of several books including liars poker, moneyball, the big short and his recent, the undoing project. During our live three hour conversation well take your tweets, facebook questions. Michael lewis,son, live from noon to 3 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan2. Book tv. Next, George WashingtonUniversity Law professor, jonathan turley, talks about the indictments of three former Trump Campaign officials and Robert Muellers special investigation. This is 50 minutes. View irs are familiar with George WashingtonUniversity Law professor, jonathan turley. Appreciate you being here after a busy day in the mueller investigation. Yesterday, after the White House Press briefing, Sarah Sanders said the white house believes it will conclude soon. Is that realistic . Oo where do you think we are in this investigation after what you saw yesterday . Be a case of hope springing eternal. It does not look like it will end any time soon. You take the trajectory of thes9 charges just on the trial level this could easily go into 2019 before we go up on appeal. 2019. Absolutely. Or these are cases that often involve super seateding indictments. These countsan against manafort and gates may not be the charges they face. They may face double this number. The prosecutors can go back to the grandnd jury, find new findings from thean grand jury d bring out superseding indictments with additional counts. That is not uncommon. They have to anticipate that. Just their case alone could far. D that this is just the first round. We have a lot of live torpedos in thean water right now. There are people like flynn that seem to have disappeared off the radar screen andve questions whether he might be cooperating or whether he might be the next round of charges. Can you explain the scope of this investigation . We had t a couple callers in ou first segment when we talked about thiss said the charges announced yesterday seemed outside of what they thought the scope of the russia Mueller Campaign interference was. When the president came out yesterday and said, wow, the mueller charges against manafort and gates are removed from the campaign, thats correct. If you look h at the complaint, theres very little in the complaint that has a reference to the campaign. The center of gravity over there is on the business transactions of manafort and gates. However, the successive plea of guilty to false statement by another campaign figure was solidly within the wheelhouse of the campaign. Now, in fairness to the white house, he was pleading guilty to his own lies, he wasnt pleading guilty to a lie committed by the campaign. Botht sides have legitimate things to raise. Are there any guidelines where mueller has to stay in between . No. The mandate for mueller is quite broad, even in the context of other special counsels. When i saw his mandate i thought it was breath take, anything to do with the russian controversy and any crimes or matters that come up in the course of the investigation. He has read that as broadly as we anticipated. You look at the manafort and gates charges, those are not related to the campaign. Mueller is really signaling he will charge anyone for anything within that mandate and the mandate is really broad. You already brought up the papa dop pow lis guilty plea, yet you write in your article thee gates indictment is the rel threat to trump. Why . Thats an immediate trump. You look at the in diameter that came down with manafort and gates, a lot of people have been focusing on manafort, will this have manafort flip as a witness. That as a criminal defense attorney is less likely because manafort is the matinee or marquee defendant. He is so far the prize of the prosecutors. They might not go higher than manafort. Theyre not likelyra to trade ay that those charges unless he can bring deliverables, something that implicates a much higher individual, including thd president. Gates is different. Gates could easily secure a an plaemt where he could avoid jaio time if he could seal the case againstt manafort or implicate others because hes just not that critical. Couldup you explain what you seena as the strategy of announcing these things at the same time, going after somebody so high up, Paul Manafort and george papadoupolis, who seems relativelyly low in the campaig. Both sides seem to spin who these people are. Suddenly the white house barely knows papod owr doupolis name. I think part of the timing was driven byru the statute of limitation. Some are filing crimes where th statute of limitations was running out. They needed to file. I dont think thats the only reason. These types of moves are done with a purpose, tactical purpose. E. I think it sends a message to other people. Particularly people like flynn. S one of these charges is for fara. The on forr registration act. What is that . A law only used three times in its history. It is not a law prosecutors worthy of prosecution except in a handful of cases. Mueller is showing he will indict anybody for a violation. That could be used for others like general flynn or tony podesta who registered retroactively, some of these people, as foreign agents. Mr. Turlly wiey with us for 45 minutes. Republicans 2027488001. Ka democrats, 227488000. And interest. Kathy, an independent. Caller hi, mr. Turley. I have a question for you. It its evidence to me that our constitution is being challenged like no other way before with this presidency, and i am looking at what is unfolding with these latest indictments, and i have a question for you. Are congresses looking at protecting mr. Mueller, that he doesnt get fired because of firing by thetion president . My question to you is how can the president be held accountableth by not pardoning these people that are bring brought to justice as he did with ararapoe . Well, first, your location it one of my Favorite Places to visit, ive gone camping with my son. In temps of firing mueller, the