Klobuchar. New threats from the president as well that former white house lawyer don mcgahn cannot testify before congress. The question is can the pe stop him . We will take it up in cuomos court. A Closing Argument tonight thats the most important one i have ever made to you. What do you say . Lets get after it. Now, look, Speaker Pelosi has been shy on impeaching the president but she came strong at the a. G. For committing a crime today. Jerry nadlers warning that the a. G. Poses a, quote, clear and present danger to our constitutional order. The House Judiciary Committee set up a chair today for barr to sit in, along with a place card with his name on it, spelled right, knowing full well he wasnt going to show today. So they are talking the talk, but what will they do . What should they do . Hes not going to resign despite calls from democrats like my first guest, senator amy klobuchar, who got to question him yesterday, a judiciary member and 2020 hopeful joins me now. Good to see you, senator. Good to be here. Thanks, chris. Good to be with you again. Now, the idea of pelosi saying he committed a crime because it is a crime to lie to congress, former prosecutor klobuchar, do you believe that the a. G. Committed a crime of perjury . At the very least incredibly misleading when he appears under oath before both the senate and the house, is asked about his views, if mueller expressed views to him about the report and he says, well, no, or i dont know. Well, actually at that point he knew that that letter had been sent to him, right . He knew the letter had been sent which basically raised questions of the confusion that had been sewn by the fourpage letter. So he knows that. He doesnt say it. At the very least misleading. At the most, hes not telling the truth. Misleading though is not a crime. Yes. With van holland, senator van holder, senator van holland asked him directly, do you think mueller agreed or disagreed with your conclusions . He is going to use the space of saying, well, conclusions, it is not what he talked about in the letter, it is not what he talked about in the call, it was really about the summary. At the end of the day if you cant make the case, should you be talking about it this way . Lets take it up a little bit because, first of all, of course what they have to do is try to get director mueller to testify. Were trying to push for it in the senate and theres bigger reasons than just even this for why we want him to testify. That report contained pages and pages of information about how a foreign country tried to invade our election. They didnt do it with missiles. They didnt do it with tanks, but they did it with computers. They tried to hack into elections. In florida they got very close. We need to get that information out there to the public. Why . We have another president ial election coming up and this president has every reason not to protect that election. So we need to pass legislation like the secure elections act that would require backup paper ballots if something goes wrong. So the theory of your bill was just in case, well have paperbackups paper backups so we know what the count is. The white house was against it why . Ask them. We know for a fact people in the white house called senators i know this because i heard from them and told them not to support the bill. The bill was headed to a markup why. It wasnt just at a hearing. It is a bipartisan bill. Senator langford and myself introduced it. It also would require audits and better information sharing. It had the head of the intelligence committee, senator b bure as one of the cosponsors as well as senator warren. Why is it dead . Because they stopped it in its track. We need to have that. We need to make sure the political ads on facebook and twitter and other social media, companies actually say where the money came from and what the ads are. So the senators on the gop side when the white house says, no, we dont like this, thats it, it is done . Thats what happened. You havent seen that happen before in the senate . Well, i just want to be clear about your understanding. They have been caving to the white house. Yes. I heard you say something, i want to get the process down first. The president has every reason not to want to secure the next election. Thats a heavy allegation, senator. What are you suggesting . The last way it was handled appeared to benefit him. Lets look at what happened. It slowed at the very least, it slowed Hillary Clintons momentum, right . It slowed her down. It reversed her momentum because of the way the russians hacked into her campaigns email. Imagine if they hacked into your email. God forbid. And put it out there for your competitors to see. Thats what they did to her. They hacked into her Campaign Chairs email. They got information and they just as we know also on both the republican side, they hurt marco rubio in the primary. We know they were doing things in both primaries to try to sew discord. This isnt just bad for one campaign. I thought rubio had a good quote. He said, this time it was one party that got hurt and one candidate, the next time it will be the other one. But theyre sewing discord in our own country. It makes people hate each other more when you have these fake ads that come out that are getting people mad at each other. They are doing that deliberately. So this is such a bigger issue of our National Security. And 100 i agree. A fourpage memo on what happened i agree. But theres a hyperfocus, especially in your party, on who did what and when within the Trump Campaign, and at some point it has to end, right . Either you go down impeachment