Ellis told prosecutors, you dont care about mr. Manafort. You care about what information manafort can give you to lead you to mr. Trump or an impeachment or whatever. Ellis retorted, ill be the judge of that. And then he added, we dont want anyone in this country with unfettered power. Its unlikely youre going to persuade me the special prosecutor has the power to do anything he or she wants. The American People feel pretty strongly that no one has unfettered power. A delighted federal trump broke news in dallas this afternoon. A highly respected judge in virginia made statements. It says, judge questions muellers authority to prosecute manafort. Judge t. S. Ellis, who is really something very special, i hear from many standpoints, suggested the charges before the u. S. District court for the Eastern District of virginia was just part of the mueller teams design to pressure mr. Manafort to give up information on President Trump. Ive been saying that for a long time. Its a witchhunt. Well, lets review these developments with House Intel Committee with nunez. We have a lot to talk about with him. Its good to see you. T. S. Ellis i know very well. He is a senior judge in the Eastern District of virginia. I think a long time ago i interviewed with him. Very well respected, appointed by president reagan because in 87. But he was brutal on the counsel who was arguing the case, who is basically a deputy a general whos now in the mueller office. What were your thoughts on his comments about how this is really outside the scope of the mueller authority . I was astonished by the comments the judge made today, although its not surprising. Everything in this case has just gone off the rails. Theres not a day that goes by that something new and crazy doesnt break. Finally just today we were able to get the two pages that we needed that we now know that comey and mccabe did in fact say that general flynn that agents didnt think he was lying. So you have to judge saying that theyre lying, the mueller teams lying. Now you have the case where we know that mr. Comey has been lying out there publicly. This continues to just i think its bewildering, quite frankly. Comey basically decided to override the agents. We focus on the text with lisa page. But i believe, unless im wrong, i believe peter was one of the agents who interviewed a mike flynn. And we heard this for some time now confirmed that flynn didnt lie, meaning poor mike flynn. They twisted the screws on him to plead guilty to a false statement in order to, like a lot of people do, save their family and whatever money they have left. And meanwhile comey is going around saying he lied. Its wild. Why would he override the agents . Thats my question. This isnt new news to us on the intelligence committee. This has been the problem of all these issues that they keep classified from the American People. We knew this very shortly after the interview took place, the interview where the fbi agents went into the white house and interviewed mr. Flynn. Shortly after that, mr. Comey comes in and briefs us. Thats on the record. I know he also briefed other committees. So on the record, we knew what mr. Comey said. We had the transcripts. We had been fighting with the department of justice and the fbi for six weeks to release this. We finally have it tonight late on a friday night. This is total unacceptable. You have the judge from this morning. This is continued ridiculous behavior. Its like they want to keep digging. And the American People are beginning to understand that the department of justice and the fbi have major problems. I have no idea how they can investigate themselves, but they believe they can. They have so many more documents they have to provide to us that we needed like yesterday. And i hate to have to continue to come out publicly and talk about this, that we are still missing documents important to our investigation. Lets remind everyone. A few weeks ago you were on the show. I believe it was a friday night or a thursday night. And you essentially threatened Rod Rosenstein with contempt of congress or impeachment if the underlying documents, the computer document that authorized the probe of spying on carter page wasnt released. He did finally then release that. However, now youre getting slammed in response by cnn and now others that you asked for these documents and then you have a staffer read them. You dont read them. So how serious are you . You just want to help the president. Youre not reading the documents. What about that report that came out today . Yeah, i enjoyed being attacked. The first thing i will tell you is whatever cnn and the New York Times write or talk about, i dont read their information. I will tell you that. Were not going to get into the specifics about how we conduct our investigation. But i will tell you, and ive said this numerous times on your show and other, is that our lead investigator reviews the initial documents with our investigator. As the chairman of the committee, when they need documents, they come to me. We use the power that we have vested in us by the constitution to try to force the department of justice and the fbi. Im trying to help our viewers understand this. When they come after you and say nunez is getting these documents, then you dont read them, it opens you up to criticism. So i dont understand why it compromises the investigation for you to say, i read the documents that are necessary to do this investigation and i consult with my staff on the primary documents. So i dont know why youre reluctant to say whether you read them or dont read them. I dont get that. First of all, what theyre talking about there is its a page and a half. What specifically what were looking for is were investigating the state department. We are looking for any official intelligence that came across. Thats what were looking for. That was not in the document. At this point, we have other lines on inquiry that were going down. We have a subpoena out there. And