president could do that. It wont be easy if he tried to do it. Hed have to get people like Rod Rosenstein to go along with it. He probably would force trump to fire him or he would resign. Why . This is what happened in nixon. F the Justice Department officials are not inclined to fire special counsels or independent prosecutors at the demand of a president. We saw that with richard nixon. If you wereri to go along with , youre tainted by that. The problem with that is like bob boric, who pulled the trigger. Pa you would have to find a person like bob boric and might not be that easy to find at the Justice Department having said i want this cup to pass from my lips. Having said that congress could passil a law that brings back t independent w counsel act. I dont think this is likely. Everything youve heard from the white house and the president pr himself, he will not fire mueller. Firing mueller would be a truly moronic mistake. We are here because of the termination of james comey. Ha some of us including myself express doubt of the existence of crimes in the russia allegations. Changed my view when he fired james comey because i felt the American Public had the right to expect an independent investigation regardless whether there are crimes or not. You dont want to repeat that mistake but if you fire mueller, it would be 100 times worse than what happened with james comey. Going back to congress for a laww to protect mueller, how ca Congress Pass a law to keep the president from firing someone within the branch . People like bob boric in the Nixon Administration had serious questions you raise, the ability of congress to do this. Courts have largely favored congress and the independent counsel act. The independent counsel act isnt around because Congress Allowed it to lapse. Congress could bring it back and the courts have supported their authority to do so. That would add a certain degree of armor for either mueller or his replacement. Nt i dont think that will happen. I think President Trump signaled he will not fire mueller. The other option, nancy pelosi calling for an independent congressional investigation toga be appointed. Can yout talk about how that would work and the Legal Options that are available if congress were to take that route . Congress has Oversight Authority through many of its committees. The committees can investigate or create special committees. They certainly have the authority to investigate any of these issues whether it is President Trumps firing of comey or the russian dossier, they have a right to do that. How is that different from threeto congressional probes wee already following . Not much. I think thats the problem. I think people are trying to show that theyre being active and reactive. We have a lot of investigations in the field right now. For the large part, democratic and republican members in some of these investigations seem to be working together fairly well. This has not been an effort to obstruct, from what i can see, for some of these investigations. I dont think theres a real need right now. The mueller indictment shows things are progressing on his side. Denise, brick, new jersey, line for independents. Go ahead. Caller i have a question. My question is with all these probeshe from congress and thei subcommittees and oversights, nobody is ever held accountable it never goes anywhere. I believe were just working against one another and conquer and divide has shown its basically been fairly much put there for its purpose, to divide the country and keep us all confused and divided. United we stand and divided we fall. That is the Main Objective and oldest trick inab the book. Why is it since nixon, since the church hearings, why is nobody ever held accountable on both sides . I think youre right to be skeptical. Youre right to be particularly skeptical about congressional investigations. It is a standard technique in this town, to diffuse scandals by creating special commissions or investigations that go a long time and the assumption is that the American People have a short attention span. I got to tell you, i think there is a certain contempt for voters in washington. They believe voters are distracted by c shiny things. Youre right to be skeptical. The special counsel investigation is a w little is erent because that guy going on his own course. Hes likely going to want to show a series of charges to support this budget and to and his effort. One thing i want to note is nt theres one aspect of this i find encouraging. That is the recent questions raised about lobbying with manafort that also involved tony podesta, the brother of john podesta i think is quite valuable. People have no idea how much russian money and money from other countries are squashing around washington. They have no idea how much money is made from influence pedaling, on both sides, both republicans andut democrats. If we actually have an investigation into that aspect, i think the American People are goinge, to be absolutely outrag. The callers question about why isnt anybody held accountable, we saw indictments yesterday for manafort and gates with a possible penalty of 70 to 80 years in jail, according to the Associated Press study of those indictments. When it comes to the congressional committees, three probes we r followed, what is t harshest sanction they could levee at the end of their probes . Pe congress doesnt really levy sanctions unless youre in contempt ofld congress. Even then they have to vote and give the matter to the Justice Department. We saw that happen during the Clinton Administration when they held attorney general eric holder in contempt im sorry, the on administration and the on administration refused to prosecute thet, case. Now, in terms of the sentence that manafort could receive, i just wantvi to have a caveat, theres a lot of reporting on that, its a little bit deceiving. If federal sentences go through a