Administrations dont get a head start. Welcome back to a. M. Joy. Now that donald trump landed back state side after his nine country world tour, hes experiencing a bit of political turbulence. This week the russia investigation got its second wind or third or fourth. Honestly, its easy to lose count at this point. When news broke that Jared Kushner had asked Russian AmbassadorSergey Kislyak about creating a secret channel of communication between the Trump Transition Team and russia, with kushner officially a person of interest in the investigation and the white house setting up a warroom to combat the endless russiagate news, what happens next . Joining me tnow to discuss this mindboggling week in washington, congresswoman Maxine Waters. Congresswoman, good morning, first of all. Good morning. I should say hello. This morning on meet the press john kelly who is the director of heland security was asked to respond to what people are calling a backchannel. I dont know if its a real backchannel. But kushner did this with the russians. Letlisten to what he had to say. All right. Our own Intelligence Community had collectively said this is a country that infiltrated or election. Did this show good judgment . Wroyou know, it was before t government was in place during the transition period, i think from what i understand, and i think any time you can open lines of communication with anyone whether theyre good friends or not so good friends is a smart thing to do. Congresswoman, in the time youve been in the federal government and seen the transition of power from one party to the other in the white house, have you ever heard of a back channel such as the one were hearing that Jared Kushner set up . Absolutely not, and as it was just said, you know, president obama was still the president of the United States. Jared kushner was not even a government employee. He was a campaign person. Adviser to trump. And so for him to talk an setting up this back channel and using the russian facilities to do it, for me, i never heard of that, most people never heard of that and it seems unseemly that he would be involved in that kind of relationship with the russians given Everything Else that we know about these relationships between trump and his allies and russia. So much attention, so much involvement, so many connections with the kremlin and with putin and all of this certainly demands investigation and better understanding of what theyre doing, why theyre doing this, what is going on. You know, i was on meet the press earlier and the question was brought up of whether or not this was a back channel which is sort of the normal course of doing business when an administration is changing over. By december, by the time Jared Kushner was having these meetings with kislyak and also with a russian bank, the head of a russian bank, the Trump Administration had already decided that they were going to hire jim mattis to be their secretary of defense, yet he was not involved in any of these discussions. It was just kushner and mike flynn. I want to let you listen to one other thing mr. Clapper said on meet the press about how the meetings struck him because at the time he was still working in office. He was still in office. Go ahead. You were still the director of National Intelligence in december. Are these things you would have known . Well, yes, they would have, and just to reinforce john brennans, former dirtor of Central Intelligence agency, his comments, i have to say that without specific specifically affirming or confirming these conversations since even though theyre in the public realm, theyre still classified but just from a theoretical stand poichb point, i well tell you my dashboard warning light was clearly on and i think that was the case with all of us in the Intelligence Community. Of course, former cia director brennan among his comments were sometimes those going along a treasonous path that may not know it. It was said earlier on meet the press that perhaps the reason the Incoming Administration did not want to do things in the open, that they wanted to do things secretly so they couldnt be viewed by the Intelligence Community, is they didnt trust the Obama Administration not to jur undermine the Trump Administration. In your experience was either john brennan, the former cia director, or mr. Clapper, hyperpartisan democrats out to undermine the Trump Administration . Well, no, as a matter of fact, you know, ouf been thinking while all this has been going on, we have to trust our intelligence agencies to protect us and to be able to identify those who are placing us at risk and harm. And so we know that the russians were hacking into the dnc and two other elected officials, United States elected officials. We knew about meetings. They knew about them. I am just a little bit unnerved that between the Obama Administration and our Intelligence Community that none of this came forward in a way that we should have been dealing with it even before the election took place. The election date. We knew enough. They knew enough. What happened to all of this information . Yeah. And yet, you know, you know there have been many analysts whove said that the key to try to uncover and unravel at least one key to trying to understand whats going on here, why there are so many contacts, so many connections, would be to see Donald Trumps tax returns and yet Lindsey Graham, senator from south carolina, was on state of the union earl yier