this is why we can play process games all the time, but at the end of the day here, we continue to have our investigation blocked. We continue to have to deal with the disinformation campaign. And this is what the left always does. Everyone who watches this show understands because theyve done it to me. They tried to. When youre effective and Holding People accountable and if youre conservative or ever supported the president , youre a target. And thats why all the articles floating around about you. Its predictable. I want to read for you a comment about whats happened to the fbi. He said, many view trumps attacks as selfserving. But as much as the roughly 14,000 special agents might like to tune out the news, internal and external reports have found lapses throughout the agency, see a troubling picture. Something really is wrong at the fbi. Now thats not devin nunez saying that. That is lichtblau saying it. He has a tough, tough job to do. He needs to clean the place up. Ive said this also publicly. We dont see a systemic problem out in the field with field agents or people overseas doing very difficult work. Where we do see a problem is in washington, d. C. Now to director rays credit, you have seen many of the comeyera people excused. Thats a good sign. It would be better if he made sure we get this information we need in a timely manner. Congressman, thank you for joining us tonight. Here with reaction, our two esteemed attorney. An author of the new book trumped up. Great to see both of you. Judge ellis, you know him well. I know him well from a long time ago when i was a litigator. Hes an incredibly talented judge. Senior judge on the Eastern District. He just laid into the special counsels office. He said, i dont see what relationship this indictment has against manafort with anything the special counsel is authorized to investigate. Its unlikely youre going to persuade me the special counsel has this unfettered power to do whatever you want. Theyre going after people like manafort and flynn and cohn because they want to flip them. They want to make them sing. As the judge put it in their statement, maybe even make them compose. I think i came up with that phrase. Composing instead of singing. The only difference between this judge and other judges is this judge is completely and totally honest. He calls it the way he sees it. The amazing thing is he called him on it. He said, you cant do that if youre a special counsel. You have to go after directly the evidence thats within your mandate. You cant be finding people, creating or exaggerating or coming up with crimes, not in order to get those people but in order to squeeze them and get them to sing and compose. Its about time a judge honestly looked at the situation and assessed it. You and i have been talking about this now for months. We shouldnt be surprised. But its surprising and refreshing that a federal judge would say that. Why did mueller take this case out of virginia and try to put it in washington, d. C. . Because he knows that he would get more positive judges and jurors in the District Of Columbia than virginia. In virginia hes going to get judges like this who are straight. And so clearly that was judge shopping and jury shopping. When i said that, i was called a racist and condemn. Congressman condemned me. But i think this opinion vindicates what ive been saying for a long time. We do have another aspect of the case thats still in d. C. I think we lost him. If we get him back, let me know. Its an obama appointee. She still hasnt rule on the motion to dismiss. But these banking transactions go back to 2004 and 2007. He said, ill be the judge of that. I dont think so. Ill be the judge of that. So 2004, 2007, an investigation that began in 2014, professor, was somehow just looped into the Mueller Investigation. It is ridiculous. Its so patently obvious from the very beginning. What theyre doing to these people like manafort and flynn and cohn could happen to any of us. If you know somebody who theyre going after, theyre going to find something on you and squeeze you. This is something that has plagued the american Justice System for many decades. If they do it to get the mafia and terrorists is maybe understandable. But to get the elected president of the United States somebody i voted against but to use that tactic of squeezing people and making them testify and sing and compose endangers the Civil Liberties of all americans. Lets look at what President Trump said today after he heard about the continuing conversation about whether he should speak to a grand jury or be interviewed by mueller. He made these comments. I would love to speak. I would love to go. Nothing i want to do more because we did nothing wrong. I have to find that were going to be treated fairly because everybody sees it now and it is a pure witchhunt. If i thought it was fair, i would override my lawyers. Its so important. Everybody should read my article in todays usa today because i give advice to the president. It would be a terrible mistake for him to voluntarily testify unless he has no choice. No prosecutor has ever tried to get anybody to speak to him to help that person. Its to spring a perjury trap. I have never had one of my clients speak to a prosecutor or voluntarily appear before a grand injury. He can fight the subpoena on the grounds that this judge has now apparently ruled saying that many of the questions are beyond the scope of the mandate of the special counsel. Others are within the privilege of a president not to have to answer why he pardoned, why he fired, why he did this and that. Those are not appropriate questions. The one thing you shouldnt do is volunteer to sit down and talk to a prosecutor. No good comes of that. People think theyre so smart. And weve been around this with witnesses. The more prominent the witness, the more problems in a deposition because they dont want to hear your advice, they dont want to be coached. They want to go and i can handle it. Look