Transcripts For CNNW At This Hour With Kate Bolduan 20170315

His partys Health Care Bill. Hes scheduled to depart joint base andrews any moment. Well be following his movements throughout this hour as well. First lets get to cnn Congressional Correspondent Sunlen Serfaty on capitol hill. Sunlen, were waiting for the press availability, what if anything are we expecting to hear from House Intelligence Committee chairman and Ranking Member . Reporter kate, most likely what well hear from both of them today is in essence trying to hit the reset button on all of this investigation, trying to refocus in advance of the big day that their committee has on monday. Thats the House Intelligence Committee who will hold the first public hearing on russia. They have invited fbi director james comey to testify and a whole slate of others. Today will be pulling everything together, as you know, a very fastmoving story. Today well see Ranking Member adam schiff, democrat on the committee, and devin nunes, the republican chairman, appear together today, potentially trying to show a united force in advance of mondays hearing. These are two men, though, who have appeared side by side in the past and contradicted each other completely at times over what evidence they believe they have, what conclusions they will are made based on that evidence. That will be interesting to watch. On the other side of capitol hill, a lot of other investigations going on. And some confusion this morning, when you have some senators like senator whitehouse who today said excuse me, last night he said that director comey had told him and senator graham that they would know by today whether or not an investigation exists at the fbi between looking into the trump administration, the Trump Campaigns potential ties to russia. Thats something that senator whitehouse said very clearly that he expects to hear back today from fbi comey on. But thats something that senator graham said he doesnt agree with. Here is what he said earlier today. You will subpoena the fbi, is that what youre saying . I will subpoena the information requested in the letter with the support of my chairman, senator grassley, who has been terrific. The ranking democrat is senator feinstein. They have helped senator whitehouse and myself write the letter. And were going follow up. Congress is going to flex its muscles. The president of the United States asked congress to look into this as to whether or not the Trump Campaign was surveilled during the 2016 election by the federal government. Im going to get to the bottom of it. And if it needs a subpoena to get there, thats what well do. So youre seeing big threats being made there by senator graham. But a lot of mixed messages coming out, what exactly they anticipate to hear from fbi director james comey. Its still not clear at this point exactly what, since both of them are seeing different things, kate. Kind of a sign of the times when it comes to so many investigations going on on capitol hill. When i spoke with Lindsey Graham this morning, he said he has no idea if hes going to hear back from james comey, he just needs to know if there is a criminal investigation going on into russia ties as similar investigations are being launched on the congressional side, he says he doesnt want to step on the fbis toes. Sunlen, thank you so much. Now to the other burning story on capitol hill at this very moment. The effort to repeal and replace obamacare and the growing divide within the Republican Party over their plans. New this morning, according to a senate adviser, the white house is now acknowledging that the house bill as it stands cant get through the senate. Lets get to the white house where we find cnns sara murray, sara, what more are you hearing about where the white house stands on this . Because im not clear at this moment, sara, if the senate is on the same page as the house, and who is on what page with the white house. Reporter we can forgive your confusion because i think theyre seeing a lot of this support crumbling beneath them. The president met with a number of lawmakers including senators who are very skeptical of this Health Care Bill theyre looking over in the house. One white house adviser in this meeting acknowledged to one of the senators that look, we know this legislation in its current form cannot make it through the senate. We know we dont have the votes to make it through the senate. We expect there would be significant changes. That potentially could make it even harder for them to get this through the house. Leadership in the house has made it clear they do not want to see significant changes there, they would rather see those changes in the senate. Weve already heard from members on the house side saying why would i cast a vote for this bill if its not going to look anything like this bill when it emerges from the senate. You can see the factions theyre trying to keep on board as they try to shepherd this legislation through, kate. It looks like theyre no closer to shepherding it through at the moment because the factions are sticking firm. The president will be hitting the road, heading to detroit, then tennessee, for a campaign event. Well be following that. Lets discuss everything with democratic senator from west virginia, senator joe manchin, senator, thanks so