Investigation into Hillary Clinton. The issue is the 7yearold uranium deal. The house could have investigated it, while obama was in office but it has gotten new attention from fox news anchor sean hannity in continuous breathless coverage focusing on people, two of them, who arent currently president. Hillary clinton and barack obama, rather than focusing on trump. But now trumps own role is at issue. He personally ordered the release of a gag order. The idea is that trump wanted this informant to tell house investigators more about the issue. And lets look at the facts. In theory that could inform a nonpartisan oversight of the executive branch if done properly. But note, this arrangement already underfire because it was rolled out with partisan fanfare on the very same tv show that has been feeding this very old story from the start. Tonight, the huge breaking news. The department of justice is now going to allow that fbi informant, one of the key players in the Russia Nuclear bribery plot, surrounding the uranium one scandal, that will be lifted and he can testify before congress. As this story has unfolded this evening, critics asking why President Trump is personally involved in the first place. Theres no formal restriction but just as there was no restriction about trump interviewing candidates to be a prosecution over trump tower in new york. Legal experts say these moves risk dojs independence. Donald trump has never shown much of an understanding in the u. S. Constitution, the president doesnt dleekt gets charged or jailed. In fact, he managed to violate that boundary both for and against Hillary Clinton. His administration said to lock her up and then he claimed he wouldnt prosecute her. Okay. Heres one that just came out. Lock her out is right. Hillary clinton is the most corrupt person ever to run for the presidency. The temperament of donald trump is not in charge of the law in our country. Because you would be in jail. I dont want to hurt them. Theyre good people. I dont want to hurt them. That last response was after the election. Donald trump telling 60 minutes he wouldnt send her to jail. Lets be clear, the issue is not whether clinton should be investigated or charged. The issue is it is never the president s call to make. Not president obama, not President Trump. Former obama attorney general eric holder said the wall between the doj and the president is essential. He stressed that in a recent interview with rachel maddow. The Justice Department is different from other cabinet agencies. Senator leahy said, youre not the secretary of justice. You are the attorney general of the United States. And there has to be a wall between the Justice Department and the white house even though youre a part of the administration. History has shown us that when that wall is too low, thats when Justice Departments get in trouble. During the nixon years, during bush years when you have white house contacts. Paul, does this concern that you that wall may be in danger . It concerns me a great deal. When i was a public kropgs prosecutor at the department of justice, in the 1990s, this was the deal. That we had an important decision to make. We go first to the attorney general for the Criminal Division who happened to be at that time robert mueller. We called him bob the boss. If it were a really important decision, next up was the Deputy Attorney general and finally, if writ a decision about whether to bring charges against a very high profile person, a quick meeting with the attorney general to tell her what we were thinking. The idea that anyone would go to the president of the United States never occurred to us. It was so far out of the bounds of what is proper. It is legal in a sense because the president is the boss of the attorney general. The attorney general is not his lawyer. And thats something that President Trump just seems not to understand. Looking at the facts here, and echoing the analysis, theres not a claim on the table today about ill legality. The concern that the president is personally involved in what looks to be a house investigation into Hillary Clinton and something that is years and years old. Procedurally how does this work and politically does this look to you to be suspicious . This definitely stinks. Theres no other way to say it. I would like to make two points. It is appropriate for the president to possibly talk to the attorney general about policies. Like my policy about antitrust. It is not appropriate to talk about whether a particular antitrust case should be brought. So thats the first thing that the president should have no role in. And the Deputy Attorney general actually pled guilty and was convicted for his involvement in stopping the itt case. And thats a proof of when it goes bad. So it should not happen. And of course, attorney general mitchell went to jail for his involvement in many episodes in the watergate era. So the bar has been low before. But since then, it has been raised and it needs to stay that way. It may not be against any specific law but it is inappropriate. And paul is completely correct. The attorney general is not the president s lawyer. He represents the United States, the people against whoever the defendant is. And that is how it should stay. And paul, the underlying issue is really, really thin at this point. We welcome further evidence, if it comes out. As i mentioned, this is a pretty old deal. So a lot of this