Interesting characters to me in interesting situations. The trick is if you can attach the reader to the character at the beginning of the book, theyll follow that character anywhere. Trust me that there is no one in america who would want to read my description of collateralized debt obligations. [ laughter ] once you realize the lives of these people youve come to know turn snoeng whon knowing what tu want to know. Its very powerful, the origins of literature. Mr. Lewis is the author of several books including liars poker, moneyball, the big short and his recent, the undoing project. During our live three hour conversation well take your tweets, facebook questions. Michael lewis,son, live from noon to 3 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan2. Book tv. Next, George WashingtonUniversity Law professor, jonathan turley, talks about the indictments of three former Trump Campaign officials and Robert Muellers special investigation. This is 50 minutes. View irs are familiar with George WashingtonUniversity Law professor, jonathan turley. Appreciate you being here after a busy day in the mueller investigation. Yesterday, after the White House Press briefing, Sarah Sanders said the white house believes it will conclude soon. Is that realistic . Oo where do you think we are in this investigation after what you saw yesterday . Be a case of hope springing eternal. It does not look like it will end any time soon. You take the trajectory of thes9 charges just on the trial level this could easily go into 2019 before we go up on appeal. 2019. Absolutely. Or these are cases that often involve super seateding indictments. These countsan against manafort and gates may not be the charges they face. They may face double this number. The prosecutors can go back to the grandnd jury, find new findings from thean grand jury d bring out superseding indictments with additional counts. That is not uncommon. They have to anticipate that. Just their case alone could far. D that this is just the first round. We have a lot of live torpedos in thean water right now. There are people like flynn that seem to have disappeared off the radar screen andve questions whether he might be cooperating or whether he might be the next round of charges. Can you explain the scope of this investigation . We had t a couple callers in ou first segment when we talked about thiss said the charges announced yesterday seemed outside of what they thought the scope of the russia Mueller Campaign interference was. When the president came out yesterday and said, wow, the mueller charges against manafort and gates are removed from the campaign, thats correct. If you look h at the complaint, theres very little in the complaint that has a reference to the campaign. The center of gravity over there is on the business transactions of manafort and gates. However, the successive plea of guilty to false statement by another campaign figure was solidly within the wheelhouse of the campaign. Now, in fairness to the white house, he was pleading guilty to his own lies, he wasnt pleading guilty to a lie committed by the campaign. Botht sides have legitimate things to raise. Are there any guidelines where mueller has to stay in between . No. The mandate for mueller is quite broad, even in the context of other special counsels. When i saw his mandate i thought it was breath take, anything to do with the russian controversy and any crimes or matters that come up in the course of the investigation. He has read that as broadly as we anticipated. You look at the manafort and gates charges, those are not related to the campaign. Mueller is really signaling he will charge anyone for anything within that mandate and the mandate is really broad. You already brought up the papa dop pow lis guilty plea, yet you write in your article thee gates indictment is the rel threat to trump. Why . Thats an immediate trump. You look at the in diameter that came down with manafort and gates, a lot of people have been focusing on manafort, will this have manafort flip as a witness. That as a criminal defense attorney is less likely because manafort is the matinee or marquee defendant. He is so far the prize of the prosecutors. They might not go higher theyre not likelyra to trade ay that those charges unless he can bring deliverables, something that implicates a much higher individual, including thd president. Gates is different. Gates could easily secure a an plaemt where he could avoid jaio time if he could seal the case againstt manafort or implicate others because hes just not that critical. Couldup you explain what you seena as the strategy of announcing these things at the same time, going after somebody so high up, Paul Manafort and george papadoupolis, who seems relativelyly low in the campaig. Both sides seem to spin who these people are. Suddenly the white house barely knows papod owr doupolis name. I think part of the timing was driven byru the statute of limitation. Some are filing crimes where th statute of limitations was running out. They needed to file. I dont think thats the only reason. These types of moves are done with a purpose, tactical purpose. E. I think it sends a message to other people. Particularly people like flynn. S one of these charges is for fara. The on forr registration act. What is that . A law only used three times in its history. It is not a law prosecutors worthy of prosecution except in a handful of cases. Mueller is showing he will indict anybody for a violation. That could be used for others like general flynn or tony podesta who registered retroactively, some of these people, as foreign agents. Mr. Turlly wiey with us for 45 minutes. Republicans 