well, if i might to make sure we are not making a mistake senator coops. it is my hope that if you are confirmed and we do make progress on bipartisan criminal justice reform that as attorney general you will carry out whatever legislative decisions might be made by this body. last let me say in my six years here in addition to not working on a number of bipartisan proposals on criminal justice reform you have repeatedly voted against congressional attempts to prohibit torture in the military on text or the interrogation context and to defend enhanced interrogation practices. are you clear now that our statutes prohibit torture and if the president were to rover yid that clear legal authority what actions would you take? on your previous question i would note the federal prison population has already dropped 10 or more percent and will drop another 10,000 this year. what is happening now is reducing the federal population. this law only dealt with the federal prison population. and that represents the most serious offenders, our federal dea and u.s. attorneys are prosecuting more serious cases. with regard to the torture issues, i watched them for some time and have been concerned about what we should do about it. the bill that passed last time was a major step. i thought it was really not the right step. senator graham, i know, has been an opponent of torture steadfastly and supported a lot of different things, opposed it. it basically took what i was teaching the young soldiers at the army reserve unit as a lecturer as a teacher, the army field manual. listening to democratic senator after democratic senator give speeches in praise of the rule of law. i am heartened by that i am encouraged by that. because for eight years it s been absent. for eight years, we ve seen a department of justice consistently disregarding the rule of law. when eric holer s department of justice allowed illegal gun transactions, illegally sold guns to mexican gun traffickers as part of fast and furious, guns that were later used to murder border patrol agent brian terry, the democratic member of this committee were silent. when eric holder was found in contempt of congress for refusing to cooperate with congress s investigation into fast and furious, once again the democratic members this committee were silent. when the irs illegally targeted united states citizens for exercising the first amendment views for exercising their roles in the political process, democratic members of this committee were silent. when the department of justice refused to fairly investigate the irs targeting citizens and indeed assign the investigation to a liberal partisan democratic who had given over $6,000 to president obama and democrats, democrats on this committee were silent. when numerous members of this committee called on the attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor to ensure that justice was done on the irs case democrats on this committee were silent. when the justice department began using operation choke point to target law-abiding citizens that they disagreed with politically. you are a racist! you are ties in the kkk. you are [ inaudible ] black lives matter, black lives matter, black lives matter! guantanamo terrorists without the notification of congress, the democrats on this committee were silent. that pattern has been dismaying for eight years but i take today as a moment of celebration. if once again this committee has a bipartisan commitment to rule of law, to following the law, that is a wonderful thing and it is consistent with the tradition of this committee, going back centuries. now if we were to play a game of tit for tat, if what was good for the goose were good for the gander then a republican attorney general should be equally partisan, should disregard the law, should advance political preferences favored by the republican party. senator sessions do you believe that would be appropriate for an torney general to do? no, i do no i believe you and i think we do have to be aware that when something like this is done and some of the things i m familiar with enough to agree with you that i thought were improper, i do believe it has a corrosive effect on public confidence in the constitutional republic of which we are sworn to uphold. i think you are exactly right. you and i are both alumni of the department of justice, and it has a long bipartisan tradition of staying outside of partisan politics, of simply and fairly enforcing the law. i will say right now if i believed that you would implement policies, even policies i agreed with, contrary to law. i would vote against your confirmation. the reason i m so enthusiast enthusiastically supporting your confirmation is i have every degree of confidence you will follow the law faithfully and honestly. and this is the first and most important obligation of the attorney general. now, earlier in this hearing senator franken engaged you in a discussion that i think was intended to try to undermine your character and integrity. and in particular, senator franken suggested that you had somehow misrepresented your record. it is unfortunate to see emembes of this body impugn the integrity of a senator with whom we have served for years. it is particularly unfortunate when that attack is not backed up by the facts. senator franken based his attack primarily on an op ed written by an attorney, gerald hebert. there is an irony in relying on mr. hebert, because as you know, 1996 mr. hebert testified then and attacked you then, making false charges against you. indeed i would note in the 1996 hearing two days later mr. hebert was forced to recant his testimony to say he had given false testimony to this committee and to say, i apologize to any inconvenience to this committee or mr. theation and with non-criminal civil rights cases was to provide support for the civil rights division attorneys. i reviewed signed and cosigned briefs and others filed during my tenure. i provided assistance and guidance to the civil rights attorneys, had an open door policy with them and cooperated with them on these cases. for the cases described in 6, i supervised litigation and sign the pleading. that is consistent with the 1986 testimony that you provided help every step of the way; is that correct? i think, yes. there is no question you have been forthright with this committee and i would note that members of this committee don t have to search far and wide to know who jeff sessions is. we ve known every day sitting at this bench alongside you. i want to shift to a different topic, and it s the topic i opened with which is the politicization of the department of justice. the office of legal counsel has a critical role of providing sound, legal and constitutional advice both to the attorney general and the president. in the last eight years we have seen a highly politicized olc. an olc that has given politically convenient rulings whether on recess appointments, whether on executive amnesty. and early on, perhaps that was started by 2009 attorney general holder overruling olc concerning legislation trying to grant the district of columbia representation in congress. and it may well be that that sent a message to olc that its opinions were to be political and not legal in nature. tell me, senator session what will you do as attorney general to restore professionalism and fidelity of the law to the office of legal counsel. senator, i think any short-term political agenda gapes that come from the abuse of the law making processes and requirements of the department of justice just don t make sense. it will always in the long run be more damaging than the short-term gain that one might have. the office of legal counsel, all of us who have served in the department know, is a bigtime position. you need a mature, smart, experienced person who understands this government, who understands the laws and is principled and consistent in their application of the laws. that will help the president. it will help the congress. it will help the american people. i do believe we need to work hard to have that, and i will do my best to ensure we do have it. one final question. in the last eight years the deputy of justice s slit for general office has also i believe been unfortunately political sized. it and it sustained a unprecedented number of losses before the united states supreme court. indeed, president obama s justice department won less than half of its total cases before the supreme court, which is the lowest presidential win rate since harry truman. the average historically for the last 50 years has been about 70%. snum rouse of those cases were unanimous with indeed both obama supreme court appointees voting against the lawless positions of this justice department including their assertion that the government has the authority to supervise and direct the appointment and the hiring and firing of clergy in the church. what will you do as attorney general to ensure the integrity of the office of slitter general that it is faithful to the law and not advancing extreme political positions like the obama justice department did that have been rejected over and over again by the supreme court? i think the problem there is a desire to achieve a result sometimes that overrides the commitment to the law. in the long run, this country will be stronger if we adhere to the law even though somebody might be frustrated in the short-term of not achieving an agenda. the solicitor general should not advocate to alter the meaning of words to advance an agenda. that is an abuse of office and i would try to seek to have a slit for general who is faithful to the constitution, serves under the constitution, does not feel that its that power to rise above it and make it say what it wants it to say. thank you senator sessions. we ve been watching this hearing now since the morning hours. we want to get a quick accounting of what our correspondents have been able to learn, starting with kelly o donnell who covers capitol hill for us and has been stationed outside the hearing room. kelly, what have you picked up? brian, this is of course the entrance to the kennedy caucus room where this hearing and many others in history have taken place. and i think what is particularly striking today is how you see republicans trying to prepare and protect jeff sessions in terms the criticism coming his way, and democrats who are working to elicit areas where they think there are weaknesses in his testimony or discrepancies in his record or thing they can try to ship a light on because democrats don t have the numbers to block this confirmation but they want to expose forward barring any unforeseen circumstance. you really get a sense today of the mood here. as the first confirmation hearing, one with high stakes, a huge role, and nominee who does have some controversy in his past, the energy here in the russel senate office buildings with protesters, with international media here, and with all the people associated with staging a hearing like this, putting this on, it has been a day where you really get a sense that this is when congress can do its work with the nation paying attention. and these are real issues that are raw nerves for many americans. and they are getting a hearing today. sessions has been put through a lot of practice. we could hear that in some of his responses where he knew that there might be some areas in his record or his past statements that needed to be fixed a bit. and some of the republicans have tried to give him a forum to answer the critic. and we ve seen that unfold today. kelly o donnell on the hill. to pete williams we go next. pete, the folks that haven t watched a hearing, a high-profile hearing like this for long time would be forgiven for forgetting that this is really a team sport. various members of both teams go up, take their turns, make their points, try to score some points. so it would be so unusual indeed for this committee to knock down, to reject a nominee for a cabinet job. correct. and i think what you are seeing here is exactly that a well coordinated evident here among the democrats. all of them seem to be asking about a different facet of jeff sessions either of his time as the u.s. attorney and prosecutor in alabama and his time as a u.s. senator. and they are not repeating each other for the most part although there have been several questions here about for example, what if donald trump insists on trying to reimpose water boarding? would you advise him that that s against the law? sessions has said several times that he would. the question of voting rights has come up repeatedly today as well. senator sessions seemed to go out of his way although only with one sentence, to say that he believes civil rights are very important, specific voter rights. voter id has been a controversial issue, it s one that the justice department has been suing states over what they consider to be restrictive voter id laws. senator sessions said on the surface it did not appear to him that state voter id laws actually suppress the minority vote. so elections have consequences. there are going to be many case ways in which in justice department under donald trump is different than under barack obama. i think today is an effort both to try to tease out his views that will be different but also to try to set some markers here and putting himself on the record on issues like civil rights and the voting rights act. we are starting a busy week. while we ve been talking, up with of two other hearings have been going on. the nation s command structure and intelligence has been appearing over in front of senate intelligence. what has been gained or learned from that hearing? i don t know, brian, because i have been watching this one. but senator sessions was asked today about the intel committee report, which as you know donald trump has shown some skepticism about its conclusion. and what mr. session said today is he has no reason to doubt the intelligence report about russian hacking. and he has seen no evidence to the contrary. nothing to indicate that the report is wrong. in other words, he s not exactly embraced it, but nothing we won t distance himself from night pete williams sharing with our viewers a fundamental truth. while watching one hearing we can t be expected to watch another at the same time. never been done as far as i know. pete, thank you very much. and thanks as always for your honesty. we re going to take a break in our coverage on the other side katie tur is here and standing by in our new york studios to take this hour the rest of the way. turns out that attorney general nominee jeff sessions and chuck schumer have a similar morning routine. do you work out in the gym with senator sessions? what does he do and what do you do. we are on the bikes next to each other oftentimes watching morning joe and making diametrically opposed comments about what s going on. no fights have broken out yet. that s a good thing. ch: this moe to worry about a cracked windshield. so she scheduled at safelite.com and with safelite s exclusive on my way text she knew exactly when i d be there, so she didn t miss a single shot. i replaced her windshield giving her more time for what matters most. tech: how d ya do? player: we won! tech: nice! that s another safelite advantage. mom: thank you so much! (team sing) safelite repair, safelite replace. he is sitting before the senate intelligence committee for a hearing on russian hacking. this is his first time speaking publicly since the presidential election. first to session s nomination hearing which was mark bite repeated protests, the alabama senator sitting before that committee since roughly 9:30 this morning in a hearing that s expected to last two days. here s a quick recap of what we have heard so far. i abhor the klan and what it represents and its hateful etiology. i believe the proper thing for me to do would be to recuse myself from any questions involving those kind of investigations that involve secretary clinton. how do you feel about a foreign entity trying to interfere in our election? i think it s i go can t event. i m not asking if you believe it influenced it just if you belief the report of our intelligence agencies? i have no reason to doubt that and have no evidence that would indicate otherwise. i have no belief and do not support the idea in a muslims as a religious group should be denied admission to the united states. i do believe that if you continually go through a cycle of amnesty that you undermine the respect for the law and encourage more illegal immigration into america. down the hallway at the capitol fbi director james comey being asked what he knew about and when about reports russia hacked america s election. there is no doubt that the russians attacked intruded and took data from some of those systems. joining me now from the hill, casey hunt. and from the pentagon, hans nickels. casey, let s start with you. senator sessions was grilled on civil rights, women s rights, hate crimes, immigration, his ability to say no to donald trump. the muslim ban, torture, russian hacking, freedom of the press. what so far has been the major headline? and is there anything in there that could potentially, if not derail his confirmation, then pose a hurdle? at this point katie i think the short answer is we haven t heard anything that stands out as something that s really going to be a sticking, tripping block for jeff sessions on his road to confirmation. now, that said, before we go through a couple of those other issues one thing that we did see some late focus on was senator al franken s line of questioning. what franken did was essentially press jeff sessions on his history fighting for civil rights. so jeff sessions, the trump transition team have worked very hard to highlight areas of his resume when he served as alabama attorney general and in other roles fighting on behalf of civil rights. essentially trying to push back against this narrative that emerged when sessions was denied that federal judgeship over questions about remarks to colleagues that his colleagues said were racist. so that s been their kind of whole way of looking at this. what franken did was try to poke holes in that, asked sessions did you prosecute 20 or 30 cases about desegregation or was it really just a few? that was the one moment when we saw sessions struggle a little bit to answer questions. you heard senator ted cruz just before we started talking here focusing a little bit on that trying to give sessions some points of defense of course if you will, trying to say that yes he did work on those issues. but other than that, katie, i think a lot of the points that democrats have hit on through these hearings we expected. we expected the focus on the violence against women act. we expected the focus on race. of course some of those issues came up under questioning from republicans. lindsey graham pushing senator sessions on that russian hacking question. that was a potentially risky place for sessions to be. he was questioned whether he does believe the fbi s assessments, other things like that. i think atmospherically the protests very much a central point of this and underscore kind of the public pressure around this nomination. but so far i m not hearing anybody say that this hearing means that sessions is any less likely to be confirmed. what will be the democrats strategy going forward? i know we ve seen a number of protests in the hall trying to disrupt this hearing. but this is just the first of many confirmation hearings we are going to be getting this week. what is going to be the general strategy for the democrats? is this just a situation where they are going to be trying to question each nominee as a proxy to donald trump because they can t question him directly? in some cases, yes, that s true. session is particular because of his background on civil rights and because there are so many activists who are really focused on this nomination. and you saw that in the protests here today. i think you are going to see different strategies for other nominees. you are going to see probably an ideological activist focus around people like tom price for health and human services. i think you will see a focus on russia and hacking with rex tillerson for example. i think each one is going to bring up a new set of questions. i think the nominees that republicans and the transition team are most concerned about and ones where democrats see most tune might be flying under the radar. one i want to highlight is the nominee fortressry secretary. he has to turn over his tax returns. there was a lot of money spent and that he made in a lot of ways that the democrats are going to question. the housing crisis for example. republicans don t think he is going to be as polished as rex tillerson might be tomorrow or as jeff sessions has been today. we have seen a number of protests in that room. interesting to point out that that is the same room as we ve seen the watergate hearings. it s where clarence thomas had his hearings. it s also the very first investigation they ever did in that room was 1912, the investigation into the sinking of the titanic. a little the more you know right there. let s turn to our pentagon correspondent who has been monitoring the other hearing that s going on on capitol hill right now. james comey in front of the senate intelligence committee. this is the first time we ve seen the fbi director since the election. hans, talk to me about what we are hearing so far. he is there to testify about russianacking and he was asked very specifically if the fbi investigated any of president-elect donald trump s ties to russia. what was his answer on that? well, his challenge throughout this entire hearing is not to give too much away in terms of sources and methods. but listen to what he had to say actually about the forensics of what they know. our forensics folks would always prefer to get access to the original device or server that s involved. so it s the best evidence. were you given access to do the forensics on those servers? we were not. we were a highly respected private company eventually got access and shared with us what they saw there. katie the main point, main takeaway from this hearing versus last week this senate select committee on intelligence seem much more partisan. we have seen a number of senators block and tackle for the president-elect essentially make his point that they don t necessarily think the hacking influence was dispositive on the election and we ve seen democrats similarly looking to those panelists, looking to the fbi director, dni director clapper that russia clearly meddled and tried to influence the election. last week you had republicans, john mccain saying it was an act of war. this committee seems more partisan less impartial than the one last week. one final piece of information. we are watching both hearings hear. you just saw senator sessions make the point that he does not think that enhanced interrogation, torture, isly. that is a clear departure from the alberto gonzalez point that you can always have some enhanced interrogation. that s a departure from what donald trump said on the campaign trail, that he believes water boarding is not torture and it is an effective form of interrogation. he since tried to walk that back a little or change his stance on it since he found out that james mattis his nominee for defense secretary didn t necessarily believe it. james, one other point. s in the first time we ve seen james comey since the election. 