Hearings began thursday with fbi director james comey. Anne has more and joins us from the Washington Post where he is the papers chief correspondent. Director comey on the hill testifying. Dan it didnt play very well for secretary clinton. Director comey got a series of questions from republicans. I think there were some telling moments in that but overall, it was a reminder that this is an issue that will be with us and certainly with secretary clinton through the duration of this campaign. In no way did the lack of prosecution close the books on this. Director comey was speaking of the language of the law and politicians were speaking politics. One of the members of Congress Said if the average joe did what Hillary Clinton did, he or she would be led off in handcuffs. And mr. Comey said no. Walk us through that, if you would. Dan if you look at the totality of what she did and then it question of whether there was willful and or malicious intent, there is no precedent for prosecuting her under the statute and as he examined similar cases and other outcomes, there was nothing to suggest she could or should be prosecuted under this. One of the interesting moments was when he was asked and did compare this to what happened with general petraeus and outlined a series of things general petraeus had done when he handed over classified information to his biographer and knew what he was doing was wrong. At another point, lied to the government about it. And he said this is different than what secretary clinton had done. He made clear many of the things or some of the things that secretary clinton has said over the last year and some months were not accurate statements about her use of private server. Whether she had moved classified material act and forth. It was classic jim comey. Miles as i understand it, she had to know what she did was breaking the law. In this case, ignorance is a defense . Dan it is certainly a partial defense and enough certainly that the fbi director and the career prosecutors, who led this investigation, came to the conclusion that no reasonable prosecutor would take this case forward. The attorney general Loretta Lynch had already taken herself effectively out of the decisionmaking process. She said she had made that decision some time ago. Was ultimately was one that all in the hands of the career prosecutors and jim comey. There is little doubt at this juncture that classified material was emailed through that server. That is a fact . Dan that is a fact. Some topsecret and some confidential. Three Different Levels of classification. So reckless is the term that has been used but not illegal. How does this play in the court of Public Opinion . Dan part of it is for partisan divisions, there is, as the republicans put forward in session with director comey and many of the things they had to say outside of that arena, there is a belief justice was not being done in this case. The director said that was certainly not the case but the average person or the average person who is not a fan of Hillary Clinton will believe it one way or another that she did get special treatment. That she, in one way or another, was above the law. Jim comey went to some lengths to knock that down but i dont think that will change a lot of minds on that. The idea that this was kind of an inside deal from start to finish. Donald trump tweeting, instantly this gets injected into the political discourse. In some sense, the facts kind of get lost, dont they . Dan the facts will certainly get lost. But this was an issue that was bound to be a centerpiece of Donald Trumps campaign no matter how the fbi came out in its judgment. I had a conversation quite a while ago with an official in the Trump Campaign and we were talking about this. Their conclusion from the start was that this is in many ways a winwin for trump. The first one would be if she had been prosecuted, which would have potentially cost her the nomination. Even in the absence of that, they could easily describe this as a whitewash where he will continue to press that and people have been arguing about the facts of this case and will be arguing about the conclusions of the fbi between now and election day without any let up. Bernie sanders said last winter, our people tired of hearing about Hillary Clintons emails . Dan some people are and some people arent. But i think that reflects the Deeper Division we have in our politics right now. Its not just Hillary Clintons emails, its a variety of things to which people come to conclusions in part on the basis of where their partisan leanings stand. This is one example of this. This is a very high profile example, a very controversial example, but it is not a singular example and i think we will see that in a variety of ways as we go forward. Miles lets look ahead for just a moment. Members of Congress Asked director comey to launch an investigation into whether Hillary Clinton may have lied to congress and the state department announced it will begin its investigation now, which waited for all of this to transpire. What issues will we see dropping do you think . Dan i think its possible with a word from congress, there will be an investigation into what Hillary Clinton testified to in the benghazi hearings last fall, and it is contradicted by the evidence. The director said they have not looked at that, they have not had a referral from congress and the chairman said you will get a referral quickly. That will be one possible avenue of continuation. The second is whether the state department will continue to investigate. And theg we know, director said this a number of times that others who were handling this classified material in an unclassified environment on the private server could have their security clearances reviewed and these are senior advisers to Hillary Clinton. If there clearances are eliminated, that puts them in a totally different situation