Committee have commented on my personal diary and if i might, id like to make one brief point about it. I started keeping this diary nearly six years ago. I would write in it fairly infrequently. Sometimes two weeks, other times six weeks would go by. I made no effort to check the accuracy because this was nevada intended to be a precise narrative or a verbatim account of what took place. It was more than anything, a way to reflect on events and draw lessons from my personal and professional experiences. So there he is. 28 years old. Testifying to congress. Not because he had done anything particularly suspect or worrying, just turns out Congress Heard that he had a diary and they decided they wanted to read it. Mr. Sign teiner i want to st with you and the diary you kept. Senator, as i said in my opening statement, i used my diary as reflecting back but to try to draw lessons from my professional experiences. Now yes, would you pull the microphone i apologize. Now, do you have a copy there of the diary entries that were going to focus on today. Yes, i do. All right. Do you want to get those in front of you. Let me read you the entries. Then he reads from joshs diary. Joshua steiner worked for the treasury secretary at a tender young age and when investigators were looking into the white water scandal of the clinton era when they found young josh at the Treasury Department had a diary, they not only made him hand it over to congress but summed him to congress to talk to him about it and read him his diary entries during televised hearings and made visual aids summarizing and excerpts from joshua steiners diary and made big plaques explaining what he dear diaried in the winter of 1994 about the long hours he was working in big, bad washington d. C. White water investigation went on forever. Joshua steiner was not a bad guy in the investigation and didnt get in any trouble but he did end up under oath as a key witness handing over defending, describing, answering congressional questions about his diary from his time in washington and they raked him over the coals about it. At one point he sat there while a senator screamed at him about quote his feeble lame brained excuses about his diary. So that was during the white water scandal back in 1994. Today, axios reported sean spicer from the Trump Administration also kept kind of a diary. At least he kept copious notes in multiple notebooks during his time in the white house. Quote, former colleagues of sean spicer tell axios that he filled notebook after notebook during meetings later at the Trump Campaign and then at the white house. Spicer was so wellknown for his copious notes that under lings joked about him writing a tellall. Sean documented everything. Axios continued quote that surprised some officials of previous white houses who said because of past investigations, they intentionally took as few notes as possible whenever they worked in the west wing. Last night the Washington Post and the New York Times reported that Robert Mueller special counsel investigation looking into the trump russia issue made 13 different requests for information to the white house. Two of the 13 are very specific demands about sean spicer. Sean spicer related demands for documents reportedly the muller investigation has asked for documents from the white house concerning sean spicers comments that he made on may 3rd at the white house. Which is when the president was apparently gearing up to fire james comey. The muller investigation asked for white house documentation about comments made by sean spicer about the comey firing on may 9th, which was the day that comey was in fact fired by the president. Now that we know a lot more about what the special counsel inquiry asked the white house to hand over as part of the investigation, a couple of things are newly clear to us. One is that the muller investigation is definitely not only looking at events that just happened during the campaign but also looking at a lot of things that happened while President Trump has been in office as president. And stick a pin in that because that may end up being quite legally important and quite financially important, not just for the president but for a lot of people around him. This new information about the muller inquiry made clear there are a lot of people in the white house who should definitely have their own lawyers by now representing them specifically on the russia matter, not least of whom is sean spicer. As far as we know, sean spacer has no lawyer representing him on russia matters, which is remarkable enough before we found out he has copious diaries from his time in the white house. I know sean spicer is now 28yearold wideeyed anonymous innocent treasury employee getting chewed up by the senate and winning the sympathy of everybody who watches, but there is an emerging clarity here about who in this white house, who in trump world has a shell. Who has a defense . And whos like a turtle pulled out of the shell left to fend for it selself. In that sense and emerging clarity who is being defended and who is not, that sort of reflects the character. That window into the character of this part of Trump Administration, how they handle this gigantic scandal and defense against it is starting to parallel and look like how this administration conducts itself in other matters. Right . So i mean, how they are handling this Administration Scandal is starting to kind of echo how they are behaving as an Administration Like the basic stuff about staffing up the federal fwovt agovernment and ie business. Take a snapshot what we know from current headlines and news in terms of how they are behaving as an administration and handling themselves as a federal government. Today poll litico. Com they hire high tech positions and the appointees are a longhaul trucker, country club cabina