11 days before the election he came out and revuved, if you will, the investigation into hillary clinton s e-mails. are we expecting to hear him address that in any way? are the democrats going the try to get him on record or have they already for how he whether he believes he might have unduly influenced the election with that release? my kptation katie heading into this was that he was clearly going to be grilled on that i have not heard a question on that. i have pete williams to thank for this it s really hard to watch two hearing at once but i have not heard that. pete williams is a better reporter than me. let me offer that. and you don t need a second source on that. williams, better than nicholls. pete williams is great. hans nicholls, you are proven to be great as well. thank you for joining me. joining me now, cornell williams brooks and cedric richmond. mr. brooks, i want to start with you. senator sessions tried vehemently to say he was not a racist, to push back against this caricature of him that was painted in 1996 when he first went in front of the hearings to try to get a federal judgeship but was unsuccessful in that. has he said or done anything today that makes you feel like he has changed or he is somebody that will be a defender of civil rights in this country, a defender of the causes of the naacp. no. i have not heard anything to suggest that he is fit to lead the department of justice. the fact of the matter is we are not our endeavor is not to nor is our burden to prove that he is a racist. but it is our burden as attested to by the record that he is not fit, nor is he inclined to protect american citizens from racial discrimination. so when you look at the record, going back to 1986 where you had federal officials testifying under oath as to racially offensive remarks when you look at those remarks, that behavior, and the conduct, the legislation, the record from then until now we find nothing that assures american citizens that they will be protected by senator sessions as attorney general of the united states. so when it comes to voter suppression we have courts in the fifth circuit and the fourth circuit that have found voter id laws, voter suppressives and racial dim in aer to. in the state of alabama you have a voter id law. in his home statement he said not a mumbling word about that id law and has in fact suppressed support for voter id laws. we have 21 million americans whose right to the franchise is in peril, threatened by voter id laws. he has not made it clear that that would be a prosecutorial priority. so simply mouthing the words voter rights, as you mouth faith in voter fraud, which is a predicate for voter suppression does not offer us any assurance at all that he can lead the department of justice. so what we ve seen today is some deference to senator sessions for his tenure, his time, his collegiality in the senate as opposed to expressing confidence in his constitutional suitability to lead the department of justice. when we look at his record respect to criminal justice reform he stands for mandatory minimums in a country and at a moment when we have 2.3 million americans behind bars, 1 million fathers behind bars, 65 million plus americans with a criminal record and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of activists in the streets across our country who are standing against this era of mass incarceration. we draw no assurance from his record. when it comes to immigration rights, he stood against any and every form of comprehensive immigration reform in this country in the senate. and so if we are going to give him credit for his collegiality in the senate, we also have to give him accountability for his legislative record in the senate. make no mistake. stay with us mr. brook. congressman richmond i want to bring you in. you are part of the congressional black caucus. they held a news conference over the course of the last few weeks and they have been voicing concerns about the session nominations. you yourself will be testifying against senator sessions on bhaft of the cbc tomorrow. what are you planning to say? and how are you planning to convince your fellow congressmen that maybe senator sessions is not the right choice for e.g.? i think that cornell laid out a very good description of the concerns that we have. the position of attorney general is a very serious position. tur top law enforcement officer in the kuchbl you will enforce civil rights. you will enforce voting rights. and senator session s records on voting rights is suspect at best. at worst, he is a participant in disenfranchising people and voting is the roots to the treef democracy. congressman those are the concerns we have. these are two different jobs. his job as a senator is not necessarily the same as his job as if he gets confirmed as an attorney general. in one case he is trying to shape laws and advocating for laws or voting against laws. in another, he is slated to uphold the laws that already exist. are you not confident that he as a professional, he as a lawyer, as a civil servant, will be able to disassociate himself from his own personal viewpoints? and uphold the laws as they stand on the books? well, if you look at his record from when he was attorney general in alabama or you look at his complete body of work, part of the role of the attorney general of the united states is to make sure that policing and justice is done on a fair basis. he has already expressed his concern and his thoughts that consent decrees were intrusive. and if consent decrees are the department of justice s vehicles to make sure that police departments across the country, new orleans, baltimore and others are under cop sent decrees to make sure that justice is done and justice is applied across the board. let s not talk about all the desegregation cases for education that are still out there. there are 30 education cases under consent decree to make sure that children from every zip code will be treated fairly in terms of quality access to a public education. and the attorney general of the united states has a responsibility to ensure those thing. his record, his words, i think demonstrate that he does not have the desire to do it and he wouldn t do it. in those roles of the department of justice are just as important as any of the other roles. congressman richmond, very quickly because i want to get mr. brooks take on this as well. it looks like he will be confirmed. are you going to be able to work with him going forward? well, part of our duties is oversight. and to make sure that the rules and the guidance of not only the deputy of justice but all of the departments are followed. and to that extent, we will never give up our right of oversight and our congressional responsibility to make sure that the department is running in that matter. but we are pushing for criminal justice reform. and senator sessions was an obstacle to criminal justice reform to the extent that he would see the light and all of the data and come along with criminal justice reform we will work with him. but i believe our role is going to be to make sure that the department of justice upholds its oath and it fights against discrimination based on race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and all of the other things. and i so far us, we are going to be in oversight mode making sure that the department does what it s supposed to do. mr. brooks, quickly, if you can, where does the naacp go from here? where do we go from here? we double down in terms of our opposition. we have to be very clear about this. this is a perilous moment in american history where this nation is deeply divided by race, where the criminal justice system seems to represent injustice for so many people around the country. and so we are very clear, we have to hold senator sessions accountable for his lack of commitment to using consent decrees where we have police departments in ferguson to baltimore to cleveland where consent decrees are a vehicle through which we hold police departments accountable and we bring communities and police together. we have to take this nomination seriously. and it is not a foregone conclusion that he will be confirmed. make it clear. from 1789 until now, the senate has had the responsibility of not engaging in a political coronation, but in fact engaging in a democratic confirmation process in which they assess the fitness of the attorney general nominee to be attorney general. and we are going to make the case until the last possible moment. we will register our concerns. we will register our discontent in terms of our views and opinions, our perspective under the constitution. not only will we articulate them with our mouths but also with our bodies in terms of civil disobedience. be clear, this process continues as we speak, and the naacp opposes this nomination as we see. we will see. one more dave hearings. thank you gentlemen. next up, new reaction from the trump transition about today s confirmation hearings as the president-elect himself prepares to hold his first news conference since his white house win. that is expected to happen tomorrow. stay with us. president-elect of the united states. it s going to be his first news conference in more than 160 days, since mid-july. and it s happening just nine days before his inauguration. as of now, all signs point to it actually happening, too. joining me now from our washington newsroom, peter alexander. let s talk about this news conference before we get to the news conference let s first talk about how the transition team is reacting to senator session s testimony today. it s very clear that he was well prepared for this. are they feeling like he is well representing not only himself but donald trump s presidency? i think before we do this we need to put something that says spin alert on the bottom of the screen. they are not going to say they think he is getting crushed. they are going to say they are satisfied. i spoke with one of the persons who was hyped the scenes in the process of preparing. they say they couldn t be happier with this. they say his performance has been excel.. they say he has been confounding all the car,tures the left wing group has been trying to sell over the last weeks. they insist that the democrats are struggling. the bottom line is another individual close to the transition told us he is presenting himself as compassionate, as level headed and as a constitutional thinker. they recognize that they are on home field advantage right now. it is a more than likely despite all the protest you have seen there that he will have sufficient support because obviously republicans have majority right how. spin alert indeed let s talk about tomorrow s news conference. he is expected to talk about his business dealings and the ways he is going to go forward by handing it over to his children. what else are we expecting to hear from mr. trump? what sort of topics could be covered? there is a myriad of them, right? i think you are exactly right. this is the first time he has held one of these news conferences in more than 160-something days right now. so reporters, you and i and others have obviously been gathering up our questions. there are a variety of top i. the best opportunity we ve had to sort of pin him down on questions related to the intelligence report and other which come in the short he can changes when he comes down from his tower at trur tower on fifth avenue. the golden escalator. i trust will there will be questions about russia, especially the intelligence. has said russia is not the only perpetrator of these types of crimes. he refers to china and others. and others in his team has said too much focus has been put on russia. obviously questions in other places in that region, syria as well. obamacare going to be a significant conversation pooesz piece as well. also foreign to remind the audience last time he had a news conference during the dnc that s when he encouraged the russia to find hillary clinton s memes. those notable. the new york times is saying he is going to be encouraging republicans to immediately repeal obamacare. he is saying that if it takes weeks it will be too long. but he also wants them to have a plan in place to replace it. that doesn t seem like that is likely to happen. is this just him using his bully pulpit to get them to move quickly more quickly than maybe congress normally does? here s the challenge here. here s in part what he said to the new york times. he said we have to get to business. obamacare has been a catastrophic event. the challenge here is that his position is saying there should be an immediate repeal of obamacare. and then within a matter of two to three weeks perhaps a replacement put in place as the fact there is no replacement available right now. the vote on the process begin as early as this week in terms of repeeping right now. you have some republicans who want to see a repeal but they also want to have an immediate replacement. we are concerned in the repeal happens too soon it could take a couple of years to have a replacement. i ve been interviewing some at the freedom caucus and elsewhere, and they have admitted we don t have a plan. we have a lot of plans, paul ryan among others say they need time to develop the replace men plan. it s going to be difficult. let s continue on this track talking about donald trump s urging of congress to repeal obamacare. joining me now is political analyst robert costa. no one better has a direct line into the donald trump transition and to donald trump himself than you do, robert. now talk to me. how frustrated is he potentially going to be seeing that congress does not work as quickly as maybe he would expect them to? or maybe he is used to in his business dealings? quite frustrated. the u.s. congress here at the capitol is by no means like the trump organization. things move at a glacial pace in congress. it is difficult to get rid of the obamacare because of all the different taxes and to make sure the insurance system doesn t collapse. while they want to get rid of the health care law as soon as possible the process could take not only weeks but months. as you are talking you should mention that senator sessions as you can see on our screen is still being grilled, if you will, on capitol hill. his hearing started at 9:30. it has been quite a long time. it is going to go through tomorrow. talk to me about how the transition is preparing not only senator session but the other nominees, if you will, for four cab for cabinet position. they are doing mock hearings. they are trying to get them prepared for a myriad of questions from democrats, trying to find a way to make them as non-controversial as they possibly can be? that s exactly right, katie. senator sessions because he is a member of the club in congress s a member of the senate, he hasn t had as extensive preparations or concerns. of course he has gotten ready for these hearings but he is seen as someone who in spite of his report, quite conservative by all accounts, from both parties, he will be likely confirmed even as there are some protests from democrats. other nominees on the agenda, such as rex tillerson, the oil executive, former head of exxonmobil they are getting much more training. tillerson has been media savvy during his career. he has a large public profile as a major executive at a global corporation but it s different here at this stage. tomorrow we have donald trump s press conference. we also have news that jared kushner is going to be a senior adviser, that s his daughter ivanka s husband. a ton of news coming out of the trump transition. there will continue to be i suspect in the days to come. stay with user, robert costa joining us from the hill. next, president obama s last address to the nation in just hours before donald trump becomes america s 45th commander in chief. this is humira. this is humira helping to relieve my pain and protect my joints from further damage. this is humira helping me go further. humira works for many adults. it targets and helps to block a specific source of inflammation that contributes to ra symptoms. humira has been clinically studied for over 18 years. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened, as have blood, liver and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you ve been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you ve had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don t start humira if you have an infection. ready for a new chapter? talk to your rheumatologist. this is humira at work. confirmations of an attorney general in modern times. because usually you have got a president with long public service experience. you know where he stands on voting rights, civil rights, criminal justice. not donald trump. nor has he ever dealt with an attorney general before. so what you have seen is these senators trying to get sessions essentially to agree to certain precedents serving a president who delights in breaking traditions and precedents so they will have some assurance on what is going to happen. let s talk about president obama. he gives his final address tonight. going back home to chicago essentially trying to recapture a lib of that grant park feeling he had back in 2008 when he accepted the presidency. talk to me about what you expect to hear from him. and where will this rank in terms of presidential farewells? i think what we will hear is some prompting to people like me, historians, what we should think and write about barack obama in the future. we had farewell addresses from truman and eisenhower and reagan. these were all people along the years. barack obama presumably has decades ahead in his career. presumably we ll hear him say this is what i think i have done and this is why it s relevant to the country in the future. we should also note that the hearing with fbi director james comey has now ended. stay here on mbz to watch complete coverage of president obama s final address. also complete coverage of all of the hearing news we re coming out of today. ahead of the president s speech you can watch all of these different shows on mbz and nbc. and lester holt of nbc nightly news with sit down with president obama exclusively. you can watch that conversation friday night on nbc. check your local listings. that does it for this hour of mbz live. kate snow picks thiks up right now. we have a lot to cover this
national republican party to be clear, in context, there s a whole bunch of problems that the trump dpan has for the republican party. there s a new poll that puts donald trump nationwide 14 points behind hillary clinton. 14 points behind? now, that is not the only poll in the world, right? there s another national poll out also tonight from fox news that says he s only 3 points behind hillary clinton. we ll be talking later on in the show with an expert about how to read the various polls right now. how to know what s right, especially when you ve got results like these that are so disparate. in either case 13 points behind or 3 points behind, he is still behind. the headwinds seem very clear right now. tonight at fivethirtyeight.com they re reading those headwinds for the presidential race and looking at the senate polls. fivethirtyeight is giving the republican party a 68% chance of losing control of the united states senate this year. so that is just one of the problems that it appears the donald trump candidacy has created for the republican party. here s another new one that i think nobody s been talking about thus far at the national level but this could be really important. today the national conference of state legislatures said that they re watching for party control to potentially flip this year in 11 state senates and in 7 state assemblies. in the vast majority of those they expect to flip they are republican controlled now, which means if they flip, they re ready to flip to democrat, if the now expected blue wave comes in just at the right time and the right way. that s another part of the bad news that the republican party i think can largely blame on the presidential candidacy of donald trump. so i get that. but what we reported here on monday night that has now all of a sudden come to fruition as truly bad news for the republican party brought upon them by donald trump, it s a very specific thing. it s something that leading republicans are tearing their hair about tonight. and it is having to do with this. several of these signs were reported at polling places in newark s north ward. republican poll watcher, some of them off-duty policemen wearing guns and arm bands were also near the polls. it was all part of the national ballot security task force set up by the republican national and state committees to guard against vote fraud. but democrats charge it was a scare campaign to intimidate voters primarily in minority neighborhoods. this was 1981, the new jersey governor s race that year. we reported on this monday night. this is the case where the national republican party got involved in that gubernatorial election. they flew in basically a goon squad of national operatives on election day and these guys flooded into minority precincts as basically vigilante poll watchers. governor s race in new jersey was going to be close that year. this group from the rnc decided they wanted to keep the vote down, so in trenton, camden, newark, they put up these big warning, warning, warning signs telling people that these voting locations would be patrolled by the ballot security task force and they brought in off-duty cops and off-duty sheriffs deputies who in many cases wore guns on their hips and these guys put on these hooptie ballot security forces arm bands which made them look quasiofficial, then they physically patrolled the voting sites in dozens of precincts that had mostly minority voters. if you did call the phone number that was listed on the big warning signs because you wanted to collect their thousand dollar reward for voter fraud, the 1-800 number reportedly went directly to the republican national committee headquarters at the time. so there was no obfuscating this. it was straight up an rnc op. and it worked. the republican won the governor s race that year in new jersey by a tiny, tiny fraction. both parties at the time claimed that this ballot security task force stunt is how they did it. these armed guys in semiofficial looking arm bands stomping around minority neighborhoods. both parties claimed at the time that was probably enough to make a difference in that race. so for the short-term political calculation that op worked for the republican party, but for the long-term that was a bad move because they re still living with the consequences of what they did there and the fact they got caught for it. because the democratic party sued them over what they did in new jersey that year and the democrats won. and now 35 years later the republican party is still trying to get out from under the legal restrictions that were placed on them because of them getting caught and losing that case. and that is the problem that donald trump has now gotten the national republican party into tonight. in that news footage from that time in 1981, you saw those arm bands that the ballot security task force wore? you could go to a website called stop the steel or another called vote protectors, they directed you to the same place. if you went to those websites until tonight, you could use something called an i.d. badge generator. you enter your details and print out effectively this year s version of the republican party ballot security task force. this year in 2016, this is the badge you get if you use that thing onhine. a vote protector semiofficial looking i.d. badge. that s the picture there and the name of a reporter from the huffington post on the left. she also added in joe schmo, not a real person and a picture of the frog racist trump character from online to show that you can enter anybody s photo and anybody s name and get one of these badges. makes you look quasilegit, right? back in the day when they got in trouble for it in new jersey, the republicans ballot security task force targeted 75 different minority heavy precincts. this year the pro trump vigilante effort. the forces using the fake i.d. badges, online tutorials teaching people to videotape and livestream video of voters at their polling places. this year they haven t pick just three minority heavy cities in one state. this year the effort is targeting minority heavy cities in swing states, cleveland, ohio, detroit, michigan, philly, las vegas, milwaukee, ft. lauderdale, richmond, virginia, fayetteville and charlotte, north carolina. these are parallel efforts, right? what the republicans got caught for in 1981 was organizing these supposed poll watching intimidation schemes, specifically in minority-heavy areas. what s that list look like to you for 2016? right. they only did it in new jersey in 1981, now they re all over the map. but you see the theme there. also a key element of the intimidation back in the day that they got caught for was that they used off-duty law enforcement. that helped both in terms of you know, these intimidating ballot security task force personnel having firearms. they re off-duty cops, off-duty sheriff sheriffs. they had firearms. that added a quasiofficial character to it. random citizens can still be intimidating on their own whether or not they re armed. but when you get law enforcement to do it, that s like the gold standard. we have a lot of law enforcement people working that day. we re hiring a lot of people. we re putting a lot of law enforcement. we re going to watch pennsylvania