It seems to me that a president ial campaign using a law firm as a conduit to pay for activities with which the campaign it itself doesnt want to be directly associated, is more than just dirty politics. Its also quite possibly illegal. To me, it seems that this is at least the violation of Campaign Finance laws for failure to accurately disclose the actual recipients of campaign dispersements. However this type of arrangement is not illegal. If its not illegal under current law i fear were risking opening pandoras box with all sorts of underhanded activities which campaigns being laundered through law firms and shielded und und under Attorney Client privilege. Do you share a similar concern and in your opinion is it legal under current law for a president ial campaign to hide its funding of the com pilation and dissemination of political dirt on its opponent by using a law firm to directly pay for the work . I would think that those matters are worthy of consideration, but as to the details of them and for me to express an ultimate comment today im unable to do so. Thank you. Let me shift over to something entirely different. Federal law currently still cites marijuana as a dangerous drug. Still prohibited. Its still illegal under federal law. Yet, a number of states have, for both medical purposes, now even for recreational purposes, have basically made it legal. What is your departments policy on that relative to enforcing the law . Our policy is that the same really fundamentally as the holder lynch policy, which is that the federal law remains in effect and a state can legalize marijuana for its Law Enforcement purposes, but it still remains illegal with regard to federal purposes. Okay. It seems to me that theres always been a tremendous amount of gray area in that whole field which i think as a nation, you know, we need to look much more closely at, both from the states point of view and the federal Government Point of view, but thats just my feeling on that. Im running out of time. Four other things. But let me go to one final thing here. Ive been very involved in the area of victims rights. I was the following henry hydes leadership on this introduced the victims rights cube stugsal amendment years back, various pieces of legislation on victims rights and ive also worked closely with the parents of murdered children. And when you talk about something that affects ones family, theres nothing that affects a family more adversely than Something Like that happening and we still have Capital Punishment on the books both at the federal level and many of our states. Yet, these families are dragged left and right up and down back and forth into hearing after hearing. These cases can drag on for more than 20 years before the imposition of Capital Punishment actually occurs in many instances obviously it never does, while these people are behind bars oftentimes they attack, sometimes kill guards and sometimes attack and kill other inmates. So what is i would be interested to see what is your what is your intentions relative to Capital Punishment in this country . Well, many states have Capital Punishment. The federal government has Capital Punishment for a number of offenses and specifically control we have within the department a recommendation process through our appointed committee to seek or not seek a Death Penalty when a case is charged. Sometimes its a complex thing. But i believe the Death Penalty, the federal Death Penalty, is a part of our law. I think its a legitimate penalty. Its constitutional and we will do our duty even in those circumstances that require the imposition of the Death Penalty. Thank you very much. My time has expired. The chair recognizes the gentle woman from california. Thank you, mr. Chairman and mr. Attorney general for being here today. Former National Security adviser Michael Flynn is under investigation because of his work and ties to Foreign Governments. According to various reports, much of his work with these Foreign Governments went unreported when mr. Flynn was required to make certain disclosures by law. Now, as chairman of the Trump Campaign, National SecurityAdviser Committee and lead adviser on the trump transition team, i think you worked closely with mr. Flynn and i would like you to answer a few yes or no questions about mr. Flynn and knowing that mr. Flynn is under investigation, im going to stick to subject matter that predates both the special counsels investigation and your appointment as attorney general. Now, the Foreign Policy platform at the Republican National convention undertook dramatic changes. Did you discuss changes to the republican Foreign Policy platform with mr. Flynn at any point during the campaign . I dont recall it. I was not at the convention when the Platform Committee met. Youre the you were the lead of the campaign but you dont recall discussing it with him . Well, that may be a bit of a stretch. I was asked to lead and form and find some people who would join and meet with mr. Trump to give him advice and support regarding Foreign Policy and i did so, although we were not a very Effective Group really. You met with ambassador kislyak in november of 2016. Did you discuss your meetings with ambassador kislyak with mr. Flynn . Did i discuss mr. Flynn with him . Did you discuss your meeting with the ambassador with mr. Flynn . The ambassador i met with i think some 25 ambassadors that year. I did meet once in my office with mr. Kislyak. And i do not recall and dont believe i communicated any of that information to mr. Flynn. Are you