2027488001. Ka democrats, 227488000. And interest. Kathy, an independent. Caller hi, mr. Turley. I have a question for you. It its evidence to me that our constitution is being challenged like no other way before with this presidency, and i am looking at what is unfolding with these latest indictments, and i have a question for you. Are congresses looking at protecting mr. Mueller, that he doesnt get fired because of firing by thetion president . My question to you is how can the president be held accountableth by not pardoning these people that are bring brought to justice as he did with ararapoe . Well, first, your location it one of my Favorite Places to visit, ive gone camping with my son. In temps of firing mueller, the president could do that. It wont be easy if he tried to do it. Hed have to get people like Rod Rosenstein to go along with it. He probably would force trump to fire him or he would resign. Why . This is what happened in nixon. F the Justice Department officials are not inclined to fire special counsels or independent prosecutors at the demand of a president. We saw that with richard nixon. If you wereri to go along with , youre tainted by that. The problem with that is like bob boric, who pulled the trigger. Pa you would have to find a person like bob boric and might not be that easy to find at the Justice Department having said i want this cup to pass from my lips. Having said that congress could passil a law that brings back t independent w counsel act. I dont think this is likely. Everything youve heard from the white house and the president pr himself, he will not fire mueller. Firing mueller would be a truly moronic mistake. We are here because of the termination of james comey. Ha some of us including myself express doubt of the existence of crimes in the russia allegations. Changed my view when he fired james comey because i felt the American Public had the right to expect an independent investigation regardless whether there are crimes or not. You dont want to repeat that mistake but if you fire mueller, it would be 100 times worse than what happened with james comey. Going back to congress for a laww to protect mueller, how ca Congress Pass a law to keep the president from firing someone within the branch . People like bob boric in the Nixon Administration had serious questions you raise, the ability of congress to do this. Courts have largely favored congress and the independent counsel act. The independent counsel act isnt around because Congress Allowed it to lapse. Congress could bring it back and the courts have supported their authority to do so. That would add a certain degree of armor for either mueller or his replacement. Nt i dont think that will happen. I think President Trump signaled he will not fire mueller. The other option, nancy pelosi calling for an independent congressional investigation toga be appointed. Can yout talk about how that would work and the Legal Options that are available if congress were to take that route . Congress has Oversight Authority through many of its committees. The committees can investigate or create special committees. They certainly have the authority to investigate any of these issues whether it is President Trumps firing of comey or the russian dossier, they have a right to do that. How is that different from threeto congressional probes wee already following . Not much. I think thats the problem. I think people are trying to show that theyre being active and reactive. We have a lot of investigations in the field right now. For the large part, democratic and republican members in some of these investigations seem to be working together fairly well. This has not been an effort to obstruct, from what i can see, for some of these investigations. I dont think theres a real need right now. The mueller indictment shows things are progressing on his side. Denise, brick, new jersey, line for independents. Go ahead. Caller i have a question. My question is with all these probeshe from congress and thei subcommittees and oversights, nobody is ever held accountable it never goes anywhere. I believe were just working against one another and conquer and divide has shown its basically been fairly much put there for its purpose, to divide the country and keep us all confused and divided. United we stand and divided we fall. That is the Main Objective and oldest trick inab the book. Why is it since nixon, since the church hearings, why is nobody ever held accountable on both sides . I think youre right to be skeptical. Youre right to be particularly skeptical about congressional investigations. It is a standard technique in this town, to diffuse scandals by creating special commissions or investigations that go a long time and the assumption is that the American People have a short attention span. I got to tell you, i think there is a certain contempt for voters in washington. They believe voters are distracted by c shiny things. Youre right to be skeptical. The special counsel investigation is a w little is erent because that guy going on his own course. Hes likely going to want to show a series of charges to support this budget and to and his effort. One thing i want to note is nt theres one aspect of this i find encouraging. That is the recent questions raised about lobbying with manafort that also involved tony podesta, the brother of john podesta i think is quite valuable. People have no idea how much russian money and money from other countries are squashing around washington. They have no idea how much money is made from influence pedaling, on both sides, both republicans andut democrats. If we actually have an investigation into that