as, what, some kind of noble cause in the house, you believe thats what the base wants even though you will never remove him in the senate . What do you think should be the end game here . Dont say the truth because it is not just about the truth. It is about what you do in the pursuit of the court. Im in cuomo court so thats what i will say. No, what i will say the end game for our party should be to put a president in the white house and i would like to be that president who will truly lead this nation again. To me right now our job is to protect our country from this politicization of the Justice Department, and it is not just about barr and russia and what is happening here. Look at what they just did this week. They just filed a brief in the fifth Circuit Court of appeals to overturn the entire Affordable Care act, which will get rid of the protections for people who have preexisting conditions. This is the mom who is pushing the toddler in the stroller isnt this good for you . My kid has downs syndrome, this is what a preexisting syndrome looks like. Here is my argument. Isnt it good no. A lot of people you are running against are medicare for all, all in, lets do it. Not you. If they go after the aca, the following precedent so far would suggest theyre going to lose. Now isnt there an opportunity for you to say, look, they tried to kill it, they failed, lets work on the aca instead of medicare for all . My first priority, like any other senator, like any other leader, is to protect people and to what Paul Wellstone always called politics is about improving peoples lives. Thats what this is about. We cannot let People Health care get taken away and thrown off their insurance, even if it is a political benefit right now. When i look at the Bigger Picture here, they are literally one by one by one using the Justice Department to go after things that are protected people for a long time. Yes, we will make the case politically, but our job right now, chris, is to protect the people of this country. If that means pushing them in the congress, if that means people are going to bring lawsuits to stop them, thats what is going to happen. One quick thing i want you on the record about because, again, you are a lawyer. The idea of don mcgahn, the president says the former white house attorney, he cant, i gave him enough already to mueller, he did already, this time no, executive privilege. Do you believe legally that he can reestablish privilege because the theory is that, well, it was only for the executive, not outside the executive. I didnt waive that privilege. Or do you think it is it, it is done, mcgahn is free to testify . No, i believe he is free to testify. I believe that because it is a public report. Everyone felt it was going to be public in some way. There are pieces that are redacted but it is a public report. He went before them. That was a time they maybe could have tried to exert executive privilege but now it is a public report. So congress and i believe this will hold up in court should have every right to question the witnesses who spoke to mueller and are in that public report. Otherwise this is an equal branches of government situation. We have the right to question those witnesses. But, again, when you step up from all of the details, what this is really about is making sure that we put a president in the white house thats going to obey the law and thats going to tell the truth. Right now we dont have that happening. By the way, the president told the entire press corps, he said, well, i assume mueller looked at my taxes and my financial documents, and when i asked the attorney general of the United States if that was true he said, i dont know. I said you dont know if mueller you have this big report looked at the documents . And he said, why dont you ask bob mueller. And i said, well, i will, and then the next thing you find out theyre trying to shield us from asking him. So all of this is going to result in us pushing to get the information out, but guess what democrats can do two things at once. Well see. We can push for the truth but we can also have an optimistic economic agenda for the country. Thats what ive been talking about. Absolutely. Out there about health care, about infrastructure that you and i talked about last week, about making sure people are trained for the jobs we will have available in the next decades. Thats what this is really about in this nation, and we have a president in place that is just sewing chaos, putting in a tax bill that will saddle the next generation with trillion dollars in debt and not really governing for the long term. Theres no question that youre going to have to do more than one thing at a time. We see the numbers the president s approval on the economy. People generally vote their pocketbooks. They dont seem to indicate theyre going to vote on mueller, but you can do more than one thing at a time and we will be following. Senator, you are always welcome here to make the case to the american people. I will continue to do that. Thank you. Thank you very much. Theres news developing that may rile up the right. It involves the fbi and the Trump Campaign after the a. G. Doubled down on his spying claim. Plus, this is a legit legal question. Can the president block mcgahn from testifying . You heard the senators case. We will put it to cuomos court next. 