and their ability to advise her simply during the campaign and if she were to become president. There are some potential consequences yet to happen on this. Paul ryan, the speaker of the house, has said she should not get classified briefings as a candidate because of this. I doubt that will happen but you can see where the drumbeat from republicans will increase and there should be some kind of penalty to those that have been found to be engaging in this extremely careless handling of the material. Miles im going to put you in the role for a moment as an advisor to Hillary Clinton. What would you tell her to get in front of this . Dan her sense is that this will be an issue no matter what she says. She has been grudging at best with coming forward with information throughout this process. She has only done it when it has been politically necessary. I remember late last summer when the email issue was clearly hurting her in the campaign, she finally began to talk about it in a more contrite way but it has been remarkable that she has had nothing to say about this. It seemingly demands some answers from her but she has not had a formal press conference in months and months and months. She has done individual interviews on television but not a General Press conference. Miles this controversy is a lot like my email box, it keeps filling up. Thank you very much for your time. Dan thank you. Miles the dallas protest was one of several nationwide that have been called following the shooting deaths this week of alton sterling and Philando Castile. With me now is jelani cobb. You talk about the layer cake of horrible issues involved in this. The first thing that comes to mind is race. The governor of minnesota said it wouldnt have happened if that had been a white person in that car. Do you believe that . Jelani i do. At least far less likely to have happened. We have a large number of Police Shootings and the majority of people who are shot fatally by police this year are white. It means we have a twofold problem. One, there is a great deal of Police Shootings that have been in this country and a disproportionate number of them have been people of color. But we took all the africanamericans and latinos out of that shooting, we would still have violence happening at rates that would horrify most western democracies. In the shortterm, its much more likely when there is a person of color in the vehicle. Miles you mention the word horrifying and it is. There is a sense of inertia here. How can we possibly at this point start working towards some kind of solution, a conversation . You wrote about that idea of initiating a conversation. Jelani i think we are having a conversation. It seems to me thats all we are doing is having a conversation. Had there been an attempt to create some groundswell on the floor, reform around guns, reform around police training, now it seems in the wake of what happened in dallas, that conversation will change dramatically. Miles how much does dallas change the whole equation . Black lives matter is a movement. Does that stop it . Jelani i think dallas is catastrophic and for a lot of reasons. Certainly for people who are interested in having a conversation, it becomes infinitely more difficult to have that conversation because, now, we are much more inclined to think about the dangers that police face, something we should be thinking about but something we really talk about is the danger involved on the other end of that interaction with police and that will not happen for a long time right now. Miles by all accounts, Dallas Police we are told were judicious in their use of force, racially sensitive, all the things we would hope to expect out of a Big City Police department. Theres a bit of irony here. Jelani there is. When we look at the castile situation in minnesota, he did what a motorist was supposed to do, followed the best practices. When hes pulled over, he tells the officer he has a licensed firearm in the car and from what we know, it led to him being shot fatally. Miles which compounds the horror. Jelani he was doing the right thing. Hearing from people during the march before the shooting broke out, people were saying there was a heavy Police Presence but there was a pretty good rapport between the demonstrators and police. In both cases, you see people following what might be the best practices and you still wind up with the worstcase scenario. Miles where do we begin . With guns, retraining police, with condemnations of violence . Anonymous seems to work. Jelani it doesnt. When we were looking at what happened in baton rouge with alton sterling, who was shot fatally by a Police Officer, possibly by two officers on tuesday and looking at the situation with Philando Castile in minnesota and in dallas, the Common Thread is guns. When police talk about the dangers implicit in their work, they are talking about dealing with a heavily armed public. When people say this person overreacted, the fact is they are confronting realities in which they are much more likely to be dealing with an armed person than a counterpart in most other countries. On the other side of it, if we are going to have a second amendment, this is almost an object lesson in applicability to other communities where in the idea of that, a person who has a weapon generates a fatal response from lawenforcement. I think it all points us in the direction saying we need to have some meaningful reform in our relationship with weapons. Another point i will a about this is if this is correct, if there was one shooter involved in dallas, we have to ask ourselves is it reasonable for the average citizen to have access to a firearm that can hit 12 Police Officers, 12 trained lawenforcement officers before they have a chance to respond . Miles its a difficult question given the constitutional protections and ive got to say, we talk about a groundswell and you can pull