It all adds up to our most Reliable Network ever. One that keeps you connected to what matters most. The last man in the room before the president spoke alone with fbi director james comey spoke under oath. Hes seen and heard lot as a cabinet member and before that as one of the closest Campaign Advisors and been known as being untruthful. And went beor the committee in part to set the recrd straight about secret innuendo being leaked about himself, the president and this whole affair. However he had lez to say beyond that to the considerable irritation of several and the loud approval of many others. And in a moment well hear from senator ron wyden who was involved in the Contentious Exchange but first some of the key moments from todays testimony. I did not have any private meetings, nor do i recall any conversations at the mayflower hotel. Has the president invoked executive privilege in the case of your testimony today . No, he has not. Then what is the basis of your refusal to answer the question . The president has a constitutional i understand that but the president hasnt asserted. So what is the legal basis for your refuse tool answer these question snz. I am protecting the right of the president to exert it it. Ill exert it should he choose. Did these people meet with russian officials at any point in the campaign . Paul manafort . I dont have any information that he had done so. He served as campaign chairman. I have no information that he did. I dont recall it. Reince priebus . I dont recall. Steve miller . I dont recall him having such a conversation. Cory lewandowski . I do not recall any of those individuals having any meeting with russian officials. Carter page . I dont know. Have you ever in any of these fantastical situations heard of a plot line so ridiculous that a sitting United States senator and ambassador colluded at an open setting with hundreds of other people to pull off the greatest caper in the history of espionage. Thank you for saying that, senator cotton. Its just like through the looking glass. I mean what is this . Stone dstz walling of any kind is unacceptable and general sessions has acknowledged there is no legal basis for this stonewalling. Senator widen, i am not stonewalling. I want to ask you point blank why did you sign the letter recommending the firing of director comey when it violated your recusal . It did not violate my recusal. It did not violate my recusal. That would be the answer to that. And the letter that i signed represented my views that had been formulated for some time. Chairman, just if i can finish that answer my my view doesnt pass the smell test. General sessions, respectfully youre not answering daegz. Well, what is the question . The question is mr. Comey said that there were matters with respect to the recusal that were problematic and he couldnt talk about them. What are they . Why dont you tell me. They are none, senatorer, there are none. I can tell you that for absolute certainty. This is a secret innuendo being leaked out there about me and i dont appreciate it. That was senator ron wyden of oregon. I spoke with him shortly before we went on air. You accused senator attorney general sessions of stonewalling. He claims he was holding long held policies. He refused to address the most basic issues today. Why didnt he recuse himself sooner . What did the president say to him about firing director comey . Look, the bottom line is that we have had one of these Trump Officials after another and they basically say theyre not going to respond to questions because they dont feel like it. I mean he did taken a oath to answer questions and executive privilege was not being called in. So is there any recourse you can take to get him to answer questions he wouldnt answer . Or are your hands pretty much tied . You certainly can take action against officials. But look what were going to do now is show that theres no legal basis for the stonewalling. He didnt have a claim of executive privilege and on some of the matters, he just threw in really bazar kinds of comments. For example when i asked him about what director comey said. Director comey said when i asked him about Jeff Sessions recusal, he said it was really problematic and he couldnt get into it in public. So i asked Jeff Sessions what was meant by that and Jeff Sessions just got all riled up and started haulering about innuendos. But he didnt answer the question. The question was why was the former fbi director find this so problematic he couldnt talk about it in public . Heres my bottom line here, anderson. What we learned today is the countrys top legal official doesnt have much of a grasp of the law and he certainly doesnt understand what recusal is all about. Do you think hell actually be able to find out whose account was accurate . Was director comey accurate when he said he knew the attorney general was going to have to recuse himself based on things which he didnt go into . When you have a situation like that, hawaii said, he said, examine the relevant facts. Director comey responded to questions for several hours and didnt pass on any of them. What Jeff Sessions did was in effect pass on all of them. So when you have two officials and one of them is straight forward and laze out a lot of details and the other seems to duck and weave and trying to figure out how to escape accountability, i think the American People are going to say were going with the people who offered the facts. Today also the attorney general forcefully declared any accusation of collusion between the Trump Campaign and russia is a appalling and detestable lie. Do you believe him . Do you believe he had no hand in any possible collusion . What i can tell you is when you