Good afternoon. Happy friday. For the last time. Good luck. Wind quick announcement. Today there is a transition exercise with cabinet members and agency heads and officials it provides an opportunity to familiarize members identified by the president elect to fill the senior positions with on the coordination structures that this administration has used to respond to major domestic incidents. Advisors of the Current Administration will share experiences and lessons as they discuss responses. This exercise was announced in november is helping the best transition possible we can give Additional Details at the conclusion of the meeting and exercise like this was held early 2009 posted by senior officials of the bush demonstration and their counterparts and this is the next that the of the process to ensure the transition for the Incoming Administration. Is this all day class. I know it is multi hours. It is ongoing as we speak and will encompass a significant portion of everyones afternoon schedule. You can provide what they are doing or how they do that . And do they review policies quick. It is primarily a large Group Exercise there is an opportunity to discuss a variety of scenarios related to domestic and Emergency Response to a Natural Disaster or a brother even to but also it will cover or include Foreign Policy and nationalsecurity exercises as well. Both the review this administration has as well legs exercises to walk through the options available in the context of a hypothetical event. What Senior Administration officials quick spirit we will have Additional Information after the meetings. With the president signed the waiver for general mattis complex unlikely indicated in the packet there is nothing that would he prevent that from passing that it it made it to his desk he would sign it. Just to follow up from yesterday, i want to be clear is today a rule that could be overturned by the next demonstration i understand it is policy but easily could they decide they want to put the policy back in place . Net is codified between cuba and u. S. Government. The Incoming Administrations nominees have noted there is a tradition to have subsequent president s observing and adhering but was put in place by the previous president of course, the specific decision is made to change policy. Obviously the president elect has that responsibility on january january 20th, one week from today to exercise all of the executive authority at his discretion. We believe there is a strong case to be made about normalizing relations between the two countries to ensure that we are treating Cuban Migrants the same as from other countries and that has a variety of benefits including an incentive for cubans to attempt the dangerous journey of what separates our two countries. I think the response to this announcement is indicative of changing on these issues and the supportive comments of leader of the community and his indication of support is the indication of a growing majority of americans who agree about the direction the president has moved between the United States and cuba. There have been a number of stories done on the Mexican Border with those who have made the treacherous trip for those who just missed to get over. Does the white house has a message for those . I think the first thing for people to understand is the migrants from cuba will be treated the same as from other countries with legitimate claims for Refugee Status or asylum will be subject to due process and that means their claims will be evaluated and if it is legitimate for asylum than that would be adjudicated through the regular process every of their my current goes through as well. As we talked about immigration policy the president believes strongly that the United States with up to our values but it also means showing respect who flee their home country. This is not that we have announced to be sure we are harmonizing and normalizing. With the House Oversight committee has a subpoena with those comments so does the white house think it is appropriate for congress to make those comments from the office of government ethics . In the comment was ethically do you have thoughts about this experiment with the Congressional Republicans they could get that done in two short weeks. But even before they were sworn into office the first act was to improve those ethical regulations that apply to them only from the public and the tweet from the president elect but one week later we learned that Senate Republicans were prepared to rollback the standards they insisted on over eight years when it came to make sure that nominees for those executive positions were fully vented and complied with ethical requirements before the hearing before the United States senate and considered for the nomination. And republicans have walked that back especially moving through the process. And then be subjected to the scrutiny that gave himself up has said was necessary. Sown now to complete that patrick you have that chairman of the Oversight Committee pdf, the individual whom is charged with providing oversight of the executive branch comet is now seeking to intimidate a Senior ExecutiveBranch Officials and forcing ethics rules and starting to shut down the office of the guy who does the job that they are refusing to do. It is outrageous and the latest installment of the embarrassing series that is characterized as chairman of that committee. Mac so this is not a departure from the series of embarrassed episodes as chairman of the committee. And it certainly as i said before runs contradictory to the preferences of the millions of americans who showed up at the polls on election day of voter for the guy who has vowed to drain the swamp certainly its going to make for an interesting relationship between the members of that committee i suspect and i think it will be worth watching particularly will be counting on all of you to watch the relationship between that committee and the Incoming Administration. Thinking weve spoke with the House Democrats today after reading the james come in they have stressed all kinds of emotions, anger, concern, lost confidence, outrage. I think washington. I think washington psychiatrists are going to be doing a brisk business in the years ahead. They dont feel like he is fit to do the job. Caring the strong words coming froms democrats democrats and obviously we need some of that. But at this point americans have heard anger and doubt coming from both sides related to the fbi in the Intelligence Community over the possible weeks. What are your thoughts on hearing this and what are the problems the American Public now face. I think it is really important and to make sure that we dont draw too many parallels between the two different situations. With regard to the handling of the investigation of secretary clinton by the department of justice and the fbi, for better or worse you spend a lot of time in this room talking about that matter not just in october but frankly for a lot of the last two years. But it wouldve came came to a head in october you often heard me describe the merits of abiding by the longstanding norms and traditions about the way the fbi conducts investigations and traditionally doesnt talk with those investigation in public. As ive said in october and i will repeat again, the president is not at all believe that director called me was motivated by a desire to influence the outcome of an election. But, there are longstanding norms and traditions that have served Senior Department of justice officials well over the years. It was announced yesterday by the Inspector General that theres no an investigation into this matter and that will limit the degree to which i can discuss it. That investigation was initiated at the sole discretion of the Inspector General. And presumably when he has some time to release will be in a position to do that publicly. With regard regard to the situation with the Intelligence Community i think its different because i think what youve heard from the Statement Released a few days ago the Intelligence Community feels a strong responsibility to communicate to senior officials as much as possible about what they know. Inasmuch as possible about the information that is available to them. What he also said in the statement with the expressed confidence that the Intelligence Committee was that the first of those weeks. Verified for you before that the white house is not the first of those leaks. And i think all of that is an