very quickly. we re going to watch pennsylvania go down to certain areas and watch and study and make sure other people don t come in and vote five times. let me just tell you, i looked all over pennsylvania. and i m studying it. and we have some great people here. some great leaders here of the republican party. they re very concerned about that. and that s the way we can lose the state. we have to call up law enforcement and we have to have the sheriffs and the police chiefs and everybody watching because if we get cheated out of this election, if we get cheated out of a win in pennsylvania, which is such a vital state, especially when i know what s happening here, folks. i know. she can t beat what s happening here. the only way they can beat it, in my opinion and i mean this 100% if in certain sections of the state they cheat. okay? so i hope you people can sort of not just vote on the 8th. go around and look and wam other po watch other polling places. you guys go make sure. you guys go watch. we have a lot of law enforcement. we have to call up law enforcement, we have a lot of law enforcement people working that day. we re hiring a lot of people. we re putting out a lot of law enforcement. a lot of observers of this election, journalists and just regular citizens have been a little ubbed out by the campaign. not just saying the election is rigged, it s being stolen but telling his supporters to go out and do this vigilante poll watching this swing state cities in particular. and when i say watch, you know what i m talking about, right? you know what i m talking about. take a look at philadelphia, what s been going on. take a look at chicago, st. louis. it s not been a subtle thing. people have been ubbed out about it when trump has been calling for people, you know what i mean, go out and watch in these cities. but listen to what he s saying there about the getting law enforcement out there to do the watching. i mean, beyond the ick factor of what he s been doing, the fact that this just seems a little sketchy to a lot of people, but beyond that there is this now plainly observable fact and legally important fact that what the trump campaign seems to be ginning up for election day this year is really a carbon copy of what the republican party did back in 1981 with their arm bands and their off-duty cops and their targeting minority districts. that s what they did in 1981 in new jersey. that s very clearly exactly what they are trying to do now, targeting minority districts, having off-duty law enforcement show up. right? identifying themselves as semiofficial officials of some kind. right? it s an exact parallel to what they did in 1981 in new jersey. that s not just an interesting parallel in history. it s now a huge, huge legal problem for the republican party. don t just take it from me. take it from the man who for many years was the top lawyer in the republican party. that s a huge problem for the republican party. the republican national committee is under a consent decree that severely limits its election day activities because of some actions back in the 80s. if they prosecute that the consent degree due to come off next year will not come off. the rnc is very eager to have that consent decree come off next year when it expires. this activity i can promise you will cause the democrats to go back into court to try to extend it. ding. that was republican lawyer ben ginsberg warning after the last debate that what the trump campaign and republicans were threatening in terms of this poll watching effort that trump keeps talking about out on the stump, he was saying that is a clear and present danger to the republican party because when they got in trouble for that with the court, they ended up signing a consent degree that prohibits them from doing any poll watching like this whatsoever because of their terrible history with this stuff. the republican national committee is banned from any election day poll watching stuff at all that in any way targets minority districts. they ve been banned, legally banned from doing that stuff since the 1980s. and it s really important to them that they follow what they are legally bound to follow here because that consent decree restricts what they re allowed to do and that is finally due to expire next year. the only way it won t expire is if the court finds the republicans are violating it, that they are doing racist poll watching again in defiance of the court in which case that consent decree won t expire next year, it will get extended for another, oh, eight years or so. ben ginsberg on our air sounded the alarm last week that the trump campaign was edging up against a legal line. we reported on monday in the activities very much looked like they are violating this order with the consent decree, then last night huffington post reported that the online training for donald trump poll watchers, for them to learn how they can livestream and videotape people while they were voting. and here s where you go online to down load your fake, semiofficial looking badge that defines you as a vote protector. and now tonight it s happened. the democratic party has just filed papers in court in new jersey asking that court to hold the rnc in violation of that ancient consent decree to which they are still legally bound. they re asking the court to stop the rnc from helping the trump campaign organize these poll watch voter intimidation efforts in minority areas around the country. they re asking that the consent decree should be extended since they say the republican party is in violation of this consent decr decree, democrats say it should be extended another eight years until 2025. so those papers were filed in federal court tonight. i told you that donald trump was creating a big problem for the republican party here. this is going to prove to be a fascinating new test of whether or not the republican party thinks it is in its interests to officially try to dump him in some way ahead of this election that he really looks like he s going to lose anyway. we re told by election law experts tonight including rick hazen from the university of california irvine, we re told that this case, now that it s been filed, it may hinge on whether or not the republican party can tell the court that they re totally divorced from donald trump, that anything highways happening by trump supporters, that anything that donald trump is asking him supporters to do, anything happening from the point of view of the trump/pence campaign, that has nothing to do with the rnc. he s not an agent of the rnc. they can t be judged by his behavior, held accountable for it. that may be the only way the republican party can legally save their skins on this. we re also told to expect that the court may act very fast on this case given that the election is two weeks away. one of the things the democrats are asking for is for the federal court to immediately step in and stop these poll watching efforts that trump and pence continue to try to organize. we re further told that if the court does move on this case quickly because of the timing, because of the stakes, this may rocket quickly right to the united states supreme court. as the republican party tries to stop donald trump from burying them once again in a hole that they have spent 35 years trying to dig themselves out of. now, i should tell you, we reached out to the rnc for comment on this tonight after this filing went in. this is exactly what they told us. quote, the filing is completely meritless. just as in all prior elections in which the consent decree was in effect the rnc strictly abides by the consent decree and does not take part directly or indirectly in any efforts to prevent or remedy vote fraud. nor do we coordinate with the trump campaign or any other campaign or party organization in any tefrts they may make in this area. the rnc remains focus on getting out the vote. part of the reason ben ginsberg said that he could guarantee the democratic party was going to file this motion tonight in federal court is because the trump campaign was bragging, they re bragging to reporters and bragging on the stump, bragging in interviews that they were working with the rnc, working with the republican party up and down the ballot, working with the national republican party, working with the state parties, working with the local parties on this effort to protect the integrity of the vote. watch those polls. they ve been bragging that they re working with the rnc on this. the rnc in this stam telling us they do not coordinate with the trump campaign in any efforts to prevent of remedy vote fraud. in order to save the republican party on this, they re going to have to divorce themselves from donald trump. i wonder if they ll think it s worth it? the candidacy of donald trump for president of the united states has not been a gift to the republican party this year. but on a night like this, with this much at stake for the party, this thing they ve been trying to defeat for 35 years and him plainly not caring about it at all, what does he care if the republican party is still stuck he doesn t care. it s not going to affect him after this. the republican party s got to be looking at these court filings and looking at this guy thinking, what else can this guy do to us? i don t know what s going to happen here, but watch this to move quickly in federal court in new jersey. watch this space. my business was built with passion. but i keep it growing by mg every dollar count. that s why i have the sparcash 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[smokey whistling a tune] i guessing smokey liked that idea. 20 years ago exactly, 13 days out before the election that year in 1996, senator bob dole was not just losing in the polls, he was getting eaten alive. in the three-way race between president clinton, senator dole and ross perot, dole was behind clinton by a margin of something like 17 points at this point in the race. and the republican party saw what was coming. the party leadership basically gave up on dole altogether. they told their down-ballot candidates to save themselves. feel free to distance yourself from the top of the ticket. and so 20 years ago, 13 days before that election, just as we re 13 days before this one now, 20 years ago bob dole hatched a plan. he did something no one expected. good evening. it appeared to be an act of desperation. bob dole way behind in the polls sent an emissary to ask ross perot if he would get out of the race and endorse him. unfortunately for dole, it backfire. it gave perot an opportunity to belittle the dole campaign. dole sent his campaign manager to perot and perot dismissed his request out of hand, it was one more bad piece one for piece of bad news for the republican candidate. david bloom is with him tonight as he s been all during this campaign. bob dole not a happy man tonight. tom, unhappy is putting it mildly. a top dole aide said this was a hail mary pass and when it failed and the story quickly leaked dole was angry and it showed. spurned by ross perot and admittedly frustrated bob dole lashed out today at voters wake up, america. at president clinton s ethics. this is a disgrace. and especially at the liberal media who dole blamed for trying to engineer his defeat. we need the media to tell the american people the truth and the truth is that bill clinton ought to be voted out of office in a landslide. in washington, ross perot called dole s maneuver weird and totalli totally inconsequential. some called dole desperate. and some admitted to being stunned and disappointed that dole would even try to court perot. but this afternoon in a huge rally in front of alabama state capitol, dole, former governor george wallace looking on, focused instead on questions of presidential character. is there no honor in this administration or in this white house? don t inflict this on america for four more years. the problem for dole is that he s having to spend much of this week campaigning in what should be core republican states already, florida, texas and alabama. that was the bob dole campaign 13 days out from the 1996 election. that hail mary overture to ross perot. and ross perot swatting it down and leaking it. and we are also now 13 days out from our presidential election this year. it is a fair point there at the end of that package from nbc that to note that bob dole, one of the ways you can really tell he was in trouble was the fact that he was having to campaign in deep red states like alabama. republican leaders were abandoning bob dole all over the country, but he did go to alabama in the waning days where he at least got former segregationist jormg wallace to rally with him. really, bob dole? why did you do that? this year it s not alabama where pence and trump are campaigning. it s utah. that s where republican vice presidential nominee mike pence held a campaign rally tonight in salt lake city, utah. tomorrow mike pence will be in nebraska. a second deep red state that republicans have not lost since 1964 and where they should never have to campaign. now, in the parallels aren t exactly the same. luckily for the trump campaign, there is no ross perot to humiliate the republican candidate this year, right? the trump campaign doesn t stand the risk of asking mr. perot to please drop out of the presidential race only to have it backfire, have perot call it weird and get, you know, ridiculed for it. the closest thing the trump campaign has this year the a third party challenger is not ross perot, it s probably the libertarian ticket of gary jo johnson and bill weld. today well, now bill weld has just endorsed in the other direction, although he s being a little coy about it. at a press conference bill weld released a statement saying if you re deciding between the two major party candidates don t vote for donald trump. not in my lifetime has there been a candidate for president who actually makes me fear for the ultimate well-being of the country, a candidate who might in fact put at risk the solid foundation of america that allows us to endure even ill-advised policies and the normal ebb and flow of politics. i would like to address myself to those who are torn. i have come to believe if donald trump were elected president he would not be able to stand up to pressure and criticism without becoming unhinged and unable to perform competently the duties of his office, donald trump is not stable, donald trump should not, cannot and must not be elected president of the united states. but beyond that, no further guidance from the libertarian vice presidential candidate bill weld. his advice is if you re choosing between two major party candidates, don t choose that one. don t choose trump. but you can do the math yourself to figure out what you should do instead. i m not endorsing hillary clinton, but you can figure it out. that s actually nicer than what ross perot did to bob dole in 1996. trump and pence should maybe be happy with that. before taking his team to e r the first time. gilman: go get it, marcus. go get it. .coach gilman used his cash rewards credit card from bank of america to earn 1%asck everhere, every time. places like the batting cas. [ crowd cheers ] 2% back at grocery stores and now atholesale clubs. and 3% back on gas. which helped him give his ayers somethg extra. the cash rewards credit card from bank of america. more cash back for the things you buy most. cer: sir, go ahead and ep out of the vehicle fore. shawn: ye sir. bud: see ya, buddy. today, shawn s got a hearing,e ll see how it go. good luck! so, it turns out buzzed driving and drunk driving, they re the same thing and it costs around $10,000. so not wtht. intercom: the library [ kis now closing.] ok kid, closing up. goodnight. the hardest part about homework shouldn t be figuring out where to do it. through internet essentials, comcast has connected over 3 million people in need to low-cost internet at home. welcome to a brighter future. comcast. zblrkts when you woke up this morning and checked your phone or whatever it is you look at first thing to get your news, you probably saw a headline like this one declaring that the polls are tightening between hillary clinton and donald trump. we have seen some recent evidence of that. a bloomberg poll of florida voters today showed donald trump actually up by two points in florida. most other florida polls have shown hillary clinton very consistently ahead in that state. we also have the nbc wall street journal marist poll today showing donald trump tied with hillary clinton in nevada. the early voting numbers for trump in nevada have looked terrible, but they re tied in the latest poll out of that state. then, as i mentioned at the top of the show, there was no national polling. there was this new ap national poll that s out tonight that puts donald trump nationwide, 14 points behind hillary clinton. trump is only at 37% in this new national poll that just came out tonight from the ap. for a little perspective on that, go back to 1984 when walter mondale only took one state in the whole election that year. if donald trump really is at 37% right now, which is what he s at in this new ap national poll that just came out, if he s really at 37%, then donald trump right now is polling 4 points worse than mondale did in this electoral scenario. which is finito, right? just as we were digesting that mammoth new lead in that ap poll with trump down by 14 points, just as we were digesting that we got another poll from fox news. fox news is editorially conservative but their polling is for real. yes, hillary clinton is leading nationally by only by 3 points. and that s in a poll with a 2 1/2-point margin of error. so these winning nationwide by 14 points, she s winning nationwide by 3 points. i mean, obviously, it all comes down to individual states, but still i m popping numbers from the ap and fox today and ones that don t make much sense together. how should we make sense of these numbers? where exactly are we at right now? we ve got expert help on that, next. honey.our turn?urn? ye, we go left right here (woman vo) great adventures are still out there. we ll find them in our subaru outback. (avo) love. it s whamakes a subaru, a subaru. 80% try to eat healthy, yet up to 90% fahort in gettingey nutrients from food alone. let s do more. add one a day men s gummies. complete with key nutrients plus b vitamins to help convert food intfuel. [dance music playing] woman: los like s done. [reco scratch] cer: d l salmonella get nkwith yo chicken. will get a foodborne illness this year. u can sethese microbes, but they might be there. so, learn the right temperae to cook each type of meat. ke your family safe at foodsafety.gov. they are going crazy because they put out these phony polls and then the real polls come out. so today bloomberg has a poll, they re very disappointed. trump is up in florida by two points. they re very disappointed. these crooked pollsters. got their thumb on this. joining us is a senior political writer for fivethirtyeight.com. a young man we ve been increasingly turning to for poll interpretation help. thanks for being here. pleasure. what do you make of the ap national poll coming out tonight showing clinton with a 14-point lead right before fox comes out with a national poll showing her with a 3-point lead? how do we absorb that information responsibly as humans in. i would say what i always say and that s average them. you have to keep in mind we re getting 50, 60, 70 polls day now. survey monkey released all these polls on the state level. you ll have a normal curve, some on the left part, some on the right part. the fox news poll was on the left part and the ap poll from the right part. and they had a poll from abc news this morning which had her up about 9 points. don t believe anything that looks too much unlike the other things you re seeing? essentially that s right. if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. or too bad to be true. depending on your angle. based on the way you look at the polls and your data and your systems for absorbing it responsibly, do you feel that the race is tightening a bit right now? if it s tightening, it s barely tightening. the last model had hillary clinton with a s7-point lead no it s 6.3. if donald trump continues to tighten that with two weeks remaining he won t be able to catch hillary clinton. unless he tightens the race at a faster pace. part of that time calculation is how many votes have been cast already. well over 10 million votes cast already. is there anything that tells you that you re watching in particular that s particularly presiptive or illuminating in terms of the early vote? you have to be very careful because some states changed the way. in nevada, a reporter out there will tell you that the trends look the same as in 2012 and when hillary clinton carried that state sorry, barack obama carried that state by five percentage points. it looks different for hillary clinton but overall be careful about reading too much into the early vote. any one state you re looking at, whether polling or early voting numbers that you feel like you re counting on as a barometer in terms of how the state will go? one is florida and the other is pennsylvania. donald trump must win in florida and hillary clinton must win in pennsylvania. there were three other polls today that had him down by three percentage points. that s very bad news for him in that state. if you could only look at two states per day from here on out, you d look at florida and pennsylvania. right. senior political writer for fithirtyeight, thank you for being here. using 60,000 points from my chase ink card i boug all the frawork. wire. anplan need to givey shop. a face. no one will forget. e wh the power of poin can do for your business. learn mo at chase.com/ink i m one unlucky guy. the chance of being involved in a robry is 1 in 757. the chances of being struck by lightning. [thunder] [cous] 1 in 750,000. [ding] woman on p.a.: please ften your seatbelts for unexpected rbulence. annncer: the chances of being a victim in an airline crash, 1 in 29 million. the chances of bng involved in a car cra are far great than lightning strikes and plane crashes. and if you are texting while driving, your risk of crash increases 23times. now, i may be an unluc guy, but i d tave to be part of thastatistic, and neither do you. drive responsibly. independents, then finally the pirates. the pirate party of hackers and anarchists whoever else just feels like being a pirate. they re on course to win next week in the parliamentary elections in iceland even over the parties named bright future and regeneration. i m not jealous exactly, i m just thinking maybe we could aim a little higher when naming our own parties there. more from our own partially pirated election straight ahead. i love that my shop is parof the morning ritualround here. people rely on that first cup ani wodn t want to mess with that. t when (my) ck pain got bad, i coul sleep. had trouble getting there on time. then i found aleve pm. aleve pm is the only one to combine a slp aid plus the 12 hour strength of aleve. look up at a new dada hey guys! now i m back. aleve pm fora better. now i m back. teachers, firefighters and nurss support prop 51. prop 51 repairs older schools and removes dangerous lead paint and pipes ensuring classrooms are safe for all students. for safe schools vote yes on 51. teachers, nurses and firefightes support prop 51. prop 51 will upgrade libraries, science labs, and classroom technology and relieve school overcrowding creating more opportunity . . . and better learning for students help students succeed vote yes on 51. all right. the very first question in the last debate between the two presidential candidates was an open-ended question about the supreme court. where do you want to see the supreme court take this country? and hillary clinton went first. she responded in a sort of tight direct way. she said she wanted a supreme court that stood up for the people against powerful interests that otherwise get their way. she wants the court to uphold row v. wage and uphold major equality. she wants the court to overturn citizens united to get dark money out of politics. it was just title down the line name check several decisions. she was first. then the moderator turned the same question to donald trump. where do you want to see the court take the country. how in your view should the constitution be interpreted? and donald trump s answer was that there s this one justice on the supreme court who said a bad thing about me once and that was terrible. and