at bill clinton. He got impeached because his lawyer gave him the advice to go and testify about his sex life at a deposition. He could have settled the case and not testified, but he didnt do that. He took the advice of the lawyer. He didnt take the advice i gave him on the network not to testify. But he made the mistake. And i dont think that President Trump is going to make the mistake of testifying unless he can do it in a controlled setting a few hours with his lawyer present, limited questions about limited subjects, perhaps written answers. If i were the president s lawyer, i would take advantage of these 40something questions and i would respond to them in writing and say to the American Public, see, im not afraid to answer these questions. The only reason they want to now talk to me in person is they want to spring a perjury trap. And theres no justification for using the grand jury for that. We promised it was not a conspiracy. Youre reaction to whats happened today. We can go back to the District Court judge or you can hit any of the issues weve been talking about. Well, im chomping at the bit. In regard to judge ellis, having appeared before him a handful of times in the last five or ten years, im not surprised. And he was equally hard on mueller and manaforts lawyer and his legal team in regard to their head shaking and what have you. But he is a smart judge. I dont disagree in regard to how the process works. They shake down drug dealers and street criminals and what have you. But the judge wants to see the memo because he does not trust mueller and needs to render a decision. Just based on the questioning, you may think hes leaning one way but go to other way. He did not issue an order. Secondly, the hearing today in my opinion was really more about whether mueller okay, does he have jurisdiction or not . But then the other thing to notice is he had local counsel there from the Eastern District. And i think if anything, the judge will say, you can prosecute manafort if you want, but youve got to do it out of the Eastern District. Nobody wants to try a case in front of a d. C. Juror because they tend to be more liberal. So they do reach out to virginia if they can make the case. In regard to the rest of the issues, the subpoenas and what the house investigators are doing, they really ought though just let the Mueller Investigation go forward. This whole corruption piece and picking and choosing these documents are real problems heaven forbid we have congress hold the executive branch accountable. Theyre supposed to keep each other honest. If the Ongoing Investigation is a travesty of justice, yes, we do want it. All right . The press versus sara sanders. Dont want to miss it. The press versus sara sands sandse sandsers. Thats the focus of tonights angle. Yesterday the White House Press briefing turned into a total frenzy. The White House Press corps is up in arms over the discrepancy of what she told the press previously and what giuliani revealed this week. Why cant you just answer yes or no whether you were in the dark . I think its a fairly simple question. I think its a fairly simple answer. I gave you the best answer i had and ill continue to do that every single day. Have we ever gotten any truth out of them . Have they become to the point that theyve become null and void . But shes lying to the American Public and i think she needs to own that. Being ignorant and lying about it is just not an excuse. Is no comment a better option . If youre just going to lie, why bother . This is how democracy die slowly right in front of us. Every single day, deception and lies become normal. How dramatic, mike. This is how democracy dies. Oh, please. Then under the headline why sara sanders should quit. She lost it with that answer. Admitting that you misled the press because the president misled you is tantamount to taking your credibility, pouring gasoline on it, and then setting it on fire. Well, these people are going to lecture us about credibility . The press . Consider the sources. Or actually, yeah. Are these reliable sources . For the most part, the White House Press pool has become a just listen to this. She can be mad at what i say right now. Tough. Im a reporter whos going to continue to ask questions and there was nothing wrong with that question. I wish i could install a bs meter. Unfortunately, i think it would be going off all the time. I actually really like sara. I think shes very resourceful. She burns facts and uses that ash to create a smoky eye. The effort to demean and drive out sanders and send her packing from her job is part of the politics of personal destruction in this town, washington, d. C. Anyone who works for the president is a target because the resistance wants to thin the ranks of those in the administration and advance a narrative of internal division and chaos. And at the same time, Sarah Sanders is in a very difficult position and has to look out for her own credibility as well. She was given scant information and repeated what she was told in good faith. All questions about this information should have been referred to the president s legal team, period. Trump needs a legal spokesperson, which he doesnt have at this point. Issues pertaining to an Ongoing Investigation should not be address eed by the White House Press opinion. Sanders cant be brought on on these legal discussions without becoming a witness herself. She doesnt want that. So, it is right for the legal team to have kept Sarah Sanders in the dark on these sensitive topics for her own protection. And this is why ive always warned against arguing your case in the press. Its tempting. I know you want to respond to everything. But it is too fraught with complications and very easy to make a misstep. But do not presume that these journalists are trying to keep it real. They have proudly, many of them, become hostile adversaries in the vanguard of the resistance. Its gotten so bad that reporters are now engaging in fullout int