aware of any meetings between ambassador kislyak and mr. Flynn that might have occurred around the time of your meeting with the ambassador . I do not. Okay. In her testimony before the senate in may, former acting attorney general sally yates testified that one week into the Trump Administration, she notified the administration that mr. Flynn had lied to Vice President pence about discussing sanctions with ambassador kislyak. As part of the transition team, and the president s pick for attorney general, in january were you notified when the administration was notified of mr. Flynns lie and his susceptibility to russian blackmail . I dont believe so. All right. With. We now know you were aware of the efforts of carter page and George Papadopolous to meet and establish communications with the russian government. Did you at any point well, thats not necessarily so about at least from mr. Carter page says. And i dont recall that. All right. Did you at any point discuss with Michael Flynn the possibility of then candidate trump or his surrogates meeting with the russian government . I do not recall such a conversation. Did you know that flynn was working for the turkish government while acting as a surrogate for the Trump Campaign . I dont believe i had information to that effect. Did you know that he was working for the turkish government at any point after the election . I dont believe so. Were you or anyone on the Trump Campaign aware of mr. Flynns efforts to extradite turkish cleric gulen . Ive read that in the paper recently. But i dont recall ever being made aware of that before this recent release of papers. You just read about it in the newspaper afterwards . After the inauguration, you did not know that the fbi was requested to conduct a new review of turkeys 2016 extradition request for mr. Gulen . The fbi was . Do you know about that . Im aware that the turkish government continued to press the federal government with regard to seeking the return of mr. Gulen to turkey. Did you know and our department had a role to play in that, although im not at liberty to discuss the details of that. Did you know that the turkish government allegedly offered 15 million for mr. Flynn to kidnap mr. Gulen . Absolutely not. You mean no. On time of the gentlecle woman has expired. The gentleman from iowa mr. King for five minutes. Thank you. Thank you general sessions for your testimony here today and your service to our country over the years that you have been front and center. And a number of things i wanted to discuss, one of them is, the daca situation and seems as i recall you made a Public Statement some time back about the constitutionality of the policy that was implemented by president obama. Would you care to reiterate that position today . Well, the president , president obama, indicated multiple times that he felt that daca he didnt have the power to do daca in the way it was done and eventually they must have changed their mind then and executed this policy to take persons who were in the country unlawfully and give them lawful status, work permits and even participation in social security. So i felt for some time that that was not proper. A Federal District court in texas so held. And the fifth Circuit Court of appeals also so held that it was unlawful. So what happened was, we helped work on the research, but the department of Homeland Security withdrew the policy because it was not defensible in my view. And established a day to close it down of march be 5th i think of next year. Thats right. The Homeland Security asked for time to wind this program down. And i thought that was appropriate. And there is a lot of public dialog about what kind of legislation might be passed in conjunction with the daca policy. And thats up in the air right now. Im noticing the democrats are saying were going to have everything we want on daca or well shut the government down. It causes me to think about what should happen if Congress Reaches an impasse and there is no passage of any legislation to extend the daca policy, if the president should decide to on or before that march 5th date that he wants to extend the daca policy what would your position be at that time. Thats hypothetical, senator king. I dont think i should speculate on that. I do think congress will have to give it thought. We have a law now, its in place, congress passed, and congress would have to change it. And i would just remark that im watching a lot of people be rewarded for a violation of the rule of law and i appreciate your emphasis on rule of law in your testimony today multiple times coming back to that point mr. King, i would say it is correct in my view and i think you probably share it, that something is lost whenever you provide an amnesty. A place will be paid if thats done. But sometimes circumstances are such that may need to be done, but we need to be careful. Thank you. And its been weve been made aware here in this committee theres a significant backlog in immigration cases. Have you presented any request to congress or a statement to inform us as to how many resources you might need, judges you might need, to get the backlog caught up and then an idea of how many we might need to maintain an anticipated level . Thats a very good question. Yes, weve worked on it and we have some preliminary information. We are seeking a total of about 360, 370 judges, added about 50 to the total. Weve shortened the time process for selecting people, not shorting the training program, and we will we are adding judges. I would say on the backlog