if you think i m being hyperbolic, i understand, you think i m being hyperbolic. i m not, though. that s exactly where i had went right off the bat in response to an open-ended question about the supreme court. secretary clinton, thank you. mr. trump, same question. where do you want to see the court take the country and how do you believe the constitution should be interpreted? well, first of all, it s great to be with you and thank you, everybody. the supreme court, it s what it s all about. our country is so, so it s just so impair ittive that we have the right justices. something happened recently where justice ginsburg made some very, very inappropriate statements toward me and toward a tremendous number of people, many, many millions of people that i represent. and she was forced to apologyize and apologize she did, but these were statements that never should have been made. donald trump, what s your view of the importance and the proper role of the united states supreme court, thank you for being here, justice ginsburg once said a mean thing about me, isn t that terrible? but enough about me. what do you think about me. that was just a weird moment to start the very last debate. right off the top, first question, what s important about the supreme court is something one justice once said about donald trump. on the one hand that was just a fantastic display of ignorant narcissism, right? hey, the supreme court isn t about you. but it s also possible that it was more than that as well. because justice ruth bader ginsburg having once said a critical thing about donald trump really isn t the most important thing everybody needs to know about the supreme court of the united states unless, unless the supreme court of the united states on which she sits is going to be called on to decide the presidential election between hillary clinton and donald trump. right now there are only eight justices on the supreme court since justice scalia died. four of the remaining justices were appointed by democrats, four were appointed by republicans. for more than seven months now republicans in the senate have refused to even consider plb b president obama s nominee for the ninth seat on the court. and if the supreme court deadlocks in a 4-4 tie, they can t rule. i mean, if hypothetically clinton versus trump goes through a contested recount situation in one state like george w. bush versus al gore did and if that happens and if the supreme court was narrowly divided like they were in bush versus gore, we wouldn t have the option this year of getting a 5-4 ruling. if the justices broke on partisan lines, we would, in fact, get a 4-4 ruling and that would mean they could not issue a ruling to decide about the contested recount in whatever state was contested. and so some random lower court or some board of elections decree in some backwater would be left to decide 40 wwho was president of the united states. then hopefully, fingers crossed, hopefully we d all decide we d go along with it because some partisan elected state judge said who the president should be so the whole country and the whole world would all salute and go along with it for four years, hopefully? just a nightmare a nightmare sc right, for the country. a nightmare scenario for the legitimacy of the presidency. a contested election and a 4-4 tie on the supreme court. that means it can t be nationally resolved. but you know what? nobody ever said you needed to have five votes to have a supreme court majority. right now it s an even number on the court. eight justices with a 4-4 ideological split, which could conceivably lead to a 4-4 tie. but if one of the justices was pressured into recusing herself, then the court would be 4-3, not 4-4. and 4-3 is not a tie. so if one justice could be persuaded to recuse from a case involving a contested presidential election, then a closely divided supreme court could decide a contested election. it would just be a 4-3 ruling. and if justice ginsburg were the recusal, it would be a republican majority 4-3 split, donald trump win. justice ginsburg made some very, very inappropriate statements toward me. when donald trump answered a question what is important about the supreme court and he immediately answered by attacking justice ginsburg for something critical she once said about him, i m not saying that wasn t a shocking display of raw narcissistic self absorption in terms of what s important about the supreme court. but it also may have been him laying the groundwork how he would contest the election if he can get it close enough or wild enough of that the election results somehow winds up in the courts. he is already laying the groundwork for demanding justice ginsburg s recusal. meanwhile, president obama s nominee to fill the vacant seat on the court has been weight 7 1/2 months since the president nominated him while republicans won t give him so much as a single hearing. will that nominee, merrick garland still be the nominee for the supreme court if hillary clinton is elected in two weeks? or will she pick her own nominee once she is sworn in january? if clinton does win, will republicans suddenly change their mind about merrick garland and decide they want to confirm him after all, right after the election, so they can fill that seat with a known quantity before the new president clinton has a chance to pick somebody new for the bench? and in that instance, clinton s running mate, vice president-elect tim kaine, he would still be in the senate and able to cast a vote. how would he vote if that happened? if the senate goes democrat in november, and if you and hillary clinton win on november 8th, the republican-controlled senate will have the opportunity in the lame duck to change their mind about merrick garland. yeah. to try to approve him because they would worry that somebody more liberal would come along. or 20 years younger. yeah. even if it was the same person 20 years younger, i don t know if i want that. if that happen, and that s not outside the realm of possibility, president obama would then have the opportunity to withdraw the nomination in deference to president-elect clinton. do you think president-elect clinton at this point would want merrick garland to be the nominee? what she pick somebody new? what would you want? i haven t talked to hillary about it. i have to tell you, this is in criminal of the republicans. mitch mcconnell has been very unequivocal, we re not take him up. we re not taking him up. but the prospect of seeing an election, boy, maybe we should, they will make that call. if he comes up for a vote in the senate, i m voting for him. because he so clearly gets over the hurdle of the fitness and character test that is supposed to be the test for advise and consent. but, you know, if the session ends and he is not approved, you know, then hillary should appoint the person that she thinks meets her criteria for being on the supreme court. should she consider merrick garland? of course. that is who president obama said this meets my criteria. hillary will be the president. it s not bill clinton term 3, and it s not barack obama term 3. it s hillary clinton term 1. and she should make the decision what she thinks is her criteri for that vacancy. tim kaine speaking with me last night about whether or not hillary clinton is going to renominate president obama s pick for the supreme court, merrick garland if she is elected president in two weeks. no one, including clinton herself or kaine here last night or anybody associated with the clinton campaign, nobody is clearly stating that she would pick someone different than merrick garland if she is elected. i think, just my take from the way they all talk about it, though, that it s fairly reasonable to expect now that she would pick somebody other than merrick garland. if she is elected. and that s going to be really interesting. because if that happens, president obama is going to be in this position after the election where the republican-controlled senate really might all of the sudden be willing to approve merrick garland, his supreme court nominee. and at that point president obama will have to consider whether he wants to have his nominee approved to sit on the supreme court or whether he instead would withdraw that nomination so hillary clinton would be free to pick her own choice when she is sworn in january. and i think i know what president obama would do in that instance. but are you sure? the supreme court and the presidency are always intertwined. this year it s starting to feel less like that traditional intertwining. it s starting to feel more like they re choking each other out. he is the steward of the office. part of our inheritance is our democratic system. that s what the office of the president of the united states is about. and when it s undermined by a candidate for the presidency, we have to understand how cancerous that is. thatchism did not rise in the 30s because it was strong, but because democracy was weak. we need to understand that. 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[applause] woan: ahh. ndistit corsation] announc: a full life measurd seats starts with the right es early on. car crashes are a leading killeof children 1 t13. learn how to prevent deaths aninjuries by using the right car seat for your child s age and size. they offer alaim-freesurce smardiscount. because sa driversost less to insur which ses money. and en they ve, you sa. that s auto and home insance for the modernorld. esurance, an allstate mpany. click or cal ance ds auto insurance a ter way. like their photo claims tool. it helps stle your claim money. qukly,which saves times and when they sa, you save. that s autand homeurance for the modernrnorld. esurancean allstate compan click or call. and something amazing ppens. th s our inspiration f fancy feast medleys. wild saln primaver tastes amazing. gfancy feast medley at the top of the show tonight, we broke the news that the democratic party has filed motions in a federal court in new jersey over the sort of vigilante poll watching stuff that the trump campaign has been threatening for election day. donald trump, mike pence, and some of their supporters have been talking about an effort to flood trump supporters into cities in swing states, particularly minority heavy swing states, cities in various swing states to watch the vote in those places. to make sure that the vote isn t stolen. it s an inchoate effort. there has been some unusual stuff, including trump talking about including law enforcement to be part of that effort. and until last night when the huffington post started asking questions about it, there was apparently an online effort to sign people up for this vigilante approach of poll watching, an effort that included an online forum where people could printout their own semi official looking badge to make themselves look like they had a reason to be at poll watching places while they videotaped people while they were voting. and reported on whatever was happening there. tonight we reported that the democratic party has filed papers in court in federal court in new jersey, saying that the republican party is in violation of a on sent decree that they ve
we saw some of that flooding all over the roadways. now we re talking about major highways, i-10 south of here. 69 is closed. beaumont becoming its own mini island, and in very many places across jefferson county, you have islands just trying to get help to them, because there are so many rivers that are passing through. rivers that used to be streamtr like this street behind me. you see the water coming off the street there. that s traveling into a drainage ditch, and this is the problem. we just saw a man try to cross the drainage ditch. he thought it was a street. he was almost washed away before our eyes. he was able to swim right back up before the current took him away. that is why police are saying here in southeast, texas, this is not over by any means. the brunt of the storm may be head thing way right now. drew griffin in beaumont. emergency services and possible rescues to go into eastern parts of texas into western louisiana. we thought new orleans was going to have rain, four to six inches overnight. they did not see it. they were sandbagging in plaquemines parish, they re not going to need that. it picks up with speed and mov s s out. that s the best news. the problem again is going to be beaumont, into lake charles, parts of louisiana could see significant rainfall, possibly 10, 12 inches or more in the next 24 hours. so this is where the concern is now coming next. we ve been hearing a lot about the levy today. how bad is the levy situation in houston? could be really bad. here is houston. it s hard to see. we ll go out to the west. we have two reservoirs right now. the first one, after course, the addicks holds 65 billion gallons of water. if you look at the communities around this. we ve had 100 subdivisions that have been evacuated. we ve got over 3200 homes flooded. at the apex, it s 1400 feet. they re looking to have water overlap that by a foot. the problem is, all the colors you see, the flood waters that are flooding all the communities, and it continues, community after community. 3200 homes. but i ve got to show you this. this really breaks it down and gives you a good indication how bad the problem is. metro houston, you can see these two areas in green. these are mainly dry areas. authorities made a gutsy call earlier in the week to release water into the buffalo bayou, even though it was receding. they knew the water levels would rise high and above where they were. this is more of a dog park. it s baseball fields. however, if you look at google street view, you get an idea of just how large of an area this is. john, this is now drowned by up to 30 feet of water. if this this is an earthen levy, not made of concrete. it cannot withstand the pressure day after day. if this gives, it will make this a colossal situation. it s hard to fathom how much water will run down to the east. that area behind tom covered in about 30 feet of water. these pictures we ve been showing you along with tom, are crews out and around houston and coastal texas. there s just water everywhere right now. every one of our teams seeing scenes like this. you can see the canoers on the water right there. no doubt trying to help people. before we saw airboats and out in beaumont, you saw people as well. they could get up to a foot of rain in the next 24 hours. this scene being played out again and again and again. so many of the people need to be rescued by boat. you need to have the right kind of boat. look how high the water is on those trees. look how high the water is on those signs. signs are six, seven feet tall and water is near the top of it. this is a neighborhood. this car is parked in what was a driveway. this is simply remarkable. we ve heard estimates that some 30% of harris county, where houston is, 30% of the county is covered by water. we re not talking about a couple inches. as you can see by these pictures right here. we re talking about feet upon feet upon feet. yes, the sun is now out in houston. the worst of the rain is now over. but a lot of the water has yet to crest. these reservoirs will continue to fill for some time. and when they let out, a lot of that water needs somewhere to go. a lot of it will go down through populated areas. so the danger, very, very real still for this area. one of the reasons why the mayor of houston has declared a curfew overnight. he doesn t want people out in the danger. he doesn t want any threats to property with so many homes evacuated. you re looking at the water. we ve seen a lot of water rescues. there s not way to get people out, that is by air. the rescues, the aviation, it is enormously challenging, because the bad weather is no weather to fly in, especially the helicopters. gosh, look at that car in the garage right there. these helicopter pilots have shown themselves to be extraordinary. cnn s brian todd joins us from the george bush international airport. you have some breaking news about a local chemical facility and the danger it may pose. what s the danger this? reporter: we have an update on that. there appears to be an emergency situation developing in crosby, texas, in harris county, the county houston is in. but this area is east of houston, in harris county, but leer the l near the liberty town. this plant makes peroxide. they are worried about their ability to cool some of the systems. they re concerned about some kind of a chain reaction that might cause a large fire or an explosion. so they had an 11-person ride-out team that was inside the facility to ride out hurricane harvey and the aftermath. they ve gotten all 11 of those people out. in addition, local fire and police are evacuating everyone with our 1.5 mile radius of that facility. so it s a fairly significant evacuation of everyone in and around the chemical it s a chemical facility that produces peroxide. so that could lead to a chain reaction and could be dangerous. they re not sure if there s imminent danger now, but because they cannot cool that plant right now, they re getting everyone out of there. we re watching rescue after rescue unfold. brian, i understand you went out on some air rescues earlier today. what did you see? reporter: that s right, john. this was the air marine operations of customs and border protection. very dedicated men and women flying these missions. we were with them on several missions today. these people pulled people out of the most flood ravaged neighborhoods in very dramatic fashion. in our black hawk, we hover next to another helicopter as a hoist is lowered. six people and a dog are lifted out. other victims rescued by hoist like this rescue on monday of four people. in one of those neighborhoods, we touched down in a liver of a parking lot that. we just landed in a heavily flooded neighborhood. they ve crammed everybody they can into this chopper. one 80-year-old victim told us there is waist high water in her house and she lost everything. she was evacuated by a boat, then by helicopter to there. what would you have done if they hadn t shown up? we would have had to have gone to the attic. they re lifesavers. reporter: these rescue operations are complicated by the fact that authorities here don t seem to have an accurate count of just how many people are still out there in immediate of rescue. how many people are still stranded. cnn has talked to authorities throughout this region about that. they simply can t give estimates on the number of people that need rescues. calls keep coming in and these operations have to keep adapting. the number keeps changing. every time they think they have one area contained, a new area no floods. brian todd, thanks so much. 360 s gary tuchman joins us from a neighborhood in southwest houston. gary? reporter: john, here in houston, the rain has stopped and the sun has come out for the first time in many days. that s good news. it also allows you to visualize more easily the ftorrents of water that have paralyzed the city. you can see people in the water who are helping to pull in boats. it s important to note that it s not just one or two or three different sections of houston that has flooding. it s the essential part of it. the north, the east, the west, and here in the south. it s been 96 hours since the hurricane entered the state of texas, and as we speak, the search still goes on for people in flood ravaged neighborhoods. rising water surrounds an upscale neighborhood in southwest houston. firefighters from the small town of limer, texas, have brought several boats. and joined by houston police officers and us. just a few minutes into the search, a woman opens her door and yells that she and her husband want to be taken out, but can t find their cat. brenda norwood and her husband steve have lived here for decades. they say it s never flooded before. a police officer spots their cat. what is his name moochie. come on out, moochie. reporter: there is little time to bring much else out of the house. pets and valuables are pretty much it. the home is heavily damaged. they hope they re able to come back soon. but for now, they board the fire department boat and evacuate like so many other houstonians. this neighborhood symbolizes how volatile the situation is. minutes later, another family makes it clear that they too want out. opening the door of their house, they don t want to wait for the water to get any higher. you okay? yeah, yeah. reporter: a father, mother, and daughter live here. they too say they ve never seen flooding on their street before. a little devastated. you know, we ll get by. reporter: word of the rescue boat s arrival brings others out of their houses with pets and belongings. this couple is engaged to be mare yesterday. and now, very grateful they re okay. but wondering what will happen next. yesterday morning, we were dry, and i really thought we were home free. a little devastated, but we ll get by. sounds like when reality meets resilience, gary. any idea how many rescues have taken place in houston overall? reporter: john, there s no way to officially calculate it. because there s so many different law enforcement bodies participating. right now, there s one happening as you can see. these people just came out of their houses. how are you folks doing? give me a thumbs up if you re okay. even the little baby give the thumbs up. this is happening all day. when you hear a number, 3,000, 4,000, we know it s way more than that. since we ve been standing here, we ve seen like 30 people come off this one street. civilians are participating in the rescue effort, too. they call them the texas navy. people bring their pickups and come to these neighborhoods and rescue people. they are truly heroes. every time we turn the camera on, we see more rescues all over that city. gary tuchman for us in houston tonight. thank you so much. as we continue to monitor the late developments throughout the program and tonight, we are going to seek with houston s police chief, the department has lost one of its own if the storm. and later, the president s visit. what he saw, what he said, and the reaction to his visit when 360 continues. each year sarah climbs 58,007 steps. that s the height of mount everest. because each day she chooses to take the stairs. at work, at home. even on the escalator. that can be hard on her lower body, so now she does it with dr. scholl s orthotics. clinically proven to relieve and prevent foot, knee or lower back pain, by reducing the shock and stress that travel up her body with every step she takes. so keep on climbing, sarah. you re killing it. dr. scholl s. born to move. tais really quite simple.est it comes in the mail, you pull out the tube and you spit in it, which is something southern girls are taught you re not supposed to do. you seal it and send it back and then you wait for your results. it s that simple. come on. s cuse me. mind if i sit here? 