Time youre not aware of him actually taking any calls . No. Hes not taken any calls at this time since june 1st. Secretary shulkin, thank you for being with me tonight. Thank you. Obviously not taking the place of twitter yet. Dont forget, you can watch outfront any time anywhere on cnn go. Anderson is next. Thanks for joining us tonight. The last man in the room before the president spoke alone with fbi director james comey testified under oath, Attorney GeneralJeff Sessions is seen and heard a lot as one of Donald Trumps closest complain advisers and is accused of being untruthful and went before the Senate Intelligence committee in part he said to set the record straight about a number of things, including in his words, secret innuendo being leaked about himself, the president and his whole affair. He had plenty to say about that. He had less to say to the considerable irritation of some
committee members. Well talk about this over the next two hours and hear from a senator who was involved in a 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 with any russian officials at the mayflower hotel. Has the president invoked Executive Privilege in the case of your testimony here today . He has not. Then what is the basis of your refusal to answer these questions . Senator kaiing, the presiden has a constitutional but the president hasnt asserted it. You said you dont have the power to exert the power of Executive Privilege, so what is the legal basis for your refusal to answer these questions . Im protecting the right of the president to assert it if he chooses. To the best of your knowledge, sir, did any of these following individuals meet with russian officials at any point during the campaign, and you can say yes or no on this. Paul manafort . I dont have any information
that he had done so. He served as Campaign Chairman for a few months. Steve bannon . I have no information that he did. General Michael Flynn . I dont recall it. Reince priebus . I dont recall. Steve miller . I dont recall him ever having such a conversation. Corey 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 an ambassador of a Foreign Government colluded at an open setting with hundreds of other people to pull off the greatest caper in the history . Thank you for saying that, senator cotton. Its just like through the looking glass. I mean, what is this . Were problematic and he couldnt talk about them. What are they . Why dont you tell me. There are none, Senator Wyden. There are none, i can tell you that for absolute certainty. You tell 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. Senator, you accused Attorney General Sessions of stonewalling. Do you have any evidence that shows that he wasnt, in fact, following proper procedure . He claims he was following longheld policies at the department of justice. He refused, anderson, 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
into it in public. So i asked Jeff Sessions what was meant by that, and Jeff Sessions just got all riled up and started hollering about innuendos, but he didnt answer the question. The question was, why would the former fbi director find this so problematic he couldnt talk about it in public. Heres my bottom line, 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 youll 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 some things which he Didnt Go Into . When you have a situation like that, you know, he 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 lays out a lot of details and the other one just seems to duck and weave and try 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 fortunately declared that any accusation that he had anything to do with collusion between the Trump Campaign and russia is a, quote, appalling and detestable lie. Do you believe him . Do you believe he had no hand in any possible collusion . Well, 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. The Attorney General also said that he would not participate in any effort to remove Robert Mueller. Does hearing that give you confidence that the integrity of the independent 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 principle above everything else, which is protect the president. Finally, the Attorney General was asked about his meeting with kislyak in his office, and he seemed unable to go into much detail of what he actually did discuss. He said it wasnt anything to do with the campaign, that it 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 just didnt remember. Normally in a meeting like that, would there be staff sitting in taking notes . Would there be any kind of account at the time of what was actually discussed . What i indicated at the hearing is some of these answers, anderson, just dont pass the smell test. If youre talking about meetings with a Prominent Russian official and he says he doesnt really remember much, he doesnt know if there are any records, this kind of thing, it just cries out for those of us who are charged with oversight to insist that we get more facts and were going to stay at it. Senator wyden, i appreciate your time. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I want to bring in the panel. Ryan, matt, gloria, jeffrey, matthew and glen. You said that the Attorney Generals testimony was the white house basically having its
cake and eating it too. I thought so. What does that mean . He said he didnt answer any questions about what donald trump said or did. But he did not cite Executive Privilege. He just said confidentiality which is basically a madeup legal kept that has no basis in law. He said Longstanding Justice Department policy. That He Couldnt Identify in writing and is not known to me and apparently not known to many people in that hearing. So the white house got the secrecy they wanted. They got the nondisclosure of conversations involving the president , but they didnt have to take the political heat of citing Executive Privilege. Gloria, Executive Privilege came up a lot. I want to show some of the moments where the term was thrown around. Has the president invoked Executive Privilege in the case of your testimony here today . He has not. Then what is the basis of
your refusal to answer these questions . I am protecting the right of the president to exert it assert it if he chooses. Senator feinstein, that would call for a communication between the Attorney General and the president and im not able to comment on that. Can you tell me, what are these longstanding d. O. J. Rules that protect conversations made in the executive without invoking Executive Privilege . Senator, im protecting the president s constitutional right. Mr. Chairman, im not able to comment on conversations with high officials within the white house. Stonewalling of any kind of unacceptable, and General Sessions has acknowledged that there is no legal basis for this stonewalling. I am not stonewalled. I am following the historic policies of the department of justice. Its the same thing, gloria, that we heard from dni coats,