today. This is what he said about whether or not the senate or house intelligence committees ought to is a fesubpoena those returns. Take a listen. Is it time to subpoena the senat president s tax returns, senator . Were not there yet. I want to know where they got ma th their money in 2008 and 2009 when people were struggling with real estate why is it too soon to look at those and use your power in congress to subpoena them . Number one, i dont have any business dealing before we, the Trump Organization and russia, that seems to be inappropriate. Do i want to look and see if they are . Yes. Now we got the special counsel. I dont want to get in his lane. Congresswoman, what do you make of that response from Lindsey Graham . Well i think, again, theyve dragged this out so long and i dont quite understand why there a peer appears to be fear or a rhett zaeticence to learn more the president , his allies and family given all that we have seen. I mean, we have been given enough information about their operations, about their connections, about their meetings, to be able to delve further into these connections and what they all mean. We, on my committee, were going to Deutsche Bank because Deutsche Bank has been lending money to this president when no other bank would touch him because of his bankruptcies, because of his debt. We know theyve done a review. Theyve done a review on what is known as mirror trading where they turn rubles into dollars in a special way. And that the Deutsche Bank and their corrupt traders are involving with this. Hes very close to all of this. Theyve also done a review on him and his family. They have a lot of information about his business connections, about his taxes, and we asked the chair of our committeea republican, to investigate. He wouldnt do it. Weve done straight to Deutsche Bank. Were asking them to release certain information and were asking mnuchin, our new treasurer, to look into all of this. We know theres a lot of smoke and where theres a lot of smoke, there certainly is fire. We should be more aggressive in finding out about all of this. And lastly, congresswoman, on the sunbject of being more aggressive, you openly talked about the fact this president has put himself in a position where impeachment is on the table, but your party, the democratic party, is very reluctant. The New York Times has an article out last week about hesitant democratic leadership in particular and Many Democrats are to call for Donald Trumps impeachment. In closing, why do you suppose that is . I dont know what the rhett answ reticence is, but i know this, the American Public is getting wary of all of these actions without enough being done by the elected officials who theyve elected to represent them. I believe this man has done enough for us to determine that we can connect the dots. That we can get the facts that will lead to impeachment. I believe there was collusion. I think we have enough information about the meetings, about the lying, about those meetings to help us to understand that something was going on. There was inction there. And certainly, i believe it was collusion, but if they just do their work and do their job, they will find out it was collusion and i believe this president should be impeached. I dont care what others say about its too soon, we dont know, we think. I think that theyre letting the American Public down by not delving deeper into what is going on with Jared Kushner and this back channeling, about the lies and his failure to disclose that he had had these meetings. The same thing with sessions. Failure to disclose about the meetings. What more do we need . Yeah. Well, pulling no punches as usual. Congresswoman Maxine Waters, thank you so much for being here. Thank you, joy, so much. Thank you. If you dont follow congresswoman Maxine Waters on twitter, you should. Check her out maxinewaters. And next, setting the record straight on the white house and the history of usie ining diplo back channels. How if guests book direct ater, choicehotels. Com and stay twice theyll get a 50 gift card . Summertime. Badda book. Badda boom. Got you a shirt . I kept the receipt. Book now at choicehotels. Com m thinking, my friends know me so well. They can tell what im thinking, just by looking in my eyes. But what they didnt know was that i had dry, itchy eyes. I used artificial tears from the moment i woke up. To the moment i went to bed. So i finally decided to show my eyes some love,. Some eyelove. Eyelove means having a chat with your eye doctor about your dry eyes because if youre using artificial tears often and still have symptoms, it could be chronic dry eye. Its all about eyelove, my friends. But weve got the get tdigital tools to help. Now with xfinitys my account, you can figure things out easily, so you wont even have to call us. Change your wifi password to something you can actually remember, instantly. Add that premium channel, and watch the show everyones talking about, tonight. And the bill you need to pay . Do it in seconds. Because we should fit into your life, not the other way around. Go to xfinity. Com myaccount this morning, i got the chance to be on nbcs meet the press and had this very interesting interaction with the wall street journal columnist kim strassel. I think we are having a discussion that is absolutely divorced from reality this week. It is astronishing. Let me set the scene for you. Its 2008. Were having an election and candidate obama, hes