and the owner of a Scented Candle company. American over sight filed a freedom of information about request to figure who was getting the jobs for which youre supposed to have at least a College Degree and for some you have to have a masters but instead installed in the jobs a kid who was an intern at the rnc. Literally that persons last job. Not like back in the day i started off as a teenager as an rnc intern but went on to be a wellqualified agriculture expert getting a highlevel job at the usda. No, direct from rnc intern to highlevel usda senior job. I mean, this is what political scientists call the spoil system. They appear to just be randomly handing out high level specific federal jobs supposed to go to experts but instead just giving them out to anybody that volunteered on the campaign or their sister. Like the person in charge of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the Energy Department is a guy who most recently worked in tire sales. Retail tire sales. The assistant to the secretary of the treasury most recently worked as a Production Assistant at something called thats entertainment. I dont know what thats entertainment does but doubt it has anything to do with Treasury Department does. The buying and selling stocks while taking action in congress to affect the price of those stocks. He nevertheless was confirmed in the Republican Senate and health and Human Services secretary tom price is making news for the hundreds of thousands of dollars he has spent in his brief time in office. Inexplicably flying around in private charter jets. At the epa, trumps appointee has diverted enforcement agents from all over the country to stop doing their work and instead provide him a 24 hour a day, seven day a week security detail and scott pruett apairs to be using his travel budget to fly back and forth every five minutes because he appears to be laying the groundwork for a run for governor. You and i would be subsidizing that run for governor every time he takes government transportation to go back home. Then there is the treasury secretary. With thats entertainment. The treasury secretary famously requested a military plane to take him and his bride on their european honeymoon vacation. They didnt end up using a military plane for that purpose but did he did take his new wife with him on a Big Government jet to fort knox. Where they quote inspected the gold. [ laughter ] they then enjoyed watching the eclipse since that trip happens to have provided then a prime viewing opportunity to see the eclipse in totality from fort knox. This is where the president started describing his private beach club as the southern white house. And then he doubled the rates for people to join that golf club. That beach club. Donald trump and donald trump junior are both having cap pain donors pay their legal fees both having the Republican National committee cover their legal fees. Why not . You know who is not having Campaign Donors pay legal fees . Paul manafort for example. Nor mike flynn. Mike flynns family turned to square space to get mike flynn Financial Assistance to pay his seven lawyers on the russia matter. Sean spicer doesnt have a lawyer for the raush sussia matt clear he needs one. They have hired russia lawyers. Who is going to pay for them . Why is the trump family able to use Campaign Funds to pay for their lawyers . But none of these other people that worked at the Trump White House are on the campaign. Its crazy enough the white House Counsel had to hire his own lawyer to defend himself in the russia matter but don mceldermcgann needs it. He is particularly going to need good legal advice if the over heard conversation at a steak house last week between two of the president s lawyers, if that bears out and white House Counsel don mcgann is hiding documents in a safe to keep rob burt muller from getting them. He is going to have a bear of a legal fight on his hands if he tries to resist handing over documents or giving testimony to the muller inquiry on the basis of the fact hes white House Counsel and shouldnt have to talk. That the an argument you could definitely litigate but hes not likely to win it. And nobody you would know would like to fund a legal fight like that because it will go to the mattresses. And how about old mike pence . Mike pence the Vice President has retained a very good, very expensive d. C. Lawyer. It clear that mike pence needs one. He has made multiple false public statements about many of the key hat matters that appear be under investigation including the firing of james comey and resignation of mike flynn. When Vice President mike pence took the unusual step of setting up his Political Action committee very early, it was initially floated he could use the pact to raise money for his own Legal Defense, for his own legal fees. Team pence apparently changed their minds about that once they started Getting Press inquiries and say pences pact will not pay for his legal fees but who will . Mike pence isnt a rich guy. He doesnt have deep pockets. He doesnt have like trump family deep pockets for sure. Put yourself in mike pences shoes for a second. How does it make sense if youre mike pence that the rnc and the campaign to reelect the president , right . Those two entities are paying the legal fees for the trump family. But they are not paying the legal fees for you. Mike pence next week is going to be doing a fundraiser in milwaukee in which he will be raising a lot of money for the campaign to reelect the president. He will be raising money used to pay for donald trump juniors legal fees. But not his own. His own, that ts his problem. This scandal and any potential prosecutions that derive from it may eventually boil down to very personal decisions about how much they are going to try to sacrifice. How much they are going to sacrifice to keep the