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(vo) when it really, really matters you need the best network and the best unlimited. now plans start at $40 per line for four lines. i ve been taking the stairs lately. you win, big guy. sorry, scuse me! oh, he looks so much more real on tv. yeah. over 75 years of savings and service. get your rate quote today. this is houston tonight. you can see rays of light. rescues are taking place everywhere we look. and reality, so much more work to do across that city. more than four feet of rain has fallen in houston. the convention center housing about 10,000 evacuees. it is getting full. the nearby toyota center will take some pressure off. people throughout the area are being changed like never before. you really get to know people during moments like the one houston is going through right now. really in big and small ways, character does come out. in this case, raw, immediate grieving for a fallen colleague. sergeant steve perez died answering the call to duty sunday morning. he was 60 years old, a 34-year veteran of the houston police department. a dive team recovered his body. the police chief of houston spoke about this, this afternoon. we called for our dive people. we even used one of our what do they call them in louisiana, god bless them. our american cajun navy. they helped us look for him. so it was too treacherous out there to go under and look for him. so we made the decision to leave officers there, waiting until the morning, because as much as we wanted to recover him last night, we could not put nor officers at risk. in addition to the loss of sergeant perez, many members of the houston police department are dealing with other strains. moments ago, houston s mayor include damaged homes indeed those of 200 houston police officers. the cheep joief joins us now by. let me express our condolences to you, and the members of the family of sergeant perperez. what do you want people to know about this 34-year veteran of the force? i want people to know this is a man that served 34 years old. while many would be retired, he had the heard of a servant. and he died doing what he loved to do best, which was to protect the people of this city. like i told his life, i don t think there s another way he would rather go if he knew the good lord was going to take him this week. there s a picture showing you and members of the police department holding an american flag. how are your officers holding up with the exhausting hours they re dealing with right now, the death of their beloved colleague, and the fact that their own families and own homes are in constant danger? i think moments like this define the heart of an organization, moments like this define individual officers, resiliency and their careers. they know that this is an event that s going to be talked about for generations to come. and i can t tell you enough about the collective heart of this organization. they shed some tears. they shed some blood. they ve shed a lot of sweat. they ve gone hungry. they ve gotten wet. i ve had officers in the same uniform for three days. but we re still here and we re not going to give up on our communities, just like they haven t given up on us. the scenes we ve been seeing hour after hour are unbelievable. and inspiring. what is your latest sense, though, of how many residents still need to be rescued, how many might be unaccounted for? well, we in our department have a couple hundred calls still pending. but we re hopeful that now that things are oepg up and we re getting more assets in theater, my biggest fear is what we re going to find once we go into secondary searches of these neighborhoods. right now, we re still doing a response to active calls for help. so our fear is what we re going to find once we start doing our secondary searches and our hearts are broken, because we ve seen so much destruction and so much suffering. but people thwe re going to con we re not going to stop. the sun did come out tonight. you could almost hear the cheer all over the country coming from houston when they caught the first glimpse of that. i do imagine it s going to pose a challenge for you in the coming days. when it stops raining, people are going to want to go home, if they can. but most people shouldn t even start trying yet, should they? no, they shouldn t. there s a lot of things that still have to be done. the water has not gone away from a lot of these infected neighborhoods. there are a lot of threats and hazards. until we declare the area safe to return, they should not go there. they should wait and they must wait until we can have an orderly return. i know it s frustrated and it s for their safety, and we urge people to be patient. lastly, there s a lot of tributaries and rivers upstream. a lot of water wicking ining i over to the gulf. we still don t know how much more water is coming our way. one reason you have to be so careful. chief acevedo, thank you for take thing time. please, our best to everyone on the force tonight. thank you very much. and to the chief s point, we re just hearing from officials saying between 9,000 and 10,000 people have been rescued in the region so far. as for the houston police department, men and women have rescued at least 3,000 people. next, we ll speak to a woman who lost six family members in the storm and how she s getting through this terrible ordeal. be. lease the 2017 rx 350 for $399 a month for 36 months. experience amazing at your lexus dealer. gloria always went big. so we helped her plan a memorial service that no one would soon forget. this one s for you, gloria. only a dignity memorial professional can celebrate a life like no other. find out how at sanfranciscodignity.com. the president had a chance today to see what some of you are seeing firsthand right now. he toured the destruction and oversaw the federal emergency response, while staying far away from the disaster area to avoid taking resources away from where they re needed most. jeff zeleny joins us from austin. jeff, what did the president have to say after he had a chance to visit? reporter: john, good evening. president trump, as he went along, had so many surpearltives, saying this is horrific, epic, the but he didn t seem to reach the empathetic mode. at times in corpus cristi, he invoked a campaign message. we love you. you are special. we re here to take care, and i want to thank you for coming out. we re going to get you back and operating immediately. thank you, everybody. what a crowd, what a turnout. reporter: what a crowd, what a turnout. that was sort of an interesting thing for the president to say. we know he likes his big crowds. but there s no question, i talked to people who spent the day with him, including the two senators from here, who said he walked away feeling the impact from this. they believe that will be helpful with the recovery and the government funding. do we know more about the president s man to return to the region this weekend? reporter: john, we do. the president is planning to come back on saturday, likely to visit houston. that s what the white house would like to do. but of course, it depends entirely on the situation on the ground there. also keeping an eye on louisiana, which is placing for flooding, as well. john, hanging over all this, the 12-year anniversary of katrina. as president bush was heading home from his vacation in crawford that year, president trump wants to act more urgently. there s no quick sort of results of that. so this is the beginning certainly, not the end of something that will be with president trump for the remainder of his term. jeff zeleny for us in austin. i think so many parts of texas would love to see the ground underneath the water. this is live pictures from beaumont, which still could see ten inches of rain overnight and into tomorrow. still very much in the danger zone. as we continue to watch harvey revisit areas already saturated, the stories are emerging and some are heartbreaking. four children, age 16, dominic, age 14, xavier was 8, and davy, just 6 years old, missing tonight, and presumed dead along with their great grand parents. they were fleeing the rising waters in a van in northeast houston. the driver said the water became too deep, the van began floating. he made it to dry land, the others did not. i spoke with his sister-in-law, virginia, the children s great aunt, earlier today. virginia, we re so sorry for your loss. i can t imagine what your family must be going through. how are you holding up? we re not holding up good. we re devastated. i can only imagine. walk us through what happened ye yesterday. i understand your brother-in-law was in the car, they were all trying to escape the rising water. what happened next? well, they were in the van, they were driving, and he said as soon as he got over the bridge and started making that turn, the current just lifted up the van and started pointing it towards into the water. it just took the van. and he had his window down. he managed to get out, and he tried to get around the van, but he couldn t because the current was too strong. he grabbed on to a tree limb and he was telling the kids to open the door, get out. and he said they couldn t get out. it was so fast. he said he couldn t do anything, that the van went into the water, and that was it. he was just left there hanging, and was there for he doesn t know how long. he felt like it was like 45 minutes or something, just hanging there. and then some guys came buy and they rescued him. how did you find out what happened? he actually called my husband, and my husband answered the phone, and my husband said he was like so you couldn t understand, he was like a robot like, they re gone. he says, what are you talking about? he said mom and dad, they re gone. he said where are my husband d phone, he was hysterical, screaming, no, no. i picked up the phone, i said tell me what happened. he said, they re gone. i said who s gone, what are you talking about? he goes, mom and dad, they re gone. i go, what happened? he said they were in the van. i said where s my babies. i said, they re gone, too. what are you talking about? they re dead, they drowned. i said no, you can t be telling me that. tell me where they are. he said, they re over there in the bayou. i said fregreen s bayou, where? he said right by the green river. i said, oh, my god, oh, my god. he goes, i m sorry, i m sorry. he just kept telling me he was sorry. he said i was trying to save all of them, i m sorry, i m sorry. and then i don t remember who hung up, because i was just screaming and crying. i didn t know what was going on after that. what have rescue workers been telling you? have they been able to locate the van? no, they couldn t see the van. i talked to the sheriff s department today, and they wanted me to know that he was so distraught when they found him hanging on that free limb. he was crying and telling us that there that his parents were in the van and that the van was down there in the water, back to texas in just a moment. first, we want to get you caught up on two other major stories breaking if the russia investigation and north korea s latest missile launch. we ll start with the russia white house watch. and new subpoenas issued for two associates of paul manafort. an update on that meeting that manafort, jared kushner and donald trump, jr. had at trump tower after they were promised dirt on hillary clinton. pamela brown joins us now. the latest on donald trump, jr., and the many questions about his meeting. reporter: right. we have learned today that donald trump, jr., president trump s oldest son, has agreed to sit down for a transcribed interview with the senate judiciary committee, similar to what trump s son-in-law, jared kushner, did just recently. we don t know the exact date, but said he is expected to meet with people on capitol hill, the staff of the senate judiciary, sometime next month. investigators want to learn more about his attendance at that 2016 meeting at trump tower where he was promised dirt on the clinton campaign. and they want to know why his initial statement saying it was only focused on adoption didn t include the fact that he was promised derogatory information on clinton. as you recall, he tweeted out the e-mail exchange that led to that meeting. but it is noteworthy that the president s son has been caught up on the russia investigation on capitol hill. and the subpoenas connected to paul manafort, what do we know about that? reporter: this could be viewed as an aggressive tactic by robert mueller to issue subpoenas to a former lawyer for manafort, and manafort s current spokesman jason maloney. the subpoenas requested documents and testimony from an attorney who represented paul manafort, as well as to jason maloney. this is according to several people familiar with the matter. this is on top of subpoenas issued to pr firms. paul manafort is under investigation for tax and possible financial crimes before he became the president trump campaign chairman. the fbi raided his home just last month, so it appears the investigation is only heating up. pamela brown, thanks so much. now to north korea. the latest missile launch and a new threat. president trump says all options are on the table. bac ambassador nikki haley says enough is enough after north cryia launcry ia north korea launched a ballistic missile over japan. we re joined now from the white house with the latest. sara, we noticed a different tone from the president today. no mention of the fire and fury he threatened north korea with in the past. reporter: that s right, none of that sort of bombastic comments we saw president trump make the last time we went in this war of words. instead he talked about north korea being increasingly isolated, he said all options are on the table. a much more traditional response to this missile launch. sort of in line with what we might have seen and did see from past administrations. reporter: absolutely. no president wants to stand here when they re dealing with a country like north korea saying we re taking the military option off the table. certainly president trump is not going to do that. so that is what this administration stood by tonight. sarah huckabee sanders on the flight back here from texas. the president is not going to forecast what his plans are, but obviously he means it when he says that every option is on the table. any comment from pyongyang? reporter: they have acknowledged this missile launch, and according to the state media there, kim jong-un is very satisfied with the launch. he said it s designed to send a signal to the u.s. sarah murray, thank you so much. up next, back to texas for an already devastating storm that s expected to make a new landfall along the board we are louisiana just hours from now. we ll get an update on the ground. and we ll introduce you to one of the heroes of houston, a man known as mattress matt, who has turned his furniture store into a much-needed temporary shelter. . right plan, wrong network. you see verizon is america s largest most reliable 4g lte network and now unlimited plans start at $40 per line, you know what i am saying? 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reporter: good morning, john. the good news is here tonight, the last several hours the rain has stopped in the houston area or at least in the southern part of the city. league city is south of houston. this is one of those neighborhoods where a fleet of volunteers, you can still see the jet skis and kayaks left behind here from the work that was done, going in, rescuing and taking out as many people who wanted to come out as possible. so all that work has continued. the good news is, we re seeing some of the floodwaters here receding. if you take a look down here at the ground, john, see where the high water mark had come up here to the street from this particular subdivision, so at least here in the last couple of hours, it has dropped a decent amount. with the rain stopping, the hope here is that this will recede as quickly as possible, but the question is, they ve never seen flooding like this, so they don t know how long it s going to take really for all of these floodwaters to recede. it is unbelievable the amount of work that has been done here over the course of the last 24 hours. in a town nearby, more than 2,000 people were evacuated from their homes in just over 24 hours. so that, dramatic work and intense work throughout much of the region. we re on the south side of houston, this isn t just a problem confined to the city limits. the flooding and devastating flooding really reaching out beyond the cope scope of the ci itself. that s the first time i heard the word, recede, used the last few days. that s awfully nice to hear. are there people choosing not to be evacuated at this point? reporter: you know, there are. there have been a number of people. we talked to a lot of these volunteers who are putting out their boats and said over the last couple l hours they re get into some of these neighborhoods and there are a number of people choosing not to evacuate. and that can be for a number of reasons. ear so some people are stubborn, don t want to leave. a lot is protection of property, people who want to stay back and make sure that their neighbors homes are okay, that there s no looting in place. in fact, before we came on the air here tonight, john, there was a group of officers that were alerted to some suspicious visitors here to this particular neighborhood. they jumped out of their truck, got on a boat and went, started floating into is this neighborhood to inspect that. it ended up being a false alarm. when the officers came off, they were definitely the type of thing they re definitely concerned about here now that the rain is slowing down. all right. ed lavendera in league city, texas, thanks so much. there have been so many stories of people helping friends, neighbors and complete strangers. tonight we want to introduce you to one man in houston who s giving people shelter from the storm and a soft place to land. his name is jim mackingvale, known in houston by just about everyone as mattress mack. he s letting people take refuge in his two furniture stores. he s truly one of the heroes of hurricane harvey and he joins me tonight. mack, so set the scene in your stores right now. how many people are you looking to shelter, how many people are inside right now? we have about 300 people at this store and the north freeway in houston county, the central part of houston, and out in west houston, the richmond area, we have about 400 including 75 national guard officers and military people. so about 800 people total in both stores. and i understand you actually gave out your personal cell phone number when inviting those people in in need. has your phone been ringing off the hook? yes, 281-844-9163. continues to ring off the hook. we re trying to help as many people as we can. we have more capacity in our richmond facility. we re looking at more refugees out there and they re getting more and more flooding out there, want to come, that store remains more capacity. this one s kind of tapped out, but, yes, it s been quite the journey for all of us texas and houstonians with the floods and hurricane the last several days. talking about texas and houstonians, you re not just talking about people, right? you re giving shelters to pets as well? yeah, we shelter pets. we have lots of dogs and cats in both facilities. and for those people who couldn t get to one of your stores and moving around is so difficult right now, you actually sent out one of your delivery trucks? yeah, we have several delivet through the high water easily. all day sunday we rescued people out of high water stranded on overpasses, these type of things and brought about 200 people into the store that way. quite dangerous at night, probably shouldn t have been doing it at night because it s easy to drive off the road in the bayous but made it thu and got home safe and sound. you got experience in this, correct, 12 years ago during katrina, you also offered help. this is something you ve done before. yeah, we housed 200 people for 2 days during katrina, all the evacuees from new orleans that were in houston. we ve done it before. you know, with the indomitable spirit of these people, they ve been there so much, their home s been flooded, apartment been flooded, their car s washed out, yet they re still happy and running around the store volunteering. it s really helpfopeful for all us for the human spirit. why do you do it, mack. i do it because that s the way i was raised up. i was taught it was better to give than to receive and although i m a capitalist, i m more of a social worker at heart. trying to fulfill the lessons in life my parents taught me, which is better to give than receive. we have great employees here who take care of everything. i m the spokesperson. they do all the work and do a tremendous job. i can t say enough about them and these refugees we re honored to house here the last several days and the next several days more. and if you had a message for your fellow houstonians as you head into another night with so much water still surrounding you, what would it be? it s real simple. message of my daughter who has mental illness, that has overcome a lot, is what does not destroy us only serves to make us stronger, if not for my struggles, i would not have known my strength. houston and texas is struggling right now. we re finding our strength in a commonality, the right, the left, centrist, we re all coming together with one purpose to make all of our citizens well and whole again and that s what we re all about. thanks to people like you. mack, thanks so much for joining us. thank you. glad to be here. we ll be right back. patrick woke up with back pain. but he has work to do. so he took aleve. if he d taken tylenol, he d be stopping for more pills right now. only aleve has the strength to stop tough pain for up to 12 hours with just one pill. aleve. all day strong. at the lexus golden opportunity sales event before it ends. choose from the is turbo, es 350 or nx turbo for $299 a month for 36 months if you lease now. experience amazing at your lexus dealer. you push yourself every day. tempur-pedic helps you recover every night. tempur material provides up to twice as much pressure relieving power. so you won t toss and turn. through september 17th, save up to $500 on select adjustable sets. tempur-pedic sleep is power.
companies. the typical family of four earning $75,000 will see an income tax cut of more than $2,000 slashing their tax bill in half. it s going to be a lot of money. going to have an extra $2,000. there s more than that. our plan expands the child tax credit for working families. you ll hear the numbers very soon. they re even larger than anticipated. even nearly doubles the amount of income taxed at the rate of zero. i don t know if any of you are paying zero. i hope you re not. i hope you re paying above that, but a lot of people who are having it s a little tougher will be paying zero. it closes special interest loop holes. it lowers tax rates for families. and our plan also cuts taxes on businesses, which is expected to raise income by an average of more than $4,000. so your income goes up. it s like having a $4,000 increase, which isn t bad, which isn t bad. it s a lot of money to spend, a lot of jobs will be created with the money that you spend. very special. it makes america competitive again so we can bring back that simple but beautiful phrase you ve heard it before made in the u.s.a., right? i don t know if they have heard it, but you ve heard it. [applause] our current tax code is burdensome and unfair. it s exported our jobs, closed our factories and left millions of parents worried that their kids will have less opportunity than the last. our factories have left. so many gone. they re all coming back. you see it ever before we do this. they re starting to come back. our country is starting to do really well again. as a country, we re being respected again. we re being respected again. i m here today to tell you that we will never let bad things happen with respect to the economy of our country. we re not going to lose our businesses again like has happened over the last number of decades. america is coming back bigger, better and stronger than ever before. they ll see it and they re going to see the result. america isn t content just by getting by. america is about getting ahead, about finding the best in ourselves and in each other. we re reclaiming our destiny as americans, a nation that thinks big, dreams bigger and always reaches for the stars. we didn t become great through massive taxation and washington regulation and by the way, we re cutting regulation at a rate never seen before in the history of our country. we became great because our people, our families and because of our freedom. we became great because of our drive to find the next horizon, to unlock the next mystery and to begin the next adventure. you know what i m talking about. and that s who we are. a nation of strivers and builders and dreamers and doers. people that treasure their independence and don t know how to quit. never quit, never ever give up. never ever. i say that also to our great cabinet. and they have done a great job. a lot of things have happened. nobody has done the job that we have done. when government loosens its grip, there is no summit we cannot reach. our tax cuts will break down, and they ll break it down fast, all forms of government and all forms of government barriers and breathe new life into the american economy. they will unleash the american worker. they will tear down the restraints on discovery, innovation and creation and they will restore the hopes and dreams of the american family. millions of middle class families will win under our plan. and today, we re honored to hear from a few of those wonderful and truly great families. bryant and ashley glick, right? they re from lancaster county, pennsylvania. i know it well. they have two beautiful third with a third on the way. bryant manages a farm equipment store. many of your predecessors promised that this reform was coming. but you did