has been addressed, scrutinized, litigated. Here was the breitbart editor who did the writing about this. When pressed, you can say to his credit, he acknowledged, there was no direct evidence of anything wrong. Take a listen. I think it deserves further scrutiny. I would question that. Based on what . Do you have any evidence that she actually intervened in this issue . No. We dont have direct evidence. Paul . Heres where i think this is important. What robert mueller, the special counsel is thinking about among other things is whether President Trump obstructed justice. And he has a lot of discretion. The question that he is asking himself, what prosecutors always ask themselves, is this a bad dude . Is this somebody who would try impede justice . You look at the evidence. Theres rarely a smoking gun. When you look at how the president is trying to intervene in this controversy, at the end of the day, what this case is about, it is not the big deal. The big deal is what it tells American People and special counsel mueller about President Trump. I want to play a little more from attorney general holder. This was in the interview on msnbc. So i want to be clear before this latest new report today. It was so on point. He said that there were times towed clash with his president. And that is what sessions has to do in his concern that you have to understand that. He argued that President Trump does not. There are going to be things that an attorney general will do that a president wont agree with. And the president has to suck it up and stay ag has the responsibility to enforce the laws. He has National Security responsibilities and he is an independent actor in the way that other cabinet officials are not. In your view, what is the right thing for attorney general sessions to do here on a week when people are basically processing the fact the trump administrations priority with todays news is more clinton investigations. I want to answer that, the most important lesson i learned during watergate, the power to speak truth to power, the courage to do that. Sally yates did it. She got fired but she did the right thing. And i hope that attorney general sessions will protect the department of justice will protect itself saying no, i will make it not based on a political enemies list which is something that Richard Nixon tried to do. To get the irs to enforce the laws against his enemies. And he had a list. And that is just not appropriate. It is not appropriate to protect your friends or to prosecute your enemies. So i think that he the attorney general needs protect the department of justice and its independence. It is very important justice in america. We have seen some extraordinary moments in trumps wikileaks issues here, all part of russia probe. You can see something brand new here. Filed by the remnants of the Trump Campaign. They are supporting wikileaks, arguing that it was legal because the swebt a publisher and that is something that has support in u. S. Law west should note it is not the view of trumps own cia director. They view wikileaks as a Hostile Intelligence Service. Its time on call out wikileaks for what it is. This tension newly important because were learning ball trumps Digital Campaign secretly trying to reach out the what pompeo called a Hostile Intelligence Service at the height of the 2016 election. So what does it mean legally . Ill give you a special breakdown. There are some overlapping legal and criminal liability questions and we believe based on our reporting, it will be a concern to investigators and to bob mueller. We make it easy to seize the day, so you can get more out of life and Medicare Part d. Just walk right in for savings that will be the highlight of your day. Walgreens has 0 copays on select plans and 100 points on prescriptions. So, swing by and save today. 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This week marked a breakthru in the russia investigation. The daily beast reporting the digital shop approached Julian Assange about accessing documents stolen. The trump did not approach clinton and ask her to give them the property. No. They asked a third party for what would be stolen from clinton. Trumps digital shop made this request as we know during a campaign when Russian Hackers stole emails from the Clinton Campaign and Assanges Wikileaks distributed that. Every sentence i just reported is undisputed. Assange does not dispute the trump approach. The campaign does not dispute the approach. The criminal theft of jon podestas emails is not disputed. Weve all seen them. It is remarkable theres not even an attempt by the Trump Campaign to challenge these accounts. In legal terms, the defense is not denial. Instead he the Trump Campaign is offering a mitigation defense arguing, it didnt matter because it didnt lead to additional email theft and the digital shot wasnt a key to their victory. It is true that while the Clinton Campaign emails were stolen, theres no indication the other emails deleted from a private server were ever located or stolen. Thats notable because the quest for those took on mythic proportions. Peter smith and these people who he assembled, they apparently read the news that democratic servers have been hacked by the russians and they and traprelated. They mounted an effort to try to get Hillary Clintons private server emails off the russians. And so did alexander nicks, ceo of the Trump Campaigns digital firm