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Progressive cant protect you from becoming your parents. But we can protect your home and auto when you bundle with us. Tonight we are learning a lot more about how the fbi investigated ties between the Trump Campaign and russia. According to the New York Times in 2016 the fbi sent an undercover investigator to cozy up to Trump Campaign aide George Papadopolous in order to gather information. Now, her efforts supposedly did not yield anything useful, but here is the question for us. Is this spying . Lets ask intel experts Susan Hennessy and former congressman mike rodgers. Hennessy, surveillance or spying . I cant hear hennessy. Go ahead again. I dont know to what extent the terms are interchangeable. I will say as a former attorney at the National Security agency, i dont think i have ever heard a lawyer describe lawfully authorized surveillance as spying. Im not sure i heard an operational person use the term spying to describe, you know, authorized intelligence collection that the United States undertakes, you know, pursuant to its mission. If you want to call this spying, i think thats fine, but then you essentially have to describe all Law Enforcement techniques including title 3 wire taps as piei spee pi spying as well. Mike, the reason we sparse is because spying suggests to people like you that you did it wrong, it was on the sneak, against somebody that didnt deserve lawful surveillance versus the way you are supposed to do it. How do you see this . Well, im a big believer in counterintelligence investigations. If you have someone overseas engaging in activity that certainly appears that would be trying to solicit and or cooperate with a foreign adversary to do anything, i think the fbi had the obligation to do something about it. I will say it is a big, big step to put an agent or in this case an fbi agent to travel overseas. You have to go through a whole big process to do that, by the way, including the cia on the ground there has the opportunity to say yes or no to these kind of things. So you have to go through that whole process to do this. So that was a big step, but i call it a counterintelligence investigation, not necessarily and, again, they went, they found nothing. Thats good. They reported it as nothing. Thats what you do in this case. But, remember, we had an american citizen overseas at the bar bragging about the fact, and in other places to people of interest that, hey, i have this connection with russia. I think it was an individual stepping way beyond his you know, listen, i think this guy thought he was something he was not. Papadopolous. He was naive. Yes, papadopolous. I think he was over there bragging on all of it. I hear you on that. Now the question becomes all it took, very involved as mike rodgers say. What does it reflect, hennessy, that they were out to get trump and it is proof or does it show they were spooked by what the guy had been talking about that came to them from the australian diplomat and it shows how serious they were and how by the book they were, which is it . It clearly speaks to the level of alarm, but i dont think the way to think about a counterintelligence investigation as being out to get someone. Ordinarily we think about counterintelligence investigations as defensive essentially, right . You are concerned about the campaign. You are concerned somebody with ties to Foreign Intelligence Services might have some influence that the campaign isnt aware of. So the entire sort of lens through which we think about this is really getting information in order to take defensive measures on behalf of the United States, in order to preserve the integrity of our National Interests and our democratic processes. You know, again, it is a significant step that they would send someone overseas. Right. It does show, you know, i think how alarmed they were. They didnt know it at the time, but fast forward all the way to just a few weeks ago when we finally saw the mueller report. The volume one of that report had over 100 pages documenting contacts between individuals related to the Trump Campaign and individuals connected to the russian government. All right. So, mike, lets put it this way. Lets put a button on it. If you are looking to make the case that they did the wrong thing, they were spying on trump because they wanted to hurt him and they find out that an american citizen had an fbi agent planted, posing with the name azra turk, in a position she didnt really hold, does this fuel the fire . I think it is definitely going to fuel the fire. Chris, here is the one thing i do think. I do think that they need to evaluate for their own interests, including the fbis best interests, what was the predicate to getting the fisa court order. I think that would be wholly appropriate. They should review it. All of that is reviewable material. On carter page. Including on carter page. On this case, if they want to review what they went for, i think this is an open and shut case. Remember, you have Foreign Intelligence Services coming to the United StatesIntelligence Services saying, you know what . This is odd. This is odd to us. This just doesnt fit quite the picture that you have an american citizen running around saying really crazy things. Again, i dont think it was fuelled by the Trump Campaign honestly when you look at the information. You think, this was a guy that wanted to be something different, he wanted to be bigger than he was. Papadopolous was a poser. He was pretending to have connections in the campaign he didnt. He was pretending to have contacts he didnt. Completely. No question. But if you dont know that and you hear it let me ask you one thing exactly. Let me tell you one thing that could have been a benefit of this. They could have gone and found out this guy was getting sucked into something he didnt understand that also would have been a benefit for the