people and there is an expression of willingness to change the status quo when it comes to guns but we dont see anything like that in congress. Jelani we dont. We saw just before the fourth of july vacation that there was a congressional sit in and we mustered a great deal of moral standing and john lewis, the former civil rights advocate hero of the civil rights movement, was involved. The demands were really pretty tepid considering. Whats interesting here is when we talk about major gun reform bills in recent history, a 1994 bill, we talk about it as a High Water Mark in terms of gun reform, but when you look at the language used in 1994, both from journalists who were covering this and from politicians advocating voting for it, they use that bill as a starting place, not a finishing place. Miles and of course nothing has happened since to continue that conversation. That is kind of a longterm issue. Lets talk shortterm for a moment. You get the sense that we have got a bit of a tinderbox in this country. How concerned are you about what will happen in the near term future and what can be done to calm things down on all sides. Jelani we have a lot ahead of us. Any reasonable person would be worried that these tensions could become further inflamed. If we had a trench of division between us previously, we have a canyon now. I think in the short term, there has to be some sort of gesture from the top that people are serious about doing some in relationship to guns. There is also importance for people to make it clear that we are interested in continuing these efforts toward Police Accountability because there was feedback here. The public feels jeopardized by Police Officers who may be too quick with a firearm and the Police Officers feel jeopardized by a public that is heavily armed. It has a loop we wont find ourselves outside of. The president , congress, the senate, the house, they all have it within their capacity to do something. Cautious optimism is appropriate. We have the capacity to make change. It doesnt necessarily happen quickly. You dont have any optimism, theres no reason to get out of bed in the morning. Miles good point. Lets talk for a moment about the medias role in this. You talked about the way its covered specifically on the cable networks. One network was comparing it to 9 11. Theres a great deal of hyperbolic language. Thats not new. Its still troubling. To compare what happened in dallas, saying this is the worst assault on Law Enforcement since 9 11, it does a number of things. It leaves you with the impression 9 11 was meant to attack lawenforcement officers and it was a general attack on america itself on every aspect of the population. Beyond that, it places us in the context of external terrorism happening on a grand scale. It is completely within our power to have done some think about this before it happened. It is in some ways a selfinflicted wound from a really inert Political Class that has not done anything about guns in this country. Miles when you talk about 9 11, what happened subsequently was the war on terror. In those terms, its scary. Jelani we tend to. Theres is a tendency, a temptation to forgo the constitution in exchange for the feeling of security and safety, which is exactly what you are not supposed to do in these times. Miles that gets ejected immediately into the political process, gets amplified by certain candidates. Jelani we saw this in orlando. There was about five minutes of grief and then it became a political fight. Even the way it was just discussed by the current republican nominee, in a way that exacerbated the divisions we were seeing. I think this is something we should be better at dealing with by now. Miles black lives matter, but words matter too. Do you think we are a little reckless with our words collectively . Yourself excluded, of course. Jelani one thing that is interesting is, i just read a statement that came from black lives matter. I was on my way over here and they were very stringent in their denunciation of what happened. I think there is also a dynamic we have seen in the media, that my nephew attended a protest and happened to be concerned about things donald trump said and attended a protest at his college and he said later on the news, it said black lives matter protest donald trump. He said i had no idea we were part of black lives matter until the news station told us we were. I think there is a consolation that happens in this conversation. And a rhetoric going on in lots of corners of the country. Its hard to open a one to one relationship between what is being said and what is being done, especially people who are troubled love access to firearms, you dont know exactly what it is that pushes them into action but i think the rhetoric doesnt help. Miles what we are watching is horrible, tragedies unfold before our very eyes, Live Streaming capability in our hands. On the other side, police with the body cameras. We are seeing something that has been going on for a long time. To what extent do you think its altering reality . Jelani it does. I think it is complicated. When we were working on the documentary we did on frontline, policing with police in new york, one of the things that came out of where there were a number of officers looking forward to having body camera because they thought that would resolve instances where they had been wrongly accused of Excessive Force or someone said they did something they didnt do and thought having a body camera would be a protection for them. At the same time, the visuals we receive most recently in baton rouge and minnesota, i think they have a kind of exacerbating effect. These are things that have been happening for a long time. They have been able to be disputed for a long time. We cast doubt on the credibility of people bringing claims for a long time but theres Something Different about having a video witness. It al