it. that we are greatly excited about this. with the tax savings that we ll see, we are going to put that money into home renovations. i m excited that you were the one that got it over the finish line. thank you, mr. president. [applause] the kovacs family also joins us from ohio. a great state. a lot of success in ohio. adam is a veteran that works in telecommunications. lindsey works in administration, admissions at a university, and they have two beautiful children. this year they re currently in the 25% bracket and pay nearly $14,000 in taxes. our plan gives them their time back, because they won t have to and the giamomolo family is here from. anthony is a 911 emergency dispatch officer. when they re not working protecting their citizens, their hands are full of four wonderful children. this year they were in the 25% bracket. they have done everything they can. they itemized deductions. they paid more than $19,000 in taxes. thanks very much, by the way. a lot of money. i like it. under our plan, they will file on a single page and save $2,700. anthony, maybe you d like to say a few words. come on in. [applause] just want to thank president trump. education is very important to our family. under this bill, our family will be able to save a lot of money. we have a lot of people going to school. my wife and i are in graduate school finishing up and still have three other four other kids to get through college. it will help out a lot. [applause] leon and marie benjamin are pastors of new life harvest church. it s a beautiful church in richmond, virginia. they have three wonderful children. under our plan, they will get a larger tax refund. they will receive a tax refund of $3,000 this year. leon and maria, i would love you to discuss your middle class tax cut a little bit with the millions of people watching right now on television. you do very well. we re very proud of you and it is indeed a beautiful church. i got to see a very nice picture. we ll have to get there some day soon. come on in. [applause] to god be the glory! thank you, president trump for inviting us here. on behalf of the benjamin family and richmond, virginia, we represent a qadry of many families across the nation. african american families, urban americans. we need it now. it s time for a change and time that we recognize that our president is making good on his promises. [applause] thank you, mr. president. god bless you and we ll continue to keep praying for you and your team as you move forward and forge ahead with this new future in america. god bless you. [applause] he can be my minister any time. [laughter] the howard family lives in washington. isaac owns an espresso machine service company and emily takes care of their four beautiful children. they re currently in the 15% bracket and pay $2,500 in taxes. our plan will wipe out their tax bill and they might even get a refund of substantially more than $700. i d like to introduce them. come on up. [applause] i m going to speak for us today. we are absolutely blessed to be here. so thank you, mr. president. our joy to stand before you guys. what this means to us as a family is that we will be able to pour out into our community, whatever that looks like, giving away to families in need or setting them up for success in any way that whatever god has planned for our family. that is our goal. we re blessed to have such an amazing president and what a good steward he is of our country. thank you, mr. president. [applause] thank you all. it s critically important for congress to quickly pass these historic tax cuts. it s going to take place i think even before the media i used the word media, you notice? as opposed to fake news media. i don t say it. because today is a very important day. we want everybody to be covered very accurately. i excited to announce if congress sends me a bill before christmas, the irs this is just out, this is breaking news has just confirmed that americans will see lower taxes beginning in february. just two short months from now. [applause] just got that. [applause] we just got that. 55 years ago this week president john f. kennedy, a democrat, launched a historic effort to pass sweeping top to bottom tax cuts. a half a century later, we were reminding that lowering taxes is neither republican or democrat idea, but an american principle and an american idea. the goal of my administration is for every american to know the dignity of work, the pride of a paycheck and the satisfaction of a job well-done. we want people to love waking up in the morning and going to work just with that incredible enthusiasm that we have in this country. that s what we re going to be doing, and that s what s going to be happening. today we stand on the verge of a new economic miracle. our economy has already surged to 3% growth, far ahead of schedule, far, far ahead, in each of the last two quarters. if we didn t have the hurricanes, we could have hit 4 last quarter. 4. a number that was unthinkable two years ago when i started the campaign. even my first month in office. that was an unthinkable number. i ll tell you what, it s going to go higher than that. we ve created 2.2 million jobs since the election. unemployment is at a 17-year low. the unemployment rate in the manufacturing business is the lowest in recorded history. consumer confidence is a 17-point high. pensions and retirement accounts are soaring as the stock market hits 85 new record highs since the election. how are we doing? are we doing okay? not bad. [applause] if congress sends me a tax reform, this is only a small beginning to the incredible things that our people will achieve over a very short period of time and the tremendous heights that we will reach economically and so many other ways in our country. every day, as this victory draws closer. we re so close right now, so close. in fact, almost i don t want to talk about it. maybe we shouldn t talk about it. the people that opposed tax cuts grow smaller and weaker and the american people grow stronger. i heard one of our opponents stand up the other day and say this is for the rich. they didn t even see the final bill. i haven t seen the final bill. this is for the people of middle income, this is for companies that are going to create jobs. this is for very, very special people. the great people of america. every day hard-working americans know that the future of this nation will never belong to those who say you can t. it will always belong to the american people who will say we will. it belongs to people like the glicks, the kovacs, the benjamins, the howards and the millions of americans just like them across our nation who pour out their hearts and souls every day to take care of their families and the country they love and that we love. we are going to have a country that celebrates you again. hard-working, great people. you re being celebrated again. remember that. because you were a little bit forgotten. we have called at this time forgotten people. somebody else called me and everybody else the deplorables. have you ever heard that term? we re proud to be the deplorables and we re doing well. we re going to make our tax system work for you again. we re going to make our economy work for you again. we re going to make the american dream. that s the real dream. that will be the dream that you want for your children and your grandchildren once again. we need your help to get congress across that finish line. we ll have very look democrat support, probably none and that s purely for political reasons. they like it a lot and they can t say it. they don t like what is happening. but they can t say it. some day we have to come together and do bipartisan and hopefully it can happen soon. [applause] right? if you make your voices heard, this moment will be forever remembered as a great new beginning, the dawn of a brilliant american future, shining with patriotism, prosperity and pride. with your help, we will bring back our jobs, we will bring back our wealth as a country and for every citizen across this beautiful land, we will bring back our great american dreams are. thank you and god bless you all. thank you very much. [applause] thank you. shepard: the president speaking at the white house regarding what is not a completed deal. we can t confirm that bit about the irs, but we can tell you the house and senate still have to vote on separate bills before they can be sent to the president s desk. leaders say they have a tentative agreement. analysis begins now on fox news channel on satellite and cable. those of you on fox television stations, we ll return yo to your local programs. i m shepard smith, fox news new york. with that, let s get to john roberts here on fox news channel who is live with us at the white house. big statement regarding the irs, john. i can t pin that one down. yeah, we have not been able to confirm that just yet, shep. we re working on it. the president clearly in a good mood today. i was also inside the cabinet room earlier today. i went in there. he was huddling with the republican house and senate conferrees, the people trying to hammer out the details to go before the house and the senate. the president seemed to be in a great mood, particularly given the results of the alabama election last night. almost want to say there was maybe a little bit of relief on his face that he didn t have to deal with the fallout of a roy moore win. perhaps that s not what he was thinking but he appeared to be in a good mood given the results of the election. he said when it came to tax reform, it s close. he s feeling optimistic about it. i don t want to say confident but feeling optimistic. he did joke with the conferrees in the lunch to say first of all, we have to have a vote, right? now it s almost critical for the president to get a vote in the house and senate next week, early next week. if he doesn t get it, it gets pushed through the holidays and the margins are even slimmer for getting it done. as you ll hear from mike emanuel this hours, shep, there s some folks on capitol hill on the republican side that are not really sold on tax reform just yet. arm twisting yet to go. the one thing we did learn today is that the president is happy, thrilled, he said, with the 21% corporate tax rate. he wanted 15 initially. he settled on 20. he said 21% is lower than 35%, so he says i ll take that. we ll see if they can get it to a vote next week, shep. shepard: john roberts on the north lawn. beautiful day. it s not warm. shepard: i m sure of that. the top democrat said the republicans should hit pause until doug jones is sworn in. the governor didn t appoint him. he won an election. it would be wrong for senate republicans to jam through this tax bill without giving the newly elected senator from alabama the opportunity to cast his vote. shepard: president trump says he wants republicans to vote on the plan next week before republicans lose that seat? the senate. our chief congressional correspondent mike emanuel is live on capitol hill. as john roberts mentioned, it s very close. that s right, shep. you have senators and house members meeting this hour here on capitol hill in a conference committee. democrats are fired up saying this conference committee is a farce. they say the deal has been cut so they re trying to shut down the meeting and they re blasting the republican process. it did not have to be this way and it is not too late for bold members on either side to reject this reckless partisan process. work on a bipartisan basis as ronald reagan did. so bottom line, democrats are frustrated that the republicans are moving forward with a bill that they have not seen yet. republicans say it s not 100% done. democrats feel like it already has been cut, shep. shepard: so they say they re going to vote on a bill next week that still isn t written? well, we expect the bill will be rolled out probably friday. we re hearing there won t be scribble in the margins. here s more from paul ryan a short time ago. they re going through the process of dotting the i and crossing the ts and making sure the numbers work to bring a bill in final shape to get it going. we re very happy. republican leaders hope the house and the senate will approve the tax reform compromise next week. it provides a modern tax system that is tremendously competitive. one that will leap frog america to the lead pack among our global competitors and unleash the growth of jobs and paychecks here at home. speaker ryan says the goal is getting it done by christmas so taxpayers can have a new tax code in 2018, shep. shepard: thanks, mike. the deal that the house and senate have tentatively agreed upon would lower the tax rate for the wealthiest americans. this is a change the last few days. i believe it was 39.6%. correct. shepard: and now 36. 37%. so you re talking about 2.6 percentage points, this is a decline. they re saying now that you can have $10,000 worth of property taxes and/or income taxes sheltered. that s a little tweak there for people wealthy. a little benefit for the wealthy. shepard: if you pay for instance, you re in a high tax state. texas, connecticut, new york, new jersey new jersey, california. shepard: if you pay a lot of state taxes and local taxes and borough taxes on and on it goes. shepard: is any of that deductible? my understanding is the big kahuna here are the income taxes. that is why they added this bit about both of these things in one combined deduction. because california has such high state income taxes. there s other states you don t think about like texas that has high property taxes. people there complaining about that. but i m going to tell you, 2.6 percentage point cut is a big deal. the major benefit goes to major corporations. they re going to bump it up to 21% from 20. cut 35%. that s a huge cut. that s not the only benefit the corporations are getting. remember, they can write down immediate expensing only solve only their equipment, bring money in from overseas at a one-time low rate. these are big benefits for corporation. the administration is betting and it is a bet, not known for sure, that these companies will expand and they will hire more people and do it right here in this country. shepard: the stock market has been thriving. it is at levels we ve never dreamed up. that s an understatement. shepard: and that means the corporations have a lot more money. have they been using that money to hire people and give people raises and expand or not? the economy is growing. growing at a good pace. what was interesting, the federal reserve hiking interest rates today. why? the economy is doing better in part. but even they don t see the kind of growth that we have at this very minute. their outlook for growth is much less. it s 2.5% for next year compared to what we re doing now, which is in excess of 3%. so yeah, we re doing better. the thing that is still missing i know you re concerned about this are wages. we don t have the wage growth that we want to see where all of that benefit goes to your bottom line and you go out and you spend and you save and you invest. shepard: the only other thing that i wonder if we won t be paying a lot of attention to in the next year or so, laws come with unintended consequences. when you put something together quickly as the detractors from this budget are arguing, you miss a lot of things that the corporate tax lawyers and tax accountants and tax attorneys will go in and find and give the rich people who are already getting a bit of a break here more of a break and more loop holes and they find themselves billions short. how much of a concern is that? i think that s an issue. look, this is not tax simplification. shepard: they say it is, but it s not. when you start peeling away what it is for small business, lord, have mercy, it s the most complicated thing s ever seen. it s super complicated. once the tax attorneys get in there, it will be more complicated. another thing to keep the back of your head that is so interesting here and one of the things the federal reserve chairman was talking about, hey, we can get this big boon in growth. it can be pretty hefty and swift. then we ll have interest rates coming higher and higher. what does that in the end going to mean? shepard: inflation. can we get inflation that we re not expecting. shepard: we haven t had inflation in so long we don t remember what it was. that might be an issue. maybe we do need to remember what that is. shepard: my mother word kill me for saying don t hardly. she was a grammar teacher. didn t go well. i don t believe that. shepard: everything was well for he. great to see you. good to see you. shepard: thank you. the republican roy moore refusing to call it quits despite returns that give the win to doug jones. we ll look at what is next. stay with us. inmate that jumped off a second floor inside a jail. oops! happened in las vegas. cops say the inmate was threatening to leap off the railing. one tried grabbing him but he fell into the arms of another. in the end, nobody was seriously hurt. patrick woke up with a sore back. but he s got work to do. so he took aleve this morning. if he d taken tylenol, he d be stopping for more pills right now. only aleve has the strength to stop tough pain for up to 12 hours with just one pill. tylenol can t do that. aleve. all day strong. all day long. attorney general, jeff sessions. in january, alabama will get their first democratic senator in a quarter century. when doug jones does take over, republicans will have a one-seat majority. 51-49. senate republicans have struggled to pass a major legislative achievement under president trump despite holding 52 seats this year. so their work will not get any easier. the president has congratulated doug jones on twitter and said he knew roy moore would lose. the president tweeted the reason i originally endorsed luther strange and his numbers went up mightily is i thought roy moore would win the general election. i was right. roy worked hard but the deck was stacked against him. after luther strange won, he joined steve bannon in endorsing roy moore. that marked a major split for republican leaders called for roy moore to quit the race after accusations of sexual misconduct with teenagers. roy moore denied all of the sexual harassment claims and beyond. the president tweeted his support for the republican candidate. he called doug jones a puppet of democratic leaders and record add robo call for roy moore. he held a rally a few miles away in pensacola where he urged supporters to vote for roy moore. in the end, educated women went heavily for the democrat. african americans turned out in numbers similar to president obama s first white house victory. doug jones is a bona fide civil rights hero. yesterday african americans showed their thanks. let s get back to john roberts who is live at the white house. quite a night. it was certainly. you know, for the president, too. he was stuck in a box. he had to support roy moore. he couldn t say look, don t vote for the republican or, you know, write in some candidate there that they knew was going to lose. he wanted to keep that seat. in the end, as he pointed out, it s 51-49 in the senate as of the new year. this could present real problems for the president s legislative agenda in 2018. he couldn t get they wanted through the senate with the 52-48 margin. now it s slimmed down even more so. he has big legislative items he wants to try to tackle next year, controversial ones. immigration reform, a fix to daca. he s been going back and forth with chuck schumer and nancy pelosi over what they want as part of a fix and what he wants as part of a fix. now they have a little more leverage on him. he also wants welfare reform and he wants to take another crack at obamacare as well. you can bet as well, shep, that democrats think there s blood in the water now after what happened to roy moore and the fact that as you pointed out, the first democrat to sit there in the senate for a quarter censure try and they will hammer the president on every front between now and next november. what we re wondering here at the white house and i m sure the president is remembering, is this a one-off that roy moore lost because of the allegations levelled against him? if a candidate like luther strange had been the candidate, would he have won? we re not sure. there s been a wave election for next november. if the president were to lose the senate next november, that would be bad. if he lost the senate and the house, that would be an absolute disaster for president trump. shep? john roberts on the north lawn. coming up as republicans plan for a slimmer majority in the u.s. senate, roy moore has not conceded to doug jones. we ll go live to montgomery with a look at what happens next. you now if you lost the race in alabama? roy moore says it s time to wait on god and let the process play out, even as the returns give the within to democratic opponent, doug jones. roy moore s supporters say they re holding out hope for the final count. alabama s secretary of state says it could take weeks to officially declare a winner. he says it s highly unlikely the winner would be roy moore. jonathan serrie has been covering the race for us. he s live in montgomery. hi, jonathan. hi, shep. friday state election officials will process the write-in ballots, some 23,000 of them. next week they will look at provisionable and military ballots. so once those numbers are in, if the tally shows doug jones leading roy moore by half a percentage point or less, the state would have a recount. the jones lead is above half a point, then there would be no recount unless the moore campaign or some other qualified party in the state wants to foot the bill. the alabama secretary of state will certify the election respects between december 26 and january 23 in which the senate-elect can be sworn in. right now jones lead is at 1.5 points. while this is still a razor thin margin, it s comfortably above that half point threshold needed to avoid the state mandated recount. but so far roy moore showing no signs of planning to concede this election, shep. shepard: jonathan, what do alabama s current senators say about doug jones victory? richard shelby and luther strange have offered warm welcomes to the apparent senator-elect in this state. as far as richard shelby, he says that he looks forward to working with doug jones. when asked what message last night s election sent to alabama and the rest of the world, here s what senator shelby says. listen. i think basically the voters the majority of the voters chose principle over politics. what about steve bannon? was there a message to steve bannon? i ll leave that to ya ll. he didn t win. the other senator, luther strange, he only held that position for a brief amount of time. he is the outgoing senator because after all, he was defeated by roy moore in the republican primary. he offered some advice to the new senator-elect. take a listen. my advice to him, which is to do what i have done. form a close working relationship with richard shelby. we had the closest relationship of any two senators in the country. we ve been effective because of that. doug jones says he plans to reach out across the aisle. gop officials say they ll be watching doug jones closely, shep. shepard: jonathan serrie in his new home in montgomery. good to see you. how do you like to hand over your phone so your texts can be released to the world? it s been particularly problematic for two fbi officials that have been helping the special counsel robert mueller investigate russian s meddling. their texts show calling president trip and idiot and a loathsome human. the deputy general says the investigation has integrity and director mueller has everything under control. we ll hear from that in just a moment. [ keyboard clacking ] [ click ] [ keyboard clacking ] [ clacking continues ] good questions lead to good answers. our advisors can help you find both. talk to one today and see why we re bullish on the future. yours. do you need the most trusted battery this holiday? maybe not. maybe, you could trust the world would be just as happy without them. (screaming) or, you could just trust duracell. it s beginning to look a lot like christmas or, you could just trust duracell. when food is good and clean and real, it s ok to crave. and with panera catering, there s more to go around. panera. food as it should be. shepard: the deputy attorney general rod rosenstein defended robert mueller s russia investigation today saying there is no reason to fire mueller. have you seen good cause to fire muler? i haven t. we have special counsel subject