guideline, recommendation given to theki court if youre convicted, for a first offender like manafort hes not looking at decades in jail, the most under the guidelines is probably 10 years. The prosecutors can ask for whats called an upward departure. The grounds forr the upward departure in this case is the size of the money laundered or hidden froman the government. Under the guide lines for those crimes, the size of the money involved in the crime is an aggravator, as its called and you can ask to depart upward. If you look at this, youd probablyho advise manafort in t worst case scenario, realistic, hes looking at about 10 years. On the line for republicans. Go ahead. Caller good morning, john, the media is all up in arms about this papadaooulos. Im asking what they are doing about the Hillary Clinton and is there a difference and why arent theyie paying attention the fusion gps . Its unlikely mueller will focus on the dossier. He could conceivably move into that area. Some of us take the view of investigate them all. Quite frankly, i would love to see everyone investigated and for us to have a full record of all of this involvement of russian sources. It is true that the dossier involved goingie to a foreign national, paying him money and he received some information from what is believed to be russian intelligence sources. It is also true papa daooulos, if you look at his indictment, there are damning aspects theres this mysterious russian with ties, was indicted simply because of his role in the campaign and they strongly suggest in the indictment russians were offering dirt presumably fromk hacked sources. That could be serious, depending on the timeline. If you look at the indictment, it seems to talk about existing email. But also we know that there were hacking efforts after those meetings. Im one of those people that have been skeptical about the existence of a crime in the russian controversy. Collusion is not a crime. On people need to separate what is a politically important issue ti a legally cog niceable issue. The only way to cross that bridge on that criminal code i the timeline is if we hear something out of mueller that indicates in those initial a meetings, whether the russian president or not, a coordination hacking effort, then youre getting into something potentially could be a crime. A crime under collusion . Under a conspiracy. Thats where it crosses. Some of the other crimes people are suggesting i think could be dangerous. Such as . De that you could treat the information given by the russians to the Trump Officials asta Something Like a political contribution. The desire to nail trump by some critics are blinding them by their implications. If you start to treat information like its a political contribution that definition could sweep within journalists, ngos, academic, you would criminalize the exchange of information. Thats a dangerous thing to bring up the criminal code. The caller brings up papadopoulos. Who is excampaign papadopoulos. He is a 30yearold selfdescribed oil gas and policy consultant. He was an advisor to ben op carsons campaign and identified him to one of his advisors in a march 2016 meeting during which he described him as an energy consultant, excellent guy. That story in usa today. Joey, las vegas, nevada, line for republicans. Go ahead. Caller hi, jonathan. I admire your intelligence, being with a third grade education i have every degree you can get being streetwise. Is it a a crime for city congressman knowing a crime is being committed and during that crime, which is a felony, 11 people get killed and he knew about it, he could have prevented it . Is that a crime to get something on somebody . What are you referring to, joey . Caller im referring to a sitting congressman, bob stupak, who knew mms was being paid off with money, prostitution and st vacations, which he admitted right on television on a greta van susken show. I havent looked at it. If you know a crimes about to occur, obviously, you could be viewed as an accessory. I havent heard that type of allegation raise so im not too familiar with this. To sewell, new jersey, democrat, go ahead. Caller mr. Turley, i really appreciate you being on today. I watch you often on different shows and im really impressed with your knowledge. I have a couple of questions for you. One is, i heard you often say collusion, which is what theyre really coming after trump for is not really a cream. N i kind of heard you touch a littlele bit about this. Thats something i cant get over, theyre pursuing it and everybody at cnn and msnbc is going nuts over this. At the end it may not even be a crime. I just dont get i it. I really think its to hurt trump duringch his being president. The other question i have to you, i heard you touched on you dont think mueller will go after this dossier. Is but you have podesta, who just resigned from his law firm, and it looks like hes part of this. Do you think hes going to be brought into it and you will start seeing some of the democrats alsous being brought into this . Ic well, jerry, the first poi, in terms of collusion, i have expressed skepticism for months now about the allegation of a crime here. It is not a crime to collude with a Foreign Government to receive information from a Foreign Government. Me there is a crime for conspiracy but spurconspiracy to do what. There is no indication thus far that indicates President Trump knewth of the influence that th russians maye have had on somei these people. You would need even more than that to establish any type of crime. Right now, on this record, i dont seeee how he would be a serious target of criminal investigation. That could change. We dont know what mueller has. Clearly, he has at least one cooperating witness in this recent plea. As for the Podesta Group, they were mentioned obliquely with the second indictment or conviction of george or papadopoulos. There were two groups, es