not even president elect, sends William Miller over to iran to establish a back channel and let the raup iranians know should he win the election, they would have friendlier terms. Okay. This is a private citizen going to foreign soil, obviously in order to evade u. S. Intelligence monitoring and establishing a back channel with a sworn enemy of the United States who was actively disrupting our efforts with the military in the middle east. Judgment, a bad thing that happened . Back channels are completely normal. They happen all the time. Reagan did them, obama did them. Everyone did. Im not quite sure why supposedly having at least the president s now elected setting up a back channel with the russians is somehow out of bounds. Well, heres one key difference. In october, months borthis latest neetings, it was one of 18 separate contacts we now know of between the Trump Campaign and russia, primary adversary in the world and superpower. In october, the collective judgment of the 17 intelligence agencies had been that russia had been taking active measures to interfere in our elections. Quite a difference. We dont think iran was doing that. We knew that was happening in october. So in december, the now president elect decides hes going to name james mattis to be his secretary of defense. He doesnt open a back channel. He sends his Real Estate Developer soninlaw, supposedly, decides to open this back channel. It isnt a back channel, by the way. This isnt how it works. You dont go to the adversary country and say lets set something up inside your embassy, so we evade our intelligence sources. We set it up inside your facility which takes them aback. Thats bizarre. The idea were going to do this in your facility. Without james mattis. Then if its a channel about opening up negotiations in terms of something realistic, i mean, in terms of something about Foreign Policy, why are they also back channeling with a bank, a kremlin connected russian bank . Why is the reuters report saying part of the decision was the possibility of opening up opportunities for financing for trumprelated we dont know the answers to those questions because what were getting here that is not a back channel by definition. You have to follow the money, have to follow the meetings, the lies, the attempts. We dont have any of that information. To derail this investigation. And the reality here is that Jared Kushner and the Trump Administration apparently trusted the russians more than the Intelligence Community. Look, how can this not be suspicious . Why would you trust im sorry, by the wary, like, we cant forget the Intelligence Services and also the Defense Department were being run by the Obama Administration. They had plenty of reason not to necessarily want the Obama Administration to know what they were doing. What did they want to hide . This is suspicious because they have at minimum. What did they want to talk about . Why would you use russian why would you not maybe want to have all of these people in these departments with this information, which they would go on to leak on a daily basis. The election was over. Try to derail your presidency. Sorry, in december, the election was over. In this country, we have a continuity of government. We hand over peacefully power from one party to another. All the time. Are you telling me the now elected Trump Administration didnt trust john brennan, that somehow the straightarrow guys in our Intelligence Services were going to now work to actively undermine . Are they now seeing them as some sort of disaccidesident to undermine thats never happened in the history of the United States. One of the interesting pieces of news that came out this week was the fisa court revelation, they said the Obama Administration had been actively engaged in abusing 4th amendment protections by unmasking peoples identities on a routine basis which they did not acknowledge to the court and which they said brought up major, major concerns. Maybe you wouldnt trust that team. Who said that . Do you know how difficult it is is to get a fisa warrant against an american person . Youre not talks about what i just mentioned. All right. Im going to pause this conversation because i do have to go to break because i do have to pay for bills. Okay. We wanted to reset this conversation. I just viewers, after that exchange, after that segment, i wanted to understand what kim was talking about because i wasnt familiar with the story that she told about supposedly the obama then Campaign Opening up this supposed back channel to iran and the only source i could find was a Breitbart News article, a Breitbart News article that claims that during his first president ial campaign in 2008, barack obama used a secret back channel to dtehran to assure th mu mullahs he was a friend of the islamic republican and they would be happy with his policies, dubious prospect to be sure, and the secret channel was William Miller who served in iran during the rule for the chief of staff on the Senate Select committee on intelligence. Supposedly according to breitbart ambassador miller confirmed the story to a guy named michael ledin, an extremist, antiislamic kind of figure on the far right. Its a breitbart story. Even if it were true or relevant, you see the quote sending a former ambassador who worked in iran, equivalent of sending your el estate investor soninlaw to chat with the are russians in their secure facility, again, not a back channel. One other