much for coming in. Thanks for having me, kate, appreciate it. Thank you. I do want to get to health care in just a second. But the breaking news and all the moving parts this hour on the congressional investigations into trumps wiretap claims, you said, of course, on the senate Intelligence Committee that held a closed during hearing yesterday. Have you seen any evidence so far to back up President Trumps claim . I have not. We have another meeting at 1 30 today. Well have a come to jesus meeting, making sure everything were supposed to receive is coming towards us, whether the nsa, fbi, cia, we want to make sure all the information is coming in. The public needs to know. I appreciate senator graham doing what he needs to be doing, pushing the envelope hard, adam ship, everybody. We want to move this country forward and youve got to get this crazy accusations behind us. When you talk about a come to jesus moment or come to jesus meeting, if you will, who is it with . Is there a problem within the committee between democrats and republicans . No. Between democrats and the republican chair . Or is it with the fbi director or the Justice Department . I ask because i do get a real sense that there is frustration with the lack of openness and cooperation from the fbi so far. Lets just put it this way. Theres not a bit of problem within the committee itself. This is a great committee, both democrats and republicans working as americans, really. Thats the way this whole congress should work, unfortunately it doesnt. But in this committee i can assure you that the men and women on that committee, that sit on that committee, will vote for their country before they will any person, any human being, any agency. Thats so refreshing. I want to assure you of that. Were concerned about basically getting the information, as the fbi, nsa, cia, and all of our other intelligence gathering agencies working together, coming to the conclusion that this is accurate, this is not accurate, this is false, this is just hearsay. Thats what were concerned about. You might hear from one, but then you have to wait to hear from the other. We want to get it all under one roof, thats what were working on today. Is there one agency thats holding up this investigation . Because whether there were wiretap warrants or not seems to be a pretty easy answer to get. It is an easy answer. Senator graham showed his frustrations. I think going into that meeting with fbi director comey, to find out is there any validation to what the accusations made by the president or the white house, if there is, tell us and show us what it is, and if theres not, then say so and lets move on. Senator warner, the democratic Ranking Member, says he expects there will be a hearing later this month in the committee on the broader russian investigation. Senator, can you give us a sense of who will be testifying . We dont have we have a request list for so many people that youve mentioned so many times on your show. Youre fairly accurate on what youre asking for because you know who all the players are. Those will be interviewed, well find out which ones are credible, have information and knowledge, and will be able to come before the committee. The staff we have is a very seasoned staff, very expert in what they do. Youre talking about those trump advisers, seeing if theyll come before the committee, Paul Manafort . Whether it be manafort, whether it be general flynn and all the other people youve identified, absolutely. We need to know and get to the bottom of it. I think basically the country deserves that. We need to move on. We need to get this behind us. We need to get it cleared up. Ive said this, the intelligence that we received from our agencies, the intelligence should take us to where theyre accurate or not accurate. Right. That should tell us what the truth is. And the truth should allow us to make the decisions we have to make to protect not only this institution but democracy as we know it. Thats what were fighting for. From your perch and post right now, what you can tell me, senator, do you think that the fbi is even investigating ties between Trump Associates and russia . I honestly cannot say yes or no to that, because i dont know. I want to know. But i cant tell you. And if its at the classified level, i couldnt speak about it. But i can honestly tell you i dont know. Thats what were going to find out. What we do know, an awful lot of smoke, a little bit of smoke everywhere. We need to clear the smoke up and see if theres a fire. If theres not a fire, what caused the smoke, lets clear the air and move on. But if there is, were going to find out and get to the bottom of it. We know the russians have worked harder this last election process, this last election cycle, to be involved in our election. Whether it was to be involved to change it. We also know their involvement did not change the outcome one iota, no votes were altered or messed with as we know. With that being said, what was their intent . And where they able to make inroads to the point where they could be much more involved and they could have basically an impact on the outcome of our elections . What are they doing in germany . What are they doing in france, what are they doing in mogadishu, what are they doing trying to disrupt our nato allies, the