indication that both the Intelligence Committee in regard to this matter and the white house is following longstanding precedent and tradition. With norms and guidelines that have served generations of white house officials and intelligence officials well. I think thats why i would caution against drawing too many parallels between the situation. There are obvious similarities but there are some that i just described where the handling of these matters was different. Give an explanation talk about have had the need to share information. Hes choosing between two bad options but he felt getting information out there was right in time. By getting it out there and briefing it to the president elect to making sure the president elect was aware that had come to the attention of the Intelligence Community. He stated in his statement that he could not at this point confirm the accuracy of the report. I will leave it to him. We talked about if general flynn was in contact with them faster several times. I read many reports and i think to answer your question as bluntly as i can, it depends on what he said. I know some members of the Transition Team have tried to talk about those but i have zero insight about what communicated back and forth. I would refer you to general phlegm himself and why those conversations were initiated. You listed along string of problems that youve had over the years but i wonder if every day average americans who arent in this industry are yours really know or care may be a lot of that falls on deaf ears. We just heard president obama and his latest interview say that he feels on some issues that he and his team lost the pr battle. Why do you think that is . Why do you think these things that you have been stressing as being so important in some cases so aboard to democracy itself. They dont seem to matter. Well, as a matter they do make a difference. They do have a bearing on the strength and success of our democracy. But youre asking irrelevant question in light of the election outcome. Given the sordid record the republicans have on some of these ethical matters and have continued since the election raises questions about why it didnt influence the vote of more people. I dont know that i can give you a real direct answer on that. I think in some ways the president address this in his speech on tuesday night pretty directly. He said that its a problem in our democracy when we excuse the ethical shortcomings of people in our own party that are ready to question the motives of people in the other party. He said more openly than that but you would know what im referring to. I think up the concern im raising is about one of the basic functions of the congress which is to provide oversight. There have been a bunch of ethical questions raised about some members of congress about some of the conflicts of interest that loom in the background of some of the nominations that the administration has put forward, theres some people who fit both of those categories. The responsibility like with all of you and with the United States congress to resolve those questions. The real problem we have right now is that there seems to be zero appetite among republicans who were voted into office by people literally chanting drain the swamp for enforcing not ethical relations, theyre not even doing the basics are there not even enforcing the minimum standards. Theyre trying to rollback those standards. Theyre voting to reduce the standards that apply to them. Theyre not applying the standards to cabinet nominees that they have been applying for the last eight years. And in this case the most egregious case you have the person in the house of representatives whose most responsible for oversight suggesting hes going to shut down the office of the official watchdog of the executive branch. Again, theyre moving in the wrong direction. Those are all facts. I think it would be hard to contest any of this. If youll make a difference at the polling place the next time people have an opportunity to vote for their elected representatives in congress i dont know, well see but it seems like republicans are taking a big risk considering the drain the swamp chance at their preelection rallies to rollback the ethical standards within the first couple of weeks in washington. I think that poses a risk to them the last time democrats when the majority back from republicans in the house of representatives was prompted in no small part by a series of ethical transgressions on the part of Congressional Republicans. So i think its far too early to be making specific prognostications about the 2018 elections. We will see. Thank you. A couple of questions primarily on justice issues which he announced today cabinet people announced new federal do you believe theres enough in this administration . I do not have as we discussed the white house was not briefed on these criminal investigations. Those including determining which investigators will take a look at a particular case are decisions made by the department of Justice Without influencer input from the white house. I dont know at what stage they are in the investigation so its hard to me invests how time they need to complete their investigation. And lastly, several president obamas friends and theres one in particular what did president obama feel about pardoning friends that have not asked for a pardon, but what did he feel about the issue about the possibility pardon. Now when i say friends, he was a friend to this administration, im nuts and he was involved but friends of the administration. He was a Political Supported on the president appreciated his Political Support but describing him as a friend might be going too far. Im not sure its fruitful for us to assess the president s relationship on an individual basis with these people. But its the root of your question which is simply that there is a process in place at the department of justice to evaluate petitions for clemency filed by individuals who are currently incarcerated for people whatever record theyre looking to clear. The president establish this process and has asked the department of justice to take the lead in considering the applications to help process applications as efficiently as possible to make individual determinations on the merits. Thus with the president expects the president of justice to do and its a standard we have lived up to. Im wondering whether the actual incidents that are being walked through or whether theyre modeled on it is there a crisis model, what exactly are they responding to. I can tell you little of both, there is a reference to it in here. It will be a combination of both walking through hypothetical scenarios so that the Incoming Administration can get a sense of what procedures, mechanisms are in place, what resources are available for standing to these hypothetical incidents so that when a real a real one comes up they can have help and thats how the process typically works. But they also will review in detail reallife incidents that this administration did respond to to help them help the incoming official understand what lessons learned, what breast practices were able to implement to benefit the American People. The point is that could be a little bit of both. When they look all across the horizon i dont know how detailed our readout will be afterwards, but. And then we better in the white house many times come on any those locations is razor where did he take a position with Administration Officials on the merits of sanctions involving iran . I dont know the answer but i can see if we can get to an answer. As the leader of one of the Largest Companies in the United States should not be surprising to people that he did come to the white house on a number of occasions to discuss with senior officials of important issues that have an impact on economy and National Security. Let me see if i can get you an answer to that question. Did the president reacting to the support of chicago that theres a practice of discrimination and unjustified use of deadly force . I have its token to the president about those reports come i know this was a inquiry that was initiated at the discretion of the attorney general. These investigations are conducted independently and the conclusions were put forward based on their independent analysis of what exactly has been happening in chicago with regard to local police force there. The president does believe that the department of justice is a matter of principle can play use