to all the departments, rules and subject to oversight by the department including inspector general. i m not aware of any violation of those rules by the special counsel employees. shepard: this comes after we re told that fox news obtained texts from the fbi agent peter strozk. the agent said i m riled up. trump is a [bleep]ing idiot and unable to provide a coherent answer. he was texting with an fbi law that worked on mueller s team and called the president a loathsome human being. president trump s oldest son, don jr., back on capitol hill. this time with the senate intelligence committee. last week he faced more than seven hours of questions from the house judiciary committee about his contacts with russians and wikileaks in the 2016 election period. robert mueller is looking into russia s meddling in the 2016 election and possible collusion. the white house and russia president vladimir putin have repeatedly said there was no collusion. our chief intelligence correspondent catherine herridge is live on capitol hill. what else did rosenstein said about robert mueller? he emphasized that peter strozk was fired as soon as robert mueller learned about the anti-trump texts. he had other questions for the deputy attorney general. he wanted to learn about the composition of the special counsel team and the political donations to democrats. how with a straight face can you say that this group of democrat partisans are unbiassed and will give president trump a fair shake? congressman, it s important to recognize that when we talk about political affiliation, that all demonstrates political affiliation. bias is a different thing. we have a lot of experience managing offices in the department of justice. democrats warn the republican colleagues that allegations of political bias can really cut both ways. they also in one instance defended the fbi agent for simply stating what they say a lot of americans believe about candidate trip. i want to remind my colleagues that people are allowed to have their personal opinions and their political affiliations. for instance, special counsel mueller and former fbi director james comey and you are life-long republicans. he didn t say anything about donald trump that the majority of americans weren t thinking at the same time. a lot of these key questions about the fbi agent, the fbi lawyer, whether the fbi paid for this dossier that was funded by the dnc and the clinton campaign, the deputy attorney general said all of these very important questions will be answered by this federal watch dog, the inspector general, who has been looking at the issues for several months and they expect the report eminently, shep. shepard: catherine herridge on capitol hill. thanks, cat. coming up a look back at what happened on this day in history and then top of the hour headlines from neil cavuto. don t go anywhere. talk to your doctor, and call 844-234-2424. ok, so with the award-winning our customers have 24/7 access, digital id cards, they can even pay their bill- (beep) bill has joined the call. hey bill, we re just- phone: hi guys, bill here. do we have julia on the line too? k, well we ll just- phone: hey sorry. i had you muted. well yea let s just- phone: so what i was thinking- ok well we ll- phone: yeah- let s just go ahead- phone: oh alright- the award-winning geico app. download it today. price. grazi, gino! find a price that fits. tripadvisor. on this day in 1918, woodrow wilson became the first sitting president to travel to europe. he went to france for peace talks following the first world war. wilson proposed the league of nations, an organization aimed at resolving conflicts through negotiations instead of war. the league of nations became official with the treaty of versilles and became the united nations after the first
opening for democrats to say why do you remember some things. what was happening that triggers your memory on these items that wasn t. what do we need to do to get there? i just think it gives them an in. and all he simply has to say is he doesn t remember. unless he can tell the whole context of it, i don t know if it gets us moving forward. it just seems like they are not going to give up the dog bone on this. i did think it was interesting, too, how many different roads that these lawmakers are allowed to go down. look at sheila jackson lee. she was just all over the place. sandra: you can see a little activity on capitol hill. attorney general jeff sessions has sat back down after a very brief break. so we ll go back to him when this hearing begins. it could be at any moment. the committee will reconvene. sandra: let s listen. it s reconvening now. the gentleman from florida mr. deutsche for five minutes. thank you, mr. chairman. attorney general sessions thanks for being here. general sessions, who do you work for? do you work for the american people or the president of the united states? well, i m a member of the able to answer that. general sessions, do you believe that the president should have the authority to be able to block investigations into his own campaign? investigations have to be conducted by an appropriate law enforcement officers without fear and favor, without politics or bias. right. and without fear of being dismissed by the president in order to be block that investigation because, again, that would certainly appear to represent obstruction of justice and when you fail to acknowledge that it is essentially a green light for the president to go ahead and do that. i wanted to talk about the special counsel s investigation. thus far there has been v. been some indictments. there is a guilty plea. can you tell me, in your opinion, does the president have the power to pardon george papadopoulos? i would be premature for me to comment on that. i believe. because? the president has power to pardon. there is no doubt about that. does he have the power to pardon paul manafort and rick gates ahead of trial and a conviction? i m not able to comment on that. i haven t researched that question. i think it is maybe settled law. what do you think the settled law is? i don t know. and does he have the power to pardon michael flynn? any other member of the trump campaign? let me ask you this, does the president have the power to pardon his own family members? could the president today pardon donald trump jr. for, among other things, being in contact with wikileaks regarding these emails? can he make those pardons today before there is anything further that comes from special counsel s investigation? i would not be able to answer that at this moment. with any authority. general sessions, you started by telling us that you re the american people s lawyer. now, you re not recused from giving us answers on these. you are not comfortable giving us answers on these. but here s the problem that we have. you said when you started your testimony today that there is nothing more important than advancing the rule of law. and when you answer the way you have, it suggests that the rule of law is crumbling at our feet. you took an oath to uphold the constitution. we took an oath to uphold the constitution. and while members of this committee and the majority may choose to advocate their responsibility with regard to these very important matters, you cannot and the interference what you ve told us today, in just this exchange, what we should all be concerned about is another saturday night massacre. if you can t tell us the president shouldn t fire or can fire the special counsel and everyone who works for him. we should be worried if you re telling us that the president may be able to pardon in advance all of those who are being investigated. we should be worried about the pursuit of the rule of law. general sessions. let me. we may in this i. the time of the gentleman has expired. the attorney general can answer if he chooses. just briefly one of the respect to the rule of law the attorney general should not be giving legal opinions from the seat of his britches. you need to be careful about that and that s what i m saying to you today. i do appreciate that, general sessions. time has expired. recognize the gentleman from. from the rule of your britches. thank you, mr. chairman. thank you, mr. sessions, i m over here on this side. if pursuant to a warrant, there is a wiretap conversation is seized under the foreign intelligence surveillance act, and the one person is a foreign agent, the other person is an american citizen, is the release of the information regarding who the american citizen is and/or the conversation of the american citizen a violation of federal law? i believe it is. and if somebody releases that information. maybe factual distinction. i know, hypothetical. if somebody releases the information of the name of that person and or the information contained by that person, that is a federal offense. unacceptable and could be a federal offense. so has anybody been prosecuted under your regime for doing that whether it s been in the white house or some other government agency where we hear about leaks of classified information? are you prosecuting anybody for that? for lease of fisa obtained information. release of the information of who the american is and/or the conversation by the american that s classified information. is your department investigating anybody for that? i cannot confirm or deny the existence. are you prosecuting anybody for that? nobody is under indictment. although we have at least four indictments this year of leaks of classified information and we will continue to press those cases. all right. good. we want to talk about the foreign intelligence surveillance act. secret courts issuing secret warrants to get information on terrorists overseas. that s generally the purpose of the fisa law and fisa courts. would you agree with that? well, that s not a perfect summary but it s. short? substance to it. it s too short. we know we can t trust the nsa. james clapper testified before this committee in 2013 that the nsa was not spying on americans. then all of the sudden this guy named snowden showed up and we found out whether i don t like snowden at all. he ought to be prosecuted, i think. but, anyway. we learned that the american public was being spied on by the nsa. part of the foreign intelligence surveillance act gives the nsa authority to seize information like emails, text messages, communications by these bad guys foreign agents or terrorists overseas to collect their information, to make sure that america is safe. during that process, as you know, incidental they call it incidental information. information on americans, who they are, and what those conversations may be is also seized. nsa says that s incidental information. now, it s my understanding the justice department is oppose to the usa liberty act which would require that before government goes into that information on americans, where they are not the target, the target is these terrorists. goes into that information on americans, that there has to be a warrant signed by a real judge that states probable cause before that information can be seized. now, my understanding is the justice department under your leadership is opposed to that warrant requirement; is that correct? that is absolutely correct. so, your you re a former judge. a would-be judge. a wanna be judge. i m a former judge, too. you don t think probable cause and a warrant requirement is required to go into that information that is, first of all, the seizure is done by government, without a warrant. so it s seized already. and before it can be then searched, you also don t require or believe that a warrant should be required by any court to go into that information. well,. i m just asking the same question. the courts have so held. i m not asking that question. well, i agree with the courts. not you, congressman on that. records, documents. reclaiming my time. you agree with the courts on that not me. but, let me tell you something. it is the responsibility of congress to set the privacy standard for americans. that is correct. my personal opinion and i think the constitution supports it, that before government can go in and seize something, and then search it, on an american citizen, that s incidental to the search on the target, government should get a warrant for that conduct. that s spying on americans. we know that we can t trust the nsa to do to keep from doing that. is that data ever, ever destroyed on americans? or is it kept forever? i believe it has definitely has a limited time span. i think it s five years. so americans shouldn t be concerned that information is being collected on as the has expired. the time of the gentleman happens expired. the chair recognizes the gentleman of illinois mr. guterres for five minutes. mr. chairman, before i begin i think i have a solution that could allow the committee to move on to other important national matters like gun control and immigration. your side clearly wants an investigation of hillary clinton. and our side has been begging for months to hold hearings and start an investigation of the trump administration and campaign s improper ties to mr. putin. and the russian government. my solution would say the american taxpayers a lot of grief and money by eliminating the need for the investigation. i propose we simply go to the president and the former secretary of state and ask them both to resign. i goago to hillary clinton and you go to donald trump and we will tell them to both to resign. we can move on as a nation from an election that never seems to end. i did google organizations that hillary clinton leads. and it came out zero. so i m not quite sure what you are going to get her to resign from because she doesn t appear to be in charge of anything. last time i checked, she got 3 million more votes than donald trump but she lost the election. so i don t know why don t we move on and really look at the nation. so, attorney general, i would like to ask you, you said earlier today it was a brilliant campaign. referring to the donald trump campaign. that true? you feel that? it was a remarkable thing. if overcame. remarkable, brilliant campaign. people have he campaigns candidates make promises during campaigns. you think candidates should fulfill the promises they make during campaigns? people make a lot of promises. do you think they should. try to. it was a brilliant campaign. remarkable campaign. and as a member of the cabinet of president trump, do you feel an obligation to fulfill those campaign promises when he asked you to come on? did you think you should fulfill the campaign promises? i believe the attorney general should enforce the law first and foremost. i understand enforce the law. you are helping him on the muslim ban, on immigration issue. i mean,. the president makes decisions and if it s lawful we defend it. if it s lawful, okay. i like that. if it s lawful. but, you said it was a remarkable and brilliant campaign. he said, quote: during the second debated. if i win, i m going to instruct my attorney general, that would be you, if he chose you, to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation, referring to hillary clinton, because there s never been so many lies, so much deception, end quote. and when hillary clinton responded she said because you would be in jail. are you going to fulfill that campaign promise? i m going to. that he made during the second debate because he did say he would put her in jail. he said he would ask the attorney general, you, to set a special prosecutor. that s what he said. a quote. i didn t make it up. what did he say? are you going to keep that campaign promise? i will fulfill my responsibility of the law. are you going to keep the campaign promise? yes or no? it s a promise that your boss, he hired you to fulfill. we will comply with the law, with regard to special prosecutor appointments. are you going to appoint one he s promised during the campaign? he has reminded you a couple times in a few of his tweets that that s what he wants you i will fulfill my duty as attorney general. so the brilliant campaign, remarkable campaign big smile on your face. you love the campaign but you are not going to fulfill your campaign promises i hope you don t in this particular case. i m kind of happy with your answer up to now. so, mr. attorney general, i m going to ask you another series of questions. and i would like to go back to the beginning of the hearing and get to you answer the following question. are you aware that you are under oath and that your answers must be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, mr. attorney general? i m aware of that. okay. good. so i brought this little salt shaker here. and you will forgive me if i just put a little bit of doubt into that answer. and just to remind myself that i might need this. and i ask unanimous consent that this article from mother jones magazine be entered into the record with the headline three times jeff sessions made false statements under oath to congress. i ask this because i don t want to hear in a few days or in a few weeks that your answers, mr. attorney general, have changed based on newly uncovered evidence that what you told us before was, in fact, false, misleading, or something other than the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. i ask you unanimous consent. without objection will be made a part of the record. thank you. under oath in the senate, you said as a surrogate, quote: a time or two for the trump campaign did you not have communication with russians but in march it was revealed you did. did you have campaign communications with the russians? because, it appears you have had campaign communications with the russians, mr. attorney general. that is i would like to respond to that. i thought i had the paper right here. and surely, i do. here it is. mr. chairman, take a couple minutes i would like to respond to that. colleague, i guess i should say former colleagues. senator franken asked me this question. okay. cnn has just published a story. and i m telling you about a news story that s just been published. i m not expecting you to know whether or not it s true, but cnn just published a story alleging that the intelligence community of the united states of america, the intelligence community provided documents to the president elect last week that included information that, quote: russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about mr. trump, closed quote. these documents also allegedly say, quote: there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between trump s surrogates and intermediaries for the russian government, closed quote. he goes on to say now again, i m telling you this is all coming out. so you know, but if it s true, it s obviously extremely serious. and if there is any evidence that anyone, affiliated with the trump campaign communicated with the russian government in the course of this campaign, what will you do? i was taken aback by this. i had never heard this happened while i was testifying, i suppose. and i said senator franken, i m not aware of any of those activities. i have been called a surrogate a time or two in the campaign, and i didn t have, did not have communications with the russians. and i m unable to comment on it. and you are not going to correct that today? my answer was responsive to his charge about a continuing. do you want to correct it or clarify it for us? the time of the gentleman has he could period. the attorney general can answer the question but then we are moving on. this is really important. i appreciate the opportunity to share it so my focus was on responding to the concern that i, as a surrogate, was participating in a continuing series of meetings with intermediaries for the russian government. and i certainly didn t mean i had never met a russian in the history of my life. so i didn t think to i didn t think it was responsive and my response was according to the way i heard the question as honestly i could give it at the time. i hope you ll am the chairman of the regulatory form and antitrust subcommittee on judiciary. and antitrust is an issue that is now surfacing more so than it ever has in the past and justice department s role is very drill in antitrust issues to determine whether there is an antitrust violation. i understand that the justice department s position on the ta at&t merger will require divestment of some assets. behavioral conditions have been used in verdict call mergers in vertical mergers a policy for doj at this point? antitrust policy is important. i have never been an expert at it. it was one subcommittee of the judiciary i never chose to be a part of. but we have an experienced team in the department of justice. we do try to handle each case professionally. we have a good chief now of the antitrust division. and i m not able to announce any new policies at this time, congressman. will there be a discussion concerning vertical and horizontal mergers when it comes to so-called term behavioral conditions where two companies that are merging may have to divest? could there be future discussion as to when this behavioral condition would be implemented? well, the vertical, horizontal issue is something that as always been part of the discussion. i don t think it s dispositive of any final decision. but, i m really not able at this time to comment on anything that would be part of an ongoing matter. understand. and i appreciate you giving me an opportunity to not attempt to answer that. i m going to switch to human trafficking. when i was a u.s. attorney, we handled some very heart breaking and very situations concerning human trafficking. and i know that unde you undersd like i understand the challenges involved there. what can you tell me what doj has done in upping the prosecutions and the investigations for anti-trafficking? we believe strongly that we can do even more. it s been a priority for a number of years. i was recently in the minnesota united states attorney s office. they had a major international case. i was surprised how much money was involved. almost as much as drug dealers may make. we have a recent report of our people meeting with the child exploitation group. my associate attorney general, number 3, rachel brand is very interested in this. and i have empowered her to be engaged in advancing our efforts in this regard. and she s enthusiastically responding to that. if i may make a suggestion as well. several years ago we in the middle district of pennsylvania prosecuted one of the biggest sex trafficking cases on the east coast. obviously and for the most part involving women and very young girls we had a good conviction. these people went away for 30 or 40 years. one of the areas that we have to help more with the victims is the protection side of things. of course, during the investigation and during the trial but subsequent to the convictions that these people these women around children aren t forgotten, and there are protections there to keep them from anybody else attempting to do what has been done in the past. i thank you so much for your service to us. and i yield back. thank you. thank you for your service. the chair recognizes the general woman from california ms. bass for five minutes. thank you. thank you, mr. chair. between 1956 and 1971 the fbi ran a counter intelligence program named co-intel pro that was initiated by j.r. hoover. it targeted civil rights leaders such as martin luther king and commonly understood it was abuse of surveillance power in a manner to suppress a peaceful movement. so, i would like to ask mr. chair, unanimous consent to enter this report into the record, which is black identity extremists likely motivated to target law enforcement officers. i believe earlier you said you were not familiar with the report. is that correct? i haven t read it. i know. so alleged targeting of officers by certain groups. i would like to know and i ask you about that in a minute. so you are somewhat familiar with it. who had the power in your department to order a report like this? i m not sure how that report got ordered. i don t believe i explicitly approved it or directed it. okay. so you haven t necessarily read the report but you are familiar with the term black identity extremist? well, i think so, yes. so could you tell me what that term means to you? do you believe that there is a movement of african-americans that identify themselves as black identity extremists and what does that movement do? well, it would be interesting to see the conclusions of that report. but i m aware that there are groups that do have an extraordinary commitment to