democratic governments we have around the world . Thats very concerning. They want us to help them. If we cant clear up our own mess, how are they going to expect to help them . Let me turn to health care, senator, youve come out against the house bill as it stands. The way you put it is, it adds insult to injury. Do you think the Republican House bill has any chance of passing the senate . Not what i hear. I dont know. I know from the democrats because the democrats are united, and it doesnt matter from the right to the left, we have a pretty big tent, we have bernie at one end and me on the other. You guys sing from the same song book, democrats are united. When Mitch Mcconnell says there will be changes to the bill, if the medicaid provision changes, could you get on board . Youre saying the expansion. Let me tell you one thing, common sense would tell you, weve given 20 Million People something very valuable, health care, which is something we all desire and all need and all should have, weve been able to give that to 20 Million People. Never gave them one iota of instructions how to use it. Dont you think there are savings there, we can help save a lot of money in the system . Were not making any attempt to do that. Kate, on this, when i said insult to injury, someones got to have a moral compass. How can you, with all good conscious, say my seniors are going to have to pay a lot more, to get the help they need . These are older people, poor people will have to pay more, we know 24 million of them will need the system, republicans say no, they wont leave, it will be more affordable. If it was affordable, they would have bought it, they havent bought it, lets say theyre going to leave. In my state you have poor people, elderly being hurt. Then we have an Opioid Epidemic in my state that basically theyre going to cut out the services that a lot of people get treated for addiction. Real quick, thats whats kind of confounding in this bill. Your state voted overwhelmingly for donald trump. Many of the provisions in this bill, as youre pointing out, hurt the people who voted for him. Youve talked about donald trump quite a bit. You say you talk to him more than you talked to barack obama. I said, mr. President , be very careful theyre not leading you down a primrose path. Theyve been saying for six year or more, repeal, repeal, and never had a viable repair or replacement. Now to say, because we had the budget reconciliation and we can get rid of it because we have control with 51 votes on the republican side, i said i thought the democrats were wrong in 2009 not to have any buyin from the republicans to make it bipartisan. Senator im so sorry, senator. I said, mr. President , i can assure you the people that voted for you, over 70 of the people in west have a probably benefit from obamacare or Affordable Care act, they dont know how they got it. But mr. President , theyre going to know how they lost it and who took it away. Dont get caught in that trap. Sorry to keep cutting you off, senator, im just getting breaking news on my phone, i wanted to ask you about it, it has to do with these wiretaps. This is coming from cnn. It says that attorney general sessions said today, look, the answer is no, when he was asked by a reporter if he ever had a chance to brief the president on investigations into the campaign or if he ever gave any reason to believe he was wiretapped by the previous administration. If the attorney general says no, what does that tell you . It tells you i dont know where else the president is getting his information, that something has happened such as that accusation that was made. I have no clue. I would say be very careful on that. If you have the attorney general that youve appointed and basically the head of our Justice Department saying theres absolutely nothing to this, theres no wiretapping, theres no one who has been given that authority to do that, i would take that as the truth. So i dont know. Youre telling me something brandnew. If Jeff Sessions has said that, and Jeff Sessions would have no reason to sugarcoat this thing up or to make it any more damaging than it already is, so hell be another person im sure would you like you would want to talk to. Thank you, senator manchin. The chair and the Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee are talking to the press about their russia investigation. Lets listen in. On monday, march 20th, we have confirmed that admiral rodgers from the nsa will be here along with director comey will be here. That will be a public hearing. The other witnesses, we have given them the date of march 28th to be here. Some of couldnt make the march 20th date. It does sound like that most of them will be able to make the march 28th date. We dont know the location of that hearing yet. But i think the time will be 10 00 a. M. Secondly, i want to say, as i told you last week about the issue with the president talking about tapping trump tower, that evidence still remains the same, that we dont have any evidence that that took place, in fact i dont believe just in the last week of time, the people weve talked to, i dont think there was an actual tap of trump tower. However, as i expressed last week, and i remain even more concerned about this, which are twofold, one, the incidental collection of americans that