its gone up dramatically, now over 600,000. But the last two or three months, were almost not adding to the backlog and im told by the additional work were doing by january, we will not be adding to the backlog but hopefully reducing it. That would be a real change in the trends we were heading on. Well thank you. I just ask you to reflect as this committee anticipates the potential of a special counsel to broaden this look that i think is forced upon us in a reluctant way but i certainly support the special counsel to look back at some times here that i believe should be incorporated into this and that is, i look back at october 16th, 2015, when barack obama was speaking of Hillary Clinton and whether she whether she might have violated any security clauses in our statute, in particular 18 usc 793 when he said that he had no impression that mrs. Clinton had purposely tried to hide something or squirrel away any information, made the point of intent behind that in april after that, april 10th, a similar statement, she would never, meaning Hillary Clinton, she would never intentionally put america in any kind of jeopardy. Those words of intent caught my attention when i heard james comey use that very word july 5th of 2016 and it seems as though he latched on to the statements made by president obama and a more or less implied and implemented into the interpretation of the statute the word intent as if it were a condition before there could be any prosecution for a violation of 18 usc 793. I dont know that i have a question on that. I want to make sure i put that into the record so its under consideration by the doj. Time of the gentleman has expired. Chair recognizes the woman from texas, miss jackson lee, for five minutes. Thank you very much. Mr. Attorney general, do you believe in the book the constitution of the United States . Yes. And will abide by it with all of your intentions . Thats exactly correct. I thank you so very much. I took the liberty of reviewing federal crimes against children, particularly those dealing with sexual or physical abuse. As you well know, leigh coffman, debbie glibson, gloria, and Beverly Young nelson, these young women have accused this individual, judge moore, who is running for a federal office, the United States senate, of child sexual activity. Do you believe these young women . I am i have no reason to doubt these young women. With that in mind if you believe these young women, do you believe judge moore should be seated in the senate if he wins and would you introduce investigations by the doj regarding his actions . We will evaluate every case as to whether or not it should be investigated. This kind of case would normally be a state case. I would say, representative jackson lee, that the ethics people at the department of justice, and i talked to them about that when this campaign started, its the seat i used to hold, they advised me that the attorney general should not be involved in this campaign. I have thank you. Friends in the campaign. Thank you. I only have a short period of time. I want to make sure if he comes to the United States senate i think i should continue to do so. If he comes to the United States senate that there would be the possibility of referring his case for at least a federal review by the department of justice. We will do our duty. Let me also refer you back to the meeting on march 31st, 2016, with mr. Papadopolous. You well know that mr. Papadopolous, in addition to his comments in the meeting regarding a meeting between trump and mr. Putin, had series of meetings dealing with and as you can see trump, mr. Papadopolous and you leading that committee, i cannot imagine your memory would fail you so much. But moving on, he was in that meeting but you also had Stephen Miller who was a Senior Policy Adviser who was noted in the stipulated statement of offense to receive conversation from mr. Papadopolous about his constant interaction with the russians to intrude in the 2016 election. You continued in the october 18th meeting before the Judiciary Committee or hearing in the senate to not answer the question. Now, in light of the facts that are now part of the record, do you wish to change your testimony before the Senate Intelligence committee on june 13, 2017, where you said, i have never met with or had any conversation with any russians or any foreign officials. Jump to the final part, no knowledge i have no knowledge of any such conversations by anyone connected to the Trump Campaign. Do you want to admit under oath that you did not tell the truth or misrepresented it or correct your testimony right now . Youre referring to my testimony at con firmation. Before the Senate Intelligence committee. My time is short and two more questions, please. Im not able to respond because i dont think i understand what you are saying. Your Intelligence Committee testimony do you want to change it where you indicated you had no knowledge of involvement of the trump individuals involved in conversations regarding the Trump Campaign, russians and mr. Miller, gave supported mr. Trumps press conference where he said russia if youre listening i hope youll be able to find the 30,000 emails, do you want to change your testimony that was where you said i have no knowledge of any such conversations by anyone connected to the Trump Campaign regarding russians involved in the campaign . That was a testimony on june 13. Im not able to understand. Let me move forward to let me say this, mr. Chairman, can i let me move to a document the witness is allowed to answe