aspect, i think the American People are goinge, to be absolutely outrag. The callers question about why isnt anybody held accountable, we saw indictments yesterday for manafort and gates with a possible penalty of 70 to 80 years in jail, according to the Associated Press study of those indictments. When it comes to the congressional committees, three probes we r followed, what is t harshest sanction they could levee at the end of their probes . Pe congress doesnt really levy sanctions unless youre in contempt ofld congress. Even then they have to vote and give the matter to the Justice Department. We saw that happen during the Clinton Administration when they held attorney general eric holder in contempt im sorry, the on administration and the on administration refused to prosecute thet, case. Now, in terms of the sentence that manafort could receive, i just wantvi to have a caveat, theres a lot of reporting on that, its a little bit deceiving. If federal sentences go through a guideline, recommendation given to theki court if youre convicted, for a first offender like manafort hes not looking at decades in jail, the most under the guidelines is probably 10 years. The prosecutors can ask for whats called an upward departure. The grounds forr the upward departure in this case is the size of the money laundered or hidden froman the government. Under the guide lines for those crimes, the size of the money involved in the crime is an aggravator, as its called and you can ask to depart upward. If you look at this, youd probablyho advise manafort in t worst case scenario, realistic, hes looking at about 10 years. On the line for republicans. Go ahead. Caller good morning, john, the media is all up in arms about this papadaooulos. Im asking what they are doing about the Hillary Clinton and is there a difference and why arent theyie paying attention the fusion gps . Its unlikely mueller will focus on the dossier. He could conceivably move into that area. Some of us take the view of investigate them all. Quite frankly, i would love to see everyone investigated and for us to have a full record of all of this involvement of russian sources. It is true that the dossier involved goingie to a foreign national, paying him money and he received some information from what is believed to be russian intelligence sources. It is also true papa daooulos, if you look at his indictment, there are damning aspects theres this mysterious russian with ties, was indicted simply because of his role in the campaign and they strongly suggest in the indictment russians were offering dirt presumably fromk hacked sources. That could be serious, depending on the timeline. If you look at the indictment, it seems to talk about existing email. But also we know that there were hacking efforts after those meetings. Im one of those people that have been skeptical about the existence of a crime in the russian controversy. Collusion is not a crime. On people need to separate what is a politically important issue ti a legally cog niceable issue. The only way to cross that bridge on that criminal code i the timeline is if we hear something out of mueller that indicates in those initial a meetings, whether the russian president or not, a coordination hacking effort, then youre getting into something potentially could be a crime. A crime under collusion . Under a conspiracy. Thats where it crosses. Some of the other crimes people are suggesting i think could be dangerous. Such as . De that you could treat the information given by the russians to the Trump Officials asta Something Like a political contribution. The desire to nail trump by some critics are blinding them by their implications. If you start to treat information like its a political contribution that definition could sweep within journalists, ngos, academic, you would criminalize the exchange of information. Thats a dangerous thing to bring up the criminal code. The caller brings up papadopoulos. Who is excampaign papadopoulos. He is a 30yearold selfdescribed oil gas and policy consultant. He was an advisor to ben op carsons campaign and identified him to one of his advisors in a march 2016 meeting during which he described him as an energy consultant, excellent guy. That story in usa today. Joey, las vegas, nevada, line for republicans. Go ahead. Caller hi, jonathan. I admire your intelligence, being with a third grade education i have every degree you can get being streetwise. Is it a a crime for city congressman knowing a crime is being committed and during that crime, which is a felony, 11 people get killed and he knew about it, he could have prevented it . Is that a crime to get something on somebody . What are you referring to, joey . Caller im referring to a sitting congressman, bob stupak, who knew mms was being paid off with money, prostitution and st vacations, which he admitted right on television on a greta van susken show. I havent looked at it. If you know a crimes about to occur, obviously, you could be viewed as an accessory. I havent heard that type of allegation raise so im not too familiar with this. To sewell, new jersey, democrat, go ahead. Caller mr. Turley, i really appreciate you being on today. I watch you often on different shows and im really impressed with your knowledge. I have a couple of questions for you. One is, i heard you often say collusion, which is what theyre really coming after trump for is not really a cream. N i kind of heard you touch a littlele bit about this. Thats something i cant get over, theyre pursuing it and everybody at cnn and msnbc is going nuts over this. At the end it may not even be a crime. I just dont get i it. I really think its to hurt