their racial identity and some have transformed themselves into violent activists. are you aware of white organizations that do this as well? given that white supremacy is well documented, well-research you had movement such as the neo nazis, the ku klux klan, et cetera are they white identity extremists? i didn t follow that question, please, again? is there a term or a report on white identity extremists? you mentioned you were familiar with black people who identify with their racial identity. yes. but it s not come to me at this moment. not coming to you? it s. certainly a group such as the ku klux klan. yes. and then the skin head movements. there are racial identity white movements that have been identified for sure. hats fbi done a report on white identity extremists that are likely motivated to target law enforcement officers? i m not aware of that. okay. are you aware of a group called the sovereign citizens? i have heard that group, yes. i believe that the sovereign citizens is primarily a white organization that absolutely has targeted police officers and killed police officers? you are not aware of that? i m not aware of all their crimes but i know they are a group that s known to have violent tendencies. could you name an african-american organizations have have committed acts against police officers? could you name one today? this n. this report they name organizations from 30 or 40 years ago. can you name one today that has targeted police officers in a violent manner? i believe i could, but i would want to be to confirm that and submit it to you in writing. but i believe we had within the last year or so four police officers killed by a group that some have described as extremists. what has happened is that there have been a couple incidents in which african-americans did kill police officers, who were not associated with a black organization. and so one, for example, in baton rouge was associated with sovereign citizens, which is primarily a white group. you should know that there is a lot of concern in the community, especially from organizations such as black lives matter by the way, would you consider black lives matter a black identity extremist group? i m not able to comments on that. i m not i have no so the so declared it. so you should know that a lot of activists around the country are very concerned that we re getting ready to repeat a very sad chapter of our history where people who are rightfully protesting what they consider to be an injustice in their community, which is their relationship with police officers are now being targeted and labeled as extremists going through periods of surveillance and harassment. and so i would like to know. what is your department going to do to protect the rights of average citizens to protest if they have a concern about police officers? this department will not unlawfully target people. so if that s the case then, i would ask that you review this report, black identity extremists likely motivated to target law enforcement officers because i personally don t believe that any such organizations exist. the organizations that are referred to in this report are organizations from decades ago. and so i would like to know what will you do to essentially roll back what is listed in this report? because it s not accurate. sir? we will look at the report. i actually would be interested in reading it. but they usually do an excellent job objective and fair on those kind of reports. okay. time of the gentleman woman has expired. the chair recognizes the gentleman from south carolina mr. gowdy for five minutes. thank you, mr. chairman. thank you, mr. attorney general. i want to cover a couple of areas. i want to start with something that s very important to me. i think it s important to all people in this country of good conscience, irrespective of their political i dation. that is the independence of the department of justice and in my judgment, 2016 and 2017 have been challenging years for the department of justice. you know, the decision to charge someone carries with it multiple layers of review. there s a grand jury. there is a petit jury. there is a trial judge. there are post-trial motions. there is appellate courts. there are courts of habeas corpus and then there is the media and then there is congress. but the decision not to charge someone does not carry with it the same corresponding layers of review but in some instances every bit as important to find out why law enforcement didn t do something or why prosecutors didn t do something. i m not interested in relitigating the fbi s decision not to charge secretary clinton. that decision has been made. it s been explained and i m not interested in relitigating it i am interested in reviewing 2016 and 2017 with respect to the department of justice. mr. attorney general, there was a time when my colleagues on the other side of the aisle were interested in having some of these questions at well. it wasn t a year ago that some of my democratic friends wanted james comey violated for hatch act violation. that was 12 months ago it was observed then and it s be a surrender now. what s not absurd is when the democrat colleagues why did you decide to publicize one investigation but not another. why did you decide to appropriate a decision away from the justice department, which is very unusual for the head of the fbi to serving as both the investigator and the decisionmaker just like republicans wanted to know mr. comey did you reach your conclusions before the end of the investigation? did you make decisions whether to charge or not to charge before you interviewed all of the witnesses? these are questions that, to me, go to the core of whether or not the department can be respected separate and aside from politics. i mean, i get, i guess, that certain departments are just inherently political, but the department of justice should not be. and so i tell you that up front that chairman goodlat and i are going to be looking into the decisions made in 2016 and 2017. and i think i can speak for him and i know i can speak for myself, my motivation is a love for that department. and a love for the concept of blind justice that doesn t care whether it s an even numbered year or an odd numbered year. to the extent that there were decisions made, including the decision to write a public letter in october of last year and follow that up with another public letter in november, those are legitimate questions. and i hope that the department will cooperate both with respect to making witnesses available but also with respect to documents so congress can better understand the decisions that were made and not made and restore some modicum of trust that all people, whether they agreed with the decisions or not, at least understand why they were made. now, mr. conyers asked you whether or not it was appropriate for the president to. can i respond briefly to that? yes, sir. you re familiar with the inspector general. i m meeting with him they make public their investigations some matters involve the fbi are under full and intense review by the inspector general and perhaps they can under their rules of disclosure, perhaps you can inquire more about how that s ongoing. but i m not able to give the details to you at this time. that s a serious matter. it s in my response to the chairman of yesterday. i didn t intend to ask you to respond to this because you are right, mr. horowitz is looking into it. in fact, i m meeting with mr. horowitz this afternoon not in that capacity but in another and you are right, at some point he is going to let congress know what he found. that does not absolve us of our responsibility to also look into it. mr. conyers asked you whether or not it was appropriate for the president to weigh n an ongoing investigation. of course the answer to that is no. it s not appropriate. it s not appropriate in 2017. it wasn t appropriate when president obama did it in the irs targeting scandal. it wasn t appropriate when president obama did it in the ongoing investigation in to hillary clinton s server. it is never appropriate for a president to tell a department of justice what outcome it should reach. i just wishing my friends on the other side had the same outrage when president obama did it as they do now. i mean, i guess that s what i m this will be my last question to you. you re nominated by a president. you re approved by a senate. but, yet, you work for a virtue. you work for a blindfolded woman holding a set of scales. and that is what makes our culture different. how do you restore people s trust, republicans and democrats, confidence in a department of justice when it seems like different rules apply depending on who is in power? the time of the gentleman has expired. the attorney general will be permitted to answer. well, that s a good question and important question. we intend to do our work according to the established principles of the department of justice. we will not be infected by politics or bias. we will make only decisions we believe are right and just. and we are not going to use the department to unlawfully advance political agenda. we re going to enforce laws of this country effectively as congress has passed them. and i am determined that when the years go by that people would say this department of justice did not crumble. it stayed firm and true to the great principles that i was taught in the 15 years i served in the department of justice. two and a half as an assistant. 12 as united states attorney. and looking up to the attorney general is somehow so far removed from me that it was beyond recognition. but now i m in that position. i think i understand the gravity of it. i think i understand the importance of responding to your question. and we ll do our best. thank you. the chair recognizes the gentleman from louisiana, mr. richmond for five minutes. mr. general, i have the honor of serving as chair of the congressional black caucus. you were not there but i m sure you are aware and if you are not aware i m telling on myself that i testified against your nomination. did i so because i was afraid that we would go back to a time where discrimination was rampant and that diversity was not appreciated and that right to minorities and african-americans would be furthermore obstacles would be set up. and i listened to your opening statement and i listened to your remarks since then and you talked about voter i.d. the vecy case which in texas ruled that texas voter identification law had discriminatory portions against african-americans. the district court ruled that way. the appellate court affirmed that ruling. and then you withdrew from the case after two courts ruled that it was discriminatory. how does that mesh and then argued on the side of texas, how does that mesh with the right to make sure that african-americans had unfettered access to the voting polls? congressman, the way that happened was that texas had passed a voter i.d. law that the courts did not approve but struck down. election was coming up, i believe. and the court approved a voter i.d. procedure that they approved for that election. and the texas legislature then repealed its previous law that had been found to be unconstitutional or improper and passed the one that the court had approved. so we felt that the voter i.d. law has been approved, a proper voter i.d. law is constitutional and we believe that one is constitutional. and that s why the position was changed. and also in judging department of justice in terms of nominating judges to the bench. our information tells us that out of all the judges that have been nominated, i think 91% have been white males? does that foster diversity? i m not aware of the numbers. you should look for quality candidates. and i think diversity is a matter that has significance. the national bar association could recommend and has recommended a number of african-american and other minority attorneys who are qualified. so let me just ask you and if you don t know the answer to these, just let me know that you will get me the information. but how many african-americans do you have on your senior staff? i do not have senior staff member at this time that s an african-american. i would note in alabama i participated in recommending an african-american judge and i have had many judges before and. we re talking about this administration though. of all of the u.s. attorneys that have been nominated or confirmed, how many have been african-american? one in alabama that i have recommended that i knew. and i believe he has been confirmed. i believe it s only that one. out of all of the special agents in charge of fbi bureaus around the country, how many are african-american? coul i do not know. would you get that for me? and here is the gist of what i m saying. for a lookout of people who objectively look from the back. like i do and many people where i live, the question is whether we re going towards inclusion and diversity or whether we are going back. so, i applaud the president for his approach to the opioid epidemic, which everyone in this room is concerned about. we re losing over 100 people a day. but your decision to reverse eric holder s smart on crime initiative goes back to the crack tough on crime and i think you specifically said that you want the u.s. attorneys to charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offenses and sentences but with opioids, we are treating it as a mental health crisis. and out question becomes from the outside looking in is it because of hot opioid crisis is affecting as opposed to crack? our answer to crack cocaine was mandatory minimum sentences. so the question is how does an outside observer reconcile how we treated crack which led to mass incarceration which now with the epidemic we are losing thousands and thousands of people a year and we are treating it with hugs and kisses and treatment as opposed to tough on crime, lock them up. how do i reconcile that and not conclude that the only difference is race and income? well, i would say that the federal court focuses on serious offenders not users. we talk about international drug cartels. we talk about distribution networks. serious gangs. ms-13. we focus aggressively on that. but the psn on new reinvigorated crime problem focuses more and i have been convinced of this, on the leading criminals in a neighborhood. and the federal government will not seek mass incarceration so much as we will be focusing on identifying the people who really are the driving force. maybe sucking other young people in to crime that would never have been brought in there if they hadn t had this leadership drive. it s worked in new york. it s worked in other agencies and i think it will work here. and congressman, i would note that the average federal sentence in the last three or four years has dropped 19% and the federal prison population is down 14% while we are beginning to see a spike in homicides the likes of which we hadn t seen since 1960s. the time of the gentleman has expired. the chair recognizes the gentleman from texas for five minutes. thank you, mr. chairman. mr. attorney general thank you for being here. before i got to congress i was was a computer consultant. i sometimes dive into the nerder end of things. the incursion into the dnc servers is back in the news recently. my question is can you tell us if anyone at the doj, fbi, or any other federal law enforcement agency has been able to take a look at forensically examine that server to determine who hacked it, whethers it watt russians, an jid jo inside job r somebody else? you say the dnc? dnc. i m not able to comment on that ongoing investigation. i appreciate that. we also talked a little bit today about the fisa court and 702 and surveillance. and one of the things that i don t think has been completely answered is why does the doj think it s so problematic to require a warrant from the fisa court before any court before accessing or disseminating the contents of communications that aren t related to foreign intelligence that deal with american citizens? well, the way maybe i should explain this. when you have a warrant or you have a surveillance on a foreign individual, that may be connected to terrorism or any foreign individual, you listen to who they talk to. and if they call an american and you have a terrorist on the phone, in syria, you want to know who that american is, right? the u.s.a. liberty act includes exceptions for emergencies and individuals who are reasonably believed to be engaged in international terrorism or furthering their goals. well, i m not sure i understand that. there is an exception for dealing with emergencies and people believed to be terrorists. it s all right. well, let me just say. this so if we get a lawful intercept from a federal judge of a mafia person in new york, he is not likely to be talking to many people not in the united states. and we are listening to the conversations of the people he talks to and the american citizens. if they talk about a crime you can use that evidence against them and you don t have to have a separate warrant to access it. we are talking about in 702 i hope you will activityn access those records just like you could access bank records that you got. in any other way you would have had to have gotten a warrant to get that wiretap. the problem with the warrant is let s say this. let s say you have information from an airport that somebody wants to learn to fly a plane but does not want to learn how to land the plane. as we saw one time. and you come to court and get a warrant in a number of hours. that does not give probable cause to search, tap that person s phone. i have got a couple other questions. i appreciate your answer on that. i m sorry. i do want to talk, in the last congress we passed and enacted into law the stop advertising victims of exploitation act the save act. this legislation makes it a criminal offense to advertise for commercial sex acts. has the doj used this provision to prosecute online sex traffickers or websites they use and if not, why not? i m not sure about that congressman, i will have to maybe can get back to you on that. i would appreciate that. thank you. all right. i have a couple more here. i want to take a step back and look at the big picture. i m a lawyer. i want to law school. i have always considered the attorney general to be the people s attorney. and i feel like over the past few years under previous attorney generals that the attorney general has been more the president s attorney rather than the people s attorney. can you tell me what you are doing in office to restore the confidence in the american people both in the office of the attorney general and agencies like the fbi, which most people used to have a very high respect for but i believe that level of respect and trust has dropped dramatically in recent times. these are serious questions. i believe as you get to know the fbi director chris ray, wray. you will find him to be a man of high intelligence, great integrity. great character and great capability. clearly one of the nation s great lawyers on private practice but many years in the department of justice as a prosecutor working with the fbi agents. that s one thing we ve got. i can tell you i have great confidence in him. my deputy, 27 years of professional that i chose to be my primary deputy, my associate attorney general, likewise, is a woman of the highest character and academic excellence and experience in the department. we are setting a tone of professionalism every day in what we do. so, i think that s something we need to do. there is some matters that do need to be completed. inspector general is doing investigations of some significance as in my letter i believe you received a copy involving the fbi amend the allegations that are there. we intend to make sure that no agencies of the government, not just the fbi, is not following the kind of disciplines and practices they should follow. so i guess i would say to you, watch what we do. we re not going to be driven by politics. we re going to try to do the right thing and i believe that time will show that to be true. i see my time has expired. thank you, mr. chairman. the chair recognizes the gentleman from new york. mr. jeffer res for five minutes. mr. sessions, i have a copy of the transcript of your testimony before the senate judiciary committee in october. you stated under oath i don t recall in some form or fashion 29 times. is that correct? i have no idea. i have a copy of the transcript of your testimony before the senate intelligence committee in june. you stated under oath i don t recall in some form offer fashion approximately 36 times. is that correct? i don t know. in your testimony today, you have stated i don t recall at least 20 times. is that fair to say? i have no idea. now, on october 4th, 2016, during a tv interview with lou dobbs. you criticized hillary clinton for telling fbi investigators i can t remember approximately 35 times. you also stated during that lou dobbs interview that the intentional failure to remember can constitute perjury. mr. attorney general, do you still believe that the intentional failure to remember can constitute a criminal act? if it s an act to deceive, yes. okay. now, you testified in januaryed that you no contact with russian operatives during the trump campaign. earlier today you testified that your story has, quote: never changed. is that correct? that was your testimony earlier today that your story has never changed, correct? i believe that s fair to say. we have added things that i did not recall at the time. from my statement at the time was my best recollection of the circumstances and i, as things are brought up. my time, i understand. all right. you now acknowledge meeting with ambassador kislyak during the republican national convention, correct? i remember i made a speech. he came up to me afterwards. i was standing in front of the speaker and did chat with him. okay. thank you. encounter not a meeting. it was just an encounter at that time. okay. and you also met with the ambassador in september of 2016 in your office as have you acknowledged, correct? yes, for an appointment. i had two senior staffers, both full colonels in united states army retired in the meeting you testified i m sorry. you testified in june before the senate intelligence committee that you had not heard even a whisper about possible russian involvement in the trump campaign. yet, we understand that you attended this march 31st meeting with george pawnd, papa. talked about. according to third quarter 2016 fec filing. you hosted a trump dinner meeting 2016 at the capitol hill club; smart. that s correct, i believe. your senate campaign committee paid for that meeting; is that right? june 30th meeting, correct? that is has been reported. and at that meeting carter page told you that he was going to moscow in a few days; is that right? yes. okay. thank you. thank you. he said it was a brief meeting. as he was walking out the door i don t recall that conversation but i m not able to dispute it. understood. we claiming my time. i have limited time available. that is not-did not establish some sort of improper contact. i think you understand. he is not russian either, you know. you understand, sir, i get to ask the questions and you provide the answers in that capacity. you are no longer in the united states senate. you voted in 1999 to remove bill clinton on charges of perjury; is that correct? that is correct. there were other charges. i voted for impeachment, yes. yes. understand to. remove him actually impeachment is in the house. in connection with that vote to remove president clinton from office you gave this speech on the senate floor on february 29th, 1999, and in it you acknowledge that while serving as u.s. attorney you once prosecuted a young police officer who lied in a deposition. and in that speech you decided to prosecute that young police officer even though he corrected his testimony. now, you secretary of defense under oath before the senate judiciary committee in january. you subsequently corrected that testimony in a march 6th written submission and have been forced repeatedly to come back to the senate and now the house to clarify. when explaining your vote, on the senate floor, to remove bill clinton from office, you stated that you refuse to hold a president accountable to a different standard than the young police officer who you prosecuted. let me be clear. the attorney general of the united states of america should not be held to a different standard than the young police officer whose