have someone who violates the terms of his recusal, you certainly have grounds to question other matters. So the point you are asking about i intend to follow up on. And the attorney general said he would not participate in any effort to remove Robert Mueller. Does hearing that give you confidence of the integrity of the investigation is going to be upheld . Under normal circumstances, you would say yes but certainly when you look at the trump inner circle, they have a long track record here based on the first few months of this administration to take steps that honor the one principal above everything else, which is protect the president. Finally the attorney general was asked about his meeting with kislyak in his office and seemed unable to go into much detail of what he actually did discuss. He said nothing to do with the campaign, that had to do with his role as a senator at the time and yet some of the major issues as john mccain pointed out, it didnt seem like he went into them or didnt remember. Normally would there be staff sitting in, taking notes . Would thereby any account at the time of what was discussed . What i indicated at the hearing is some of these answers, anderson just dont pass the smell test. I mean if it youre talk about meetings with a Prominent Russian official and he says he doesants remember much, he doesnt know if there are any records, this kind of thing, it cries out for those of us who are charged with oversight to insist that we get more facts and were going to stay tat. I appreciate your time. Thank you. Want to bring in the panel. And matthew whitker you said the attorney generals testimony was the white house basically having its cake and eating it too. I thought so. He said he didnt answer any questions about what donald trump said or did but he did not site executive privilege. He just said confidentiality which is a made up legalal concept which has no basis in law. He tds was long standing darnlt of justice policy. That he could not identify in writing and not known to me or many people in that hearing. So the white house got the secrecy they wanted, the disclosure nondisclosure of conversations involving the president but didnt have to take the political heat of siting executive privilege. And executive privilege came up a lot. I want to show where the term was thrown around. As the the president invehicled executive privilege in the case of your testimony here today . He has not. Then what is the base of your refuse tool answer these questions . Im protecting the right of the president to assert it if he chooses. That would call for a communication and im not able to comment. Can you tell me what are these long standing doj rules that protect conversations made in the executive without invoking executive privilege . Im protecting the president s constitutional right. Mr. Chairman, im not able to comment on conversations with officials within the white house. Stonewalling of any kind is unacceptable and general sessions has acknowledged there is no legal basis for this stonewalling. I am not stonewalling. I am following the historic policies of the department of justice. Its the same thing, gloria, that we heard from or at least rogers went tine classified testimony but no indication that sessions is going to. In fact sessions was asked about that and no indication he was going to do that. They asked the Justice Department what is the precedent that hes questioning and they poented to 1982. One from president regan and the other from ted olsen who was then the ag for the office of legal counsel. But it was not something that sessions could site in the hearing and i think that you have this pattern here of sessions, according to our reporting, did not go to the white house and ask whether he should assert executive privilege. The other two said they tried to contact the white house and never got a response if youll recall. So the white house is getting people just saying im not going to testify about these conversations because it makes it look like they could be actually damaging to the president. If its not executive privilege, what is it . I think what all the lawyers in the room believe it is, it feels a lot like attorneyclient privilege but theyre thinking were having Confidential Communications when they their sense tells them they shouldnt talk about it. But codes. Exactly but what you see is the executive branch have come up with a strategy to not answer these questions. Congress has a constitutional right to participate and investigate and a tingly sense, with all due respect, is not a legal concept. But the thing is they dont in the absence of contempt or some sort of coersion would it have made the attorney gens argument stronger . Of course. The more specific you are in any time and he was specific in the Opening Statements and you expect more than in the back and forth with senators. So theres give and take on that. But unless the doj comes up with that kind of spes fisty for the tradition hes sited other than the memos gloria mentioned, then it looks like weak part of todays testimony. I will say it was all patterned around the same thing and that was conversations with the president where you would expect them to potentially exercise executive privilege and the tingly sense as its now being described is leading somebody like general sessions whos lawyer, to have those instincts. You look at ron wyden today and boy, he looked like he was huffing and puffing and couldnt stand it and this is outrages and of course this was all missing for eight years from people like ron wyden. So there is a lot of partisanship to this. If this hearing, like the comey hearing were structured to be purely substantive, each