trump duringch his being president. The other question i have to you, i heard you touched on you dont think mueller will go after this dossier. Is but you have podesta, who just resigned from his law firm, and it looks like hes part of this. Do you think hes going to be brought into it and you will start seeing some of the democrats alsous being brought into this . Ic well, jerry, the first poi, in terms of collusion, i have expressed skepticism for months now about the allegation of a crime here. It is not a crime to collude with a Foreign Government to receive information from a Foreign Government. Me there is a crime for conspiracy but spurconspiracy to do what. There is no indication thus far that indicates President Trump knewth of the influence that th russians maye have had on somei these people. You would need even more than that to establish any type of crime. Right now, on this record, i dont seeee how he would be a serious target of criminal investigation. That could change. We dont know what mueller has. Clearly, he has at least one cooperating witness in this recent plea. As for the Podesta Group, they were mentioned obliquely with the second indictment or conviction of george or papadopoulos. There were two groups, especially the Podesta Groups of seeking to assist in this lobbying ofha manafort. Po yes, it is possible, since its mentioned in those charging documents that tony podesta and the Podesta Group could get swept within muellers investigation. Whether mueller will go even further into the dossier is a very good question. The charges against manafort really are quite removed from the russian collusion allegation. So going after the dossier allegation would not be any morf afield from that. Politico noting, as were talking about tony podesta stepping downne from the lobbyi giant he works at amid the mueller probe. We showed this headline to viewers earlier in the show. Before we leaveth the definitio you have gone over collusion and conspiracy. Can you explain obstruction of justice, how thats defined and one is found guilty of that . This is loose talk about what a crime of obstruction. Er now we have obstruction because the president fired james comeyw obstruction is made of a lot sterner stuff than that. The courts are very careful to hone these cases close to the criminale code. They dont want obstruction to be brought by prosecutors for anything because that could be considerable abuse. Usually a viable on obstruction case is more often the case, a grand jury. When trump fired comey it wasnt a nexus to a grand jury. Would it be different if he fired mueller . With mueller there would be possible obstruction but then get caught up in the Constitutional Authority of the president. What i think would happen with mueller, congress would not only move towards independent counsel act ofty adoption act but argue for impeachment. While deputyac attorney general rosen scene was not the reason trumpom fired comey and i think the white house has pretty much acknowledged that. I think the president has acknowledged that. At that same time when comey was fired, rosen scene said clearly in a memo, he should be fired. Many people in washington including democrats agreed with this position. Thereu was an independent basis to fire comey. The last defense the president couldat have to Something Like this, you watch comeys testimony, theres two things he said would help the president in any allegation. One, he said the president agreed with him the Russian Investigation should go forward to its natural conclusion. As the second thing he noted was the president wasas upset with m because he wouldnt go public to say what he told congress. The president has been upset for a long time when he heard from members of congress that comey went toar them and said, trump not a target. Ss i think that trumps view is, ng well, look, you went out and cleared Hillary Clinton in a press conference and youre telling congresst im not a target, this is hurting my administration, why dont you do it for me . Having said that, i think it was grossly inappropriate for the president to have this conversation. But i thinkof those are viable defenses. About 20 minutes left with jonathan turley. Gw law professor, answering your questions. We will take you to the Senate Homeland security committee, Homeland Security and f Governmt Affairs committee theyre having on the 2017 hurricane season, the federal response and oversight of that. The fema administrator, brock long, will be at that hearing. Thats in about 20 minutes. Until then the phone lines are yours to fill up. Jonathan turley. Republican line, go ahead. Caller thank you, cspan for having me on. I enjoy your show. I really feel you do fair reporting. Ish wanted to make just a comme on mueller. T i think he should follow this investigation everywhere it goea all the way to the very end. I have no doubt that trump will not fire him. Comey was head of the fbi, he was the director. I believe a person in that position to be leaking to the press would constitute a firing by itself. The investigation needs to go to trumps dossier, it needs to be investigated thoroughly, as he is doing the rest of the investigation we have seen, as far p reaching as he can find i. The American People need to knoa what russia is able to do, what they did do, then we can find out well, who did they do it for . Of all, Phillips Point about comeys leaking, i think we should put into context. First of all, there was grounds to fire comey but the president should have done it day one. Timingin is everything in washington. To fire comey when you are complaining about the Russian Investigation, when the