as it explains. They went even further soliciting help from the kremlin in public. Russia, if youre listening, i hope youre able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. It is illegal to solicit foreign help in a campaign. So trump quickly back tracked telling fox news, it was a sarcastic remark, not an actual request to locate the emails. That may be galling sar california. Can you imagine jeb bush or al gore joking about iran boosting their campaign . But without other evidence, sarcasm can provide a Legal Defense. Even a despicable joke. Say joking someone ought to die is not typically treated as legal threat or confession without other evidence. Let me repeat last part. Without other evidence. Which is why are this new report is so important tportentious. They were eager to solicit foreign help in the election. That list of aides included Jared Kushner who attended the trump tower meeting, Paul Manafort who attended and took notes, and donald trump jr. Who said, i love it when offered dirt on clinton that came from a master, hand picked by he putin. That matters because among the few people had face putins prosecutors and made it out of russia, one of those people recently said, he would only offer that help to trump on putins authority. Were he to decide to take such a step, he would get permission from Vladimir Putin beforehand. So the offer of russia backed dirt seemed credible and even as the Campaign Leadership denied any involvement, ties ordeals with russia. Ill all over the world but not in russia. Are there any ties between you and the campaign and putin and his regime . No. Its absurd. I have nothing to do with russia. It is not about emails accusing people of working with the russian government. I promise you. I dont have any deals with russia. The evidence shows a list have trump aides open to foreign help during the campaign. Theres that list. Lets take a step back. The collusion investigation is all about digital conduct. Hacking, targeting, facebook. Now note the new name on this list isnt a random trump staffer. It is the man running the digital firm the campaign hired for over 5 million. The list of trump aides open to foreign help exists. And now you have evidence he that supports adding a new person to that list. You can bet bob mueller is taking notice. And thats not all. The other part of trumps mitigation defense he is that whatever his rookie staff did, he didnt know about it. Trump has some experienced defense lawyers and they are ready to flip. Senator howard bakers famous question on its head. What did the president know and when did he know it . If donald trump didnt know, or didnt know until later, they can argue he didnt know about any solicitation of this foreign help pirgts looks like some of which occurred. And his own solicitation would remain in the sarcasm vault. That may sound dodgy but it could be a decent Legal Defense. Conspiracy doesnt require that your plot was successful but it does require you knew about it and you plotted it. And thats why the news tonight that another trump adviser might land on this list is so significant. The new report making waves. That he the trump digital adviser,ed will rebecca mercer, that any email could be turned into a searchable document. So this looks bad for trump because it suggests nix wasnt freelancing. That he thought could it bring real results and he offered in it writing. If mercer knew about this plan, it is another step closer to trump. It was mercy here boarded the helicopter and flew to meet trump face to face in august, urging him to fire manafort and let someone more aggressive to run his campaign. Steve bannon at the time was a website proprietor who had never run a campaign. So the list of trump aides enlisting foreign help seems to be growing. Legally it will be strained if evidence points to him. Then theres the politics. Trumps allies he can pursue distraction efforts. Note, all of these revelations are breaking while washington is in overdwrif new gop investigations into obama and clinton email. While trumps new york allies are citing those investigations to argue bob mueller should be side lined. I admit, the noise does make it easy to lose track. But this week could be an inflection point. Reports show new evidence of trump aides seeking foreign help with the campaign and even if you forget everything we just reported, you can remember. This foreign help for a u. S. Campaign is a crime. Full stop. Before you even approach the collusion problem of whether foreign help was deploying the fruits of other crimes. If a Foreign National hands money over to a political campaign, right here in the u. S. , theres a word for that. Its a felony. And in a similar situation where you have a Foreign National, but this time they hand over, say, stolen property like stolen money or emails to the u. S. Campaign, in that case, you dont have just one felony. You have two felonies. Now, we dont know if the evidence will show those two felonies occurred. Right now we only know about one felony. The hacking. And as we know, the Mueller Investigation could end with great news for trump. It could clear him of liability for conspiracy or it could find that u. S. Malfeesance occurred. If it does find a conspiracy creeping up, or evidence of a plot to conspire with Foreign Nationals in realtime during campaign, then our constitutional system may ultimately be called to adjudicate the sarcasm de