side would have their counsel asking the questions and they would be going to have their time shout nothing to the camera and we saw some of that again today like we did with comey. This is not the ideal structure for an Oversight Committee to get the most information out of a hearing and general sessions did well in his Opening Statement and there was a lot to fight about after that. I mean was today a good day for the Trump Administration . No real details came out about those conversations and a lot of the democrats wanted to hear. I think it probably was. If youre looking at is it from a political standpoint. Its probably good day for the Trump Administration. By the way i thought that senator hinrich had the best questions today and he made the point that said either you take executive privilege or if its classified information, you dont have to talk about it. Otherwise if you pledge to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, then you have no excuse for not answering those questions. Having said that i think that most of in terms of the news value and the possibility that down the road if attorney general seshzs had answered questions with more spes fisty, more specifically today and hed gotten something wrong, even if he misremembered down the road it might have come back to haunt him. I think politically it doesnt hurt him and it fuels him down the road. And a lot of his answers were i dont remember and not to my knowledge which are classic answers. It looked like he got cornered in the hallway by cameras. The president knew hawaii was coming and what he kept saying was that he was trying to preserve trumps future executive privilege as if they could rnt have had a conversation about it before he came to testify. It seemed like a game. I mean he can only play this card one time but he did play it and i think it harmed his credibility because it didnt make sense to people. I think youre thinking. Forgive me for interrupting. They can play it as many times as they like as long as they have republican control of these committees because the only thing thats going to stop them from essentially stonewalling is coersion and youre not going to get that from republicans. And another thing hanging over the hearing is whether then senator sessions led in the hearing. I want to play a portion from back in january and what was said today. If its true, its obviously extremely serious. And if there is any evidence that any one affiliated with the Trump Campaign communicated with the russian government in the course of this campaign, what will you do . Senator, franken, im not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at the time or two in that campaign and i did not have communications with the russians. And im unable to comment on it. He was asked about that by vice chairman warner. This is what happened. Senator franken asked me a rambling question after some six hours of testimony that included dramatic new allegations that the United States intelligence community, the u. S. Intelligence community had advised president elect trump quote that there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between trumps surrogates and intermediaries for the russian government, closed quote. I was taken aback by that explosive allegation which he said was being reported as breaking news that very day. In which i had not heard. I wanted to refute that immediately. Any suggestion i was part of such an activity, i replied quote to senator franken quote, senator franken, im not aware of any of those activities, i have been called a surrogate a time or two in that campaign and i did not, didnt have communications with the russians and im unable to comment on it. Closed quote. That was the context in which i was asked a question and in that context my answer was a fair and correct response to the charge as i understood it. Senator franken put out a statement saying he doesnt buy the attorney generals investigation. Franken asked him about intermediaries for the russian government, which is exactly what the Russian Ambassador is and surrogates for the Trump Campaign, which is what jefr sessions is. So even by his own explanation of the context of that question, i dont quite understand what attorney general sessions is getting at. The question was about the kind of context we now know he had. He may think theyre innocent context. They were about issues totally innocent but the question was indeed about surgrts and intermedia intermediaries. And he said he wasnt meeting with the Russian Ambassador as a surrogate. John mccain kind of got into that. John mccain said i dont remember you being that interested in Foreign Policyish oos. And quizzed him on what specific Foreign Policy issues they were discussing. And based on the department of justice accounting that sessions had had zero meetings with any ambassadors or foreign advisors of foreign governments up until the point he was appointed to the campaign in march and april he had an almost 30. I assure you i understand he could theoretically do that as a senator or surrogate. But he was doing it as a senator and previously did not do that. What kislyak was doing was to find out about the Trump Campaign. And later the man who would make the call if asked to fire special counsel hamueller. Rod rosenstein was asked about it. See what he says. Ium are sure. work sfx its not just a car, its your daily retreat. The es and es hybrid. Lease the 2017 es 350 for 329 a month for 36 months. Experience amazing at your lexus dealer. Thithis is the new new york. E . Think again. We are building new airports all across the state. New roads and bridges. New mass transit. 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