heat off this president. I mean, if the white house strategy is to try to get through this by the president having Campaign Donors and regular people pay his and his familys legal fees while they pay nothing but everybody else is expected to get personally bankrupted by those legal fees . And youre counting on all those people not rolling on you . That seems like that that seems like a reason to go through and start dotting the is and crossing the ts in dear old diary because you will be talking about it soon. Ill just raise one last point here given the general cashing in nature of the administration and how they behave not just about the scandal but in general. We started off this week with some great reporting from the Associated Press on the mysteriously large amount of money raised but not apparently spent on Donald Trumps president ial inauguration. As we talked about before, the picture on the left side of your screen is in fact the biggest inauguration celebration weve ever had in this country when barack obama was inaugurated for the first time in 2009. The picture on the right side is the comparatively much smaller inauguration for donald trump. When the obama inauguration happened in 2009, they blew everybodys mind with the fact they raised 50 million to pay for that inauguration. But it turns out they needed to. It turned out being the biggest ever and thats how much it cost. This year Donald Trumps inauguration was a fraction of that size with a fraction of the events organized by the inaugural l committee but raised more than double the amount raised for the obama inauguration in 2009. They raised 107 million for the trump inauguration. Including unlimited corporate donations. 107 Million Dollars. What happened to that money . Weve been asking this sort of since very soon after the inauguration. Administration said any leftover money would be given to charity. But as the associate the press documented this week, were a long ways since the inauguration and so far no money is handed over to charity. The inaugural l cocommittee sai there is a Third Party Audit of the funds and turns out everything is fine, everything is present and accounted for but nobody seems to actually be able to produce this audit and nobody seems to know anything about this audit including who supposedly did it. Nor has anybody turned up any evidence that audit actually took place. Part of the public accounting, they said this concert took up almost a quarter of the money they raised for the entire inauguration. That concert they held ahead of the inauguration was a 25 million concert for reference at the obama inauguration in 2009, they held a concert that featured pretty much everybody you heard of in music. It seated 10,000 people and turned out hundreds of thousands of people more to witness it. It was produced as such high quality, hbo bought the broadcast rights from the concert and that one cost 5 million. So how did trumps baton twirling cost five times as much or maybe it did not. Maybe they just need something to say about where all that money went. Just given the way this administration is behaving around money and their entitlement to public resources, if there is a giant tens of millions of dollars strong slush fund sloshing around inside this administration left over from the inauguration, couldnt that be used to pay the legal fees of the various people in trump world . Honestly many of them multi million dollar. People in the administration. First step of the administration. It could be we asked the money left oever and russia investigation and for anyone family. Really be used for that. The committee on that, the answer is, we have no comment. Lots going on tonight including a newly aggressive effort by congress to apparently try to slow down the russia inquiry. We got the latest from puerto rico tonight. Loath lots going on tonight. Hi. So i just got off the phone with our allstate agent, and i know that we have accident forgiveness. So the incredibly minor accident that i had tonight four weeks without the car. Okay, yup. Good night. With accident forgiveness your rates wont go up just because of an accident. Switching to allstate is worth it. During the yellow tag sales event, you can get 3,500 off a hard days play. 700 off select mud spa packages for two. And up to 1,300 off family packs of venison. save on a world of possibilities with deals on select 2017 canam vehicles. Only until october 31st at your local canam dealer. only whstuff happens. Old at your local canam dealer. Shut down cold symptoms fast with maximum strength alka seltzer plus liquid gels. Whentertaining us,es getting us back on track,hing . And finding us dates. Phones really have changed. So why hasnt the way we pay for them . Introducing xfinity mobile. You only pay for data and can easily switch between pay per gig and unlimited. No one else lets you do that. See how much you can save. Choose by the gig or unlimited. Xfinity mobile. A new kind of network designed to save you money. Call, visit or go to xfinitymobile. Com. It was ten years ago almost exactly when a u. S. Senator from idaho anti guy gay got arresteda bathroom for lewd conduct with a dude. An undercover cop testified that the senator had basically solicited him for sex underneath the bathroom stall divider in an airport bathroom in minneapolis st. Paul. Senator larry craig of idaho, senator in question defended himself by saying he was not gay, never have been, not even for one minute. He explained that he simply had a wide stance when he went to the bathroom. Senator craig ended up pleading guilty and paying a fine and ultimately resigning from the senate. But the scandal ended with one final indignity for him and took a long time to spin out. It didnt get resolved until 2014 three years ago ordered to pay the u. S. Treasury almost a quarter of a <