investigation is hitting its apex at that time was not a really good things to do. A lot of what happened afterward can be traced to that poor decision. It doesnt mean there were not grounds fire comey, that was not the time. As to comey leaking, i have writtenfr columns being very critical. I do think hes a leaker. I think he violated fbi guidelines taking material from the fbi and leaking to it the press. s i think the fbi pretty much indicated theyy viewed those memos he took as fbi material. I do think thats a legitimate point of criticism. I r do want to note in favor of comey that did not occur until after he was fired. I dont think it relieves him of any responsibility. He was the person in charge of trying to find leakers in the administration and when things went bad for him, he became a leaker. , that is a legitimate criticism. The caller brings up the dossier, whether that was a meeting with government officials, can you explain where the line of Opposition Research is in a campaign and where it gets into legal trouble. Tr weve heard this defense on both sides. Youve heard President Trump say, look, the president would have taken that meeting in the trump tower. Opposition research is very common in washington. Thats not entrue, not a meet le that. People are a little more sophisticated. The Trump Administration has been rather ham handed in how they dealt with this. In fairness to the president , would they have gotten the information from that meeting . Would most people have gotten it somehow . Probably. They would have used a more sophisticated way of doing it. Opposition research is the lifeblood in washington, people spend, talking millions of dollars in f doing. It gets a bad rap. I hate to be the one who defends opposition reach at this time. People are finding information theyey believe would change vots minds, information they said was relevant, not necessarily a bad thing. It gets vicious. When you have a Foreign Government coming to you, they sent the email to trump junior and said the russian government would love to helpg you and ha dirt on Hillary Clinton, sending back, i love it, is really not a smart thing to do, even if most people would have loved it but they certainly would not have taken that meeting. Michael, here inning washington, d. C. , line for independentsth here. In hi, professor terry, an alum here. Hi. T my question is being that thu manafort investigation seems to dug in, what seems to be quite significant Money Laundering activities, wondering your thoughts asht to how that investigation might expand to trump himself. His family has plots and what the implications of that might be. Thats a really good question. Not just because youre one of our graduates. Ho t there is a concern in the white house therere will be Mission Creep from mueller to get into the president s transactions. We saw with manafort it took very little of investigation to really since some elicit conduct in his transactions. Trumps portfolio is many times bigger than manaforts. R theres always a concern of a defense attorney. If you have someone with enough International Work you put enough spotlight on that you will find reporting problems and other errors. Its not how much mueller is getting into that, he picked up aor bunch of people whose specialist is finding the money and following the money trail and other transactions. The other concern for trump is the international committees, they could move to grab his tax records and other things as part of their investigation. If the republicans lose the house, this is a game changer. You can expect a democrat controlled house would go after trump with hammer and tongue, they would open up vehicleses and the first subpoenas to go out would be reinvestigations . Would they start over or pick upe on those theyre currently doing. They would inherit the work but youd have a lot of new members. Youd probably have to have 25, 30 seats flipped. No some will be organized with a democratic chair and majority. Thatra would be a nightmare for trump because we know how sensitive he is about people looking at his finances, business arrangements. To have a member of congress to have subpoena authority in a hostile environment that would of the day for President Trump. We had lots of president ial scandals but none like this. This is much earlier and matured faster than any other president ial scandal in modern history. Usually, you see this towards the end of the first term, more likely in the second term of a president. To see all of this unravel and have indictments in nine months, thats a nascar pace. It will be disfunctional for the administration until the end of their first term. Josh, georgia, line for republicans. Go ahead. Thank you all for having me. I really appreciate it. This is great, nonbiased, very informational, got good information. My question were saying to the special prosecutor and the scope that was given to him, in the second point i would like to just mention, is with this whol thing to do with russia, isnt this what russia would want . If youou listen to all of us an look at the press and everything, were all completely against each other and its worse than ever before. A lotal of it, most of it has t dogh with russia. Thats my question. First of all, take the second question. The only guy laughing in all of this is vladimir putin. Hes laughing his head off. Is it worse than ever before . I think it is. The russians succeeded. I think they had two purposes. One was to have an influence on the u. S. Election and the other was possibly finding an ally, according to this latest t indictment, someone in the Trump Campaign. Its not clear the