Page 37 - December 2016 News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Now a professor at the new school. jeremy bash, former chief of staff at cia and the pentagon, former counsel to house intel. and michael crowley, white house and national security editor over at politico. good evening to you all. jeremy, now that everyone's had 24 hours for this to sink in, lay people, folks in the news media included, white house staff, what's in here do you think that gives them the most concern? >> well, these documents take us racing back to december 2016 and january 2017. those were the weeks just before the inauguration during which the obama administration was trying t...

Speaking publicly and writing publicly in saudi arabia in december 2016 after he spoke critically about donald trump here at a think tank in washington. so it's just interesting and important to point out in addition to trump's conflicts of interest with saudi arabia, which you pointed out in the beginning and which are significant, but khashoggi was a critic of president trump and of mbs. he was a critic of these aspiring authoritarians, and in the case of mohammed bin salman, an actually thoritarian living out his authoritarian dreams. but it's significant that khashoggi was a critic of pres...

And former national security adviser to hillary clinton. dave, this is a shocking story, 500 rooms in a few months. >> that's right. the saudi lobbyists started reserving blocks of rooms at trump's hotels starting december 2016 within months of his election. and within 2016 and february 2017 they reserved 500 rooms at trump's hotel. >> to put that in perspective, that must stand out on the balance sheet of a hotel, right? presumably not a lot of other people are booking 500 rooms at a time. >> that's right. and especially, you remember what was happening in january 2017 when four of these big ...

Of questions about potential conflicts of interest surrounding donald trump. this time it's not the russians. instead it's another country he's been accused of treating with otherwise inexplicable leniency in the face of the brutal murder of a u.s. resident, saudi arabia. "the washington post" offers another possible clue as to why he's so chummy with the saudis. "washington post" reporting just a month after the election, lobbyists representing the saudi government started reserving blocks of rooms at trump's luxury hotel in washington. about 500 nights in total across just three months. thos...

Those include michael flynn's phone call with the russian ambassador in december 2016 asking russia to help defeat a u.n. resolution on israel. flynn admitted he lied to the fbi about that conversation. he also told the fbi he contacted the russian ambassador at the direction of, quote, a very senior member of the presidential transition team. we know based on nbc news reporting that that very senior member of the trump transition team was jared kushner, donald trump's son-in-law. joining our discussion now, peter zeidenberg, a former federal prosecutor and former deputy counsel for scooter li...