admiral rogers. Rogers went in later to classify testimony, but no indication that sessions is going to do that. Right. In fact, sessions was asked about that today and he didnt indicate that he was willing to do that. Our Laura Jarrett asked the Justice Department what is the precedent that jeffrey is questioning, and they pointed to two memos from 1982. One from President Reagan and the other from ted olson who was then the a. G. For the office of legal counsel, and so they set this precedent up. But it was not something that sessions could cite in the hearing. And i think that you have this pattern here of sessions, according to our reporting, jim acostas reporting, did not go to the white house and ask whether he should assert Executive Privilege. The other two gentlemen said they tried to contact the white house and never got a response, if youll recall from their testimony. So what the white house is getting is people who are just saying im not going to testify
about these conversations because it makes it look like they could be damaging to the president. Matt, if its not Executive Privilege, what is it . Well, i think what all the lawyers in the room believe it is, it feels a lot like Attorney Client privilege but the president isnt the Attorney Generals client. So theyre thinking were having Confidential Communications when their tingly sense tells them they shouldnt talk about it. Dni coats and admiral rogers. Riekght. You see theyve come up with a strategy to not answer these questions. Congress has a constitutional right to participate and to 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 coercion theres nothing they can do. Right. Would it have made theAttorney Generals argument stronger if he had brought with him and read aloud the d. O. J. Policy he was referring to . Of course. Look at his Opening Statement. He was specific in the Opening Statement, but you expect more specificity in the Opening Statement than in the back and forth with senators. So there is some give and take on that, but unless the d. O. J. Comes up with that kind of specificity for the tradition he cited, other than the memos that gloria mentioned, then it looks like a weak part of todays testimony. I will say though, it was all cabined 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 who obviously is a lawyer to have that instinct. I would note that a lot of the you look at ron wyden
today, and boy, he just looked like he was huffing and puffing and couldnt stand it and this was outrageous and of course this was all missing for 8 years for people like ron wyden. So there is a lot of partisanship. If this hearing like the comey hearing were structured to be purely substantive, each side would have their counsel asking the questions and it wouldnt be going from senator to senator so they can have their time shouting into 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. General sessions did well in his Opening Statement, and then there was a lot to fight about after that. Matt lewis, was today a good day for the Trump Administration . Again, no real details came out about those conversations that obviously a lot of the democrats wanted to hear. Yeah, i think it probably was. If youre looking at it from a political standpoint, its probably a good day for trump,
for the Trump Administration. By the way, i thought that senator heinrich 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 these questions. Having said that, i think that most in terms of the news value and the possibility that down the road if sessions, if Attorney General Sessions had answered questions with more specificity, more specifically today and he had gotten something wrong, even if he had misremembered, down the road it might have come down to haunt him. He answered very few questions, so i think politically it doesnt hurt him and it also shields him down the road. Also, a lot of his answers were, well, i dont remember or,
not to my knowledge, which are classic answers when it sounded like he got cornered in a hallway by some cameras. He knew he was coming, the president knew he was coming. What he kept saying was that he was trying to preserve trumps future Executive Privilege as if they couldnt have had a conversation about it before he came to actually testify. So it seemed like a game. It seemed like something, and he can only play this card one time but he did play it and i think that it actually harmed his credibility because it didnt really make sense to people. Youre listening to this and think forgive me for interrupting, they can play it as many times as they like, as long as they have republican control of these committees. The only thing thats going to stop them from essentially stonewalling is coercion, force. Youre not going to get that from republicans. Another thing hanging over the hearing today was whether then Senator Sessions intentionally misled the
judiciary committee during his confirmation hearings. I want to play a portion in question from back in january and what was said today. If its true, its obviously extremely serious, and if there is any evidence that anyone 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 a time or two in that campaign and i did not have communications with the russians. Im unable to comment on it. He was asked about that today by vice chairman warner. Lets play what he said. 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, close quote. I was taken aback by that explosive allegation, which he said was being reported as Breaking News that very day and which i had not heard. I wanted to refute that immediately. Any suggestion that i was part of such an activity. I replied quote, i replied to Senator Franken this way, 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 didnt have communications with the russians and im unable to comment on it, close quote. That was the context in which i was asked the question, and in
that context, my answer was a fair and correct response to the charge as i understood it. Ryan, Senator Frankens put out a statement saying he doesnt buy the Attorney Generals explanation. Just look at the language of the question. Franken asked him ab