russians really succeeded reaching to trump himself or trump knew any ofhi this. Were still at a stage that hasnt materialized in terms of that allegation. I do want to say one thing. There is another country that has a history of intervening in foreign election, far greater than russia and far more successful. That would be o us. For the russians, theyre not just laughing at us, pointing out a certain hypocrisy. We didnt just hack our allies, we hacked amerimerkle. There is a fair amount of fingerpointing at the United States. We pretty much, you know, were the leaders in intervening and also hacking around the world. As many of our congressional members express revulsion about russians are doing, i think its fair note we have a history of our own when it comei to other countries. Od al is in castleton in huds, new york. Line for independents. Caller good morning, cspan and professor. The caller from washington, d. C. , one of your graduates, he actually stole my thunder. Nc i was wondering if you could elaborate a little bit more on underr what circumstances would specifically would Donald Trumps income taxes become a partf of this whole chess game of i dont want to say legitimacy of his office but the fact he was chosen by a minority. Thats what really ticks a lot of people t off. I think hes traditional republicans have theyre not going to throw this guy a rope if he starts to sink, i can see it coming. Maybe an anchor. In terms of those records, mueller may have already acquired some of them. The l mueller is looking at russian influence. Hes not just looking at it for criminal charges. Lo he will produce a report, in al likelihood to congress on what he has found. Even if there is no criminal charge, the white house could be looking at a fairly damning report. There is a lot of people in the Trump Administration with republican contacts and a lot of democrats. These types of scandals are like some that devour their own. Its expanding to include people like tony podesta and john podesta by extension. Can they acquire those records . Yes. An the question is was there influence by the russians over the Trump Campaign as well as the election . B if President Trump has financial interests that were in the hands or could be influenced by russian figure, that will be a concern. We havent seen any evidence like that, even in the second indictment that we saw, where you had a guilty plea, it was remarkably light, in terms of connections to trump or actually concrete steps that had been taken. There was a lot of interest expressed but notably very few provisions that said, so, x happened as a result. You had cause but not much effect. Just a minute ago you were talkingn, about the interests around the world. Heres papers from around the worlde this morning in stockho, sweden, a picture of President Trump, Paul Manafort and President Trump. A the due by paper, one of manaforts exadvisors, from due by. Ed heres paper from taiwan. On the bottom of the page, pictures of jared kushner, donald trump jr. And Paul Manafort. To the front page of paper from colombia, one of the stories on the bottom translates to russiagate shakes the white house. Thats out of colombia this morning. Some interest to papers around the world today. This is actually quite damaging. Ta theres a Big International media interest in this. The president s about to go on a very important foreign trip. H on those types of trips you really have to convey that youre speaking from a position of strength. The way hes viewed is Something Like a lame duck in his first year, very odd. Ir caller two quick points, one came up in the previous discussion. Nsbe as far as Foreign Governments intervening in other governments affairs, that goes back to the romans and greeks and perhaps before that with the egyptians and jews. Its happened throughout history. We may recall that lord palmerstan came to the southerners unhappy with the United States government and promiseded assistance if we wou rebel and that led to the civil war where upon the Queen Victoria decided whats the lesson of history we should take today . Caller all im saying to try to criminalize perfect normal behavior is an absurdity. O every government throughout history has provided information about foreign leaders. Thats an absurdity to say, trump shouldnt have asked for any dirthi on Hillary Clinton. Ig Hillary Clinton was trying to get dirt on everybody. Whats the line that you think should be there. Do you think the campaign should take financial contributions . Caller i dont know about that. Thats a question perhaps should be made into legislation and a book should beai written on it campaigns would know exactly what they can do. As certainly, many foreign interests. Look at the interests that the guy down in mexico, carlos, has, by owning the new york times, as far as influencing elections. Thats bill in alabama. Jonathan turley, i if you can talk through. I think bill raised some interesting points. Ec one thing i should note i already is in the law, you cannot accept foreign contributions in a federal election. Its a crime. Aw but the really difficult thing we talked about earlier how far mueller might be willing to stretch the definition of contribution under that law. Im one of those throwing up red flags, say, we have to be very very careful. If you start to including information, like its money, that will sweep in a lot of peoplele under the criminal cod that give information to campaigns. You also dont want to intimidate informational being given to campaigns. If the information is valid in sense these are Real Communications or real issues or real problems, we dont want to custody off avenues of information. We dont want Foreign Governments to do what russia has done. Es theres a lot of focus on that. We should be very careful before we start to change the criminal codes definition. St just a few minutes left. Ias wanted to get the reaction after the indictments were released and Paul Manafort was at the federal courthouse and talked about the charges. I think you all saw today, President Donald Trump is correct, there is no evidence that mr. Manafort or the Trump Campaignpe colluded with the russian government. Mr. Manafort represented Pro European Union campaigns for the ukrainian, and in that, he was seeking to further democracy and help the ukraine come closer to the United States and the eu. Those activities ended in 2014, overof two years before mr. Manafort served in the Trump Campaign. Today, you see an indictment brought by an office of special counsel that is using a very novel theory to prosecute mr. Manafort regarding a farah filing. The United States government has only used that offense six times since 1966 and only resulted in one conviction. The second thing about this indictment i myself find ridiculous. A claimim maintaining offshore accounts to bring all your funds into the United States as a scheme to conceal from the United States government is ridiculous. En thank you. First of all, i thought it was a bit odd the first thing he would say theres no evidence that the president colluded. The ypresident s really not hi client. That struck me r as being rathe odd. At this point, you need to focus on your client and the charges. Hes perfectly right, the complaint really doesnt implicate the president. Cl was he trying to rally the public around his candidate or Trump Supporters around his sl client . I dont know. I think that ive stood ther on cases in front of the media. You have to think seriously what put out there because the media will carry a very small part of it. Its true, they did carry that. It really didnt benefit your client that much. His last point is much more beneficial. My client had an on for account and many people had foreign accounts. As theyre treating that as laundering. Thats a valid point and may have a case there. As for farah, youre right. Prosecutors have not viewed it as Something Worthy of prosecution and tony podesta case and others is handle administratively. Thats a point, wow, hundreds if not thousands of people have had this type of problem yet youre criminally charging my guy because hes that it. At that old expression one day on the cover of time, the other doing time and youre hitting him with other stuff thats not being charged. The line for democrats, thanks for waiting. Thanks for taking my call. I wanted to ask mr. Turley, that i think there is a pattern with the Trump Administration the real estate he sold overpriced with the russians in florida and people think hes a habitual liar as farar as the way that h lie. You look at this type of pattern i think people should differentiate between the way all the people that implicated, never been in w touch with the russians or anything like that, its a different ballgame with the Trump Administration. Pe thats why, in my church, we say they said when people lie constantly, they said the devil is a f liar. Thats why i do not understand why the republican we should be patriotic first, not party line. I think theres a problem with mr. Trump. E got you. Eugene says theres a credibility issue. St there might be. Er we have to be careful. I think weve gotten ahead of ourin skis when it comes to alleging crimes like obstruction or whatever collusion might be. The criminal code is a dangerous thing if you just use it opportunistically. There isntga any real evidence right now of a crime committed by President Trump. Its not even clear he hes a principal target of the investigation. These indictments dont move the ball for critics. The allegations raised he might have sold property at a highe price to russians, yeah, the special counsel could look at it and i suspect we have. Only a few minutes left. Line for republicans. Whats your question. Caller whats the domino effect . Who planted the seed . Is Hillary Clinton corrupt . Is the Obama Administration the mostbe corrupt administration h, on earth . Thanks for taking my call. The moral high ground in washington has always been measured in millimeters. When you have all these politics in a washington expressing disga about the conduct of the other side you need to sit back and take a second look at that. What i think is good about all of this, the American People are getting a very good glimpse what happens in washington. Its sort of disgusting. Al theres a lot of influence pedaling, a lot of dishonesty andd a lot of hypocrisy. I think one of the earlier callers is right. I would have all the stuff investigated. Im in favor of ripping off the scab on all of these things. If its up to politics in washington they will controlol e damage. Thats what they do. Manage scandals, try to direct it against theirth enemies and y to diffuse it against themselves. The problems in my view are not these investigations, whether anyone will be held accountable on both sides. Jonathan turley, law professor at George Washington. Follow him on twitter jonathan turley. Thanks. Cspans washington journal, live everyday with news and policy issues that impact you, coming up wednesday morning, the House Republican tax reform bill scheduled to be released wednesday. Joining us to talk about it is cia John Mcclintock and the indictments in the russia probe. And to expand registration to include women in the Selective Service with the director, john benton. Author and former