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i want to ask you something that s very important to the nation. did your investigation evaluate whether president trump could be vulnerable to blackmail by the russians because the kremlin knew that trump and his associates lied about connections to russia related to the trump tower deal? i can t speak to that. he can t speak to that. did your investigate evaluate whether trump could be vulnerable to blackmail by the russians because the kremlin knew that trump and his associates lied about the connections. and as adam schiff put it, they might have tape recordrd those conversations. they could have blackmailed him that way. did you look into that? i cannot speak to that. so, we ll take that as a maybe, right? a lot happened at this historic testimony today. special counsel robert mueller definitely seemed older than his 74 years. he seemed less on top of ....
The nation is exposed. if we can t tell, at the end of the hearing, mueller talked about, he couldn t speculate about whether trump is motivated because he still wants to do that moscow trump tower deal, he knows he needs putin s approval and that s why he can t bring himself to criticize putin or it s something else, and the fact that we, the american people, also don t know, that we have to speculate, is the problem. and so, i think it falls on the congress to do its oversight, to make sure the president is pursuing policies in our interest, not in his financial interest, that people don t have clearances that shouldn t have clearances, and we re starting to get some of those answers, rachel. we had a lengthy meeting with one of mueller s staff a week or so ago on the counter intelligence issues, but there s still a lot we don t know. there s still a lot the justice department is withholding and we re going to fight to make sure we get that information. over the course of the two h ....
The aperture at the end of the hearing. from your testimony today, i gather that you believe that knowingly accepting foreign assistance during a presidential campaign is an unethical thing to do. and a crime. and a crime. circumstances, yes. and a crime given certain circumstances. and to the degree it undermines our democracy and institutions, we can agree it is also unpatriotic. true. and wrong. true. knowingly accepting foreign assistance during a presidential campaign is a crime in certain circumstances, according to robert mueller. it is wrong, it is unethical. coming from a person who said repeatedly today that he was blocked from justice department policy from bringing an indictment against the president, even if he had wanted to, you know, maybe that rings a little hollow for him to say, yeah, that might have been a crime. maybe it is, you know, just ....
Your office did not obtain the president s tax returns, which could otherwise show foreign financial courses, correct? i m not going to speak to that. well, did they follow that money trail? i mean, simultaneously today, mueller is talking about how foreign compromise of the president and his campaign were driven by these financial entanglements that they all lied about that russia knew about and could expose at will. right? it was money. it was financial interest, it was lies about financial enta entangleme entanglements, that were the roots of the compromise that he described when it came to the president and multiple people in his campaign, but he just won t say out loud whether or not he and his investigators pursued that line of inquiry. specifically on the president s taxes alone. i think this is now kind of an urgent mystery. you might remember, after the mueller report came out, but before today, the president at one point started saying that he s sure that robert mueller looke ....
Perfect leverage for a hostile foreign power to compromise or to extort a number of different people in the president s orbit and, indeed, the president himself. now, mr. mueller was not specific, at least was not definite, when he was asked whether or not his investigation, therefore, looked at the president s finances and tried to see if the president s financial records would show evidence of those kinds of ties or might be able to detail the ways in which the president may have been compromised by those things. do you have clarity on whether or not mueller and his team looked at the president s finances and looked at his taxes? i don t think the mueller team looked at his finances. i don t think they followed the money. i think they really, and the document, i think, bears this out, they viewed their mission as quite narrow. looking at these two vectors of russian intervention, the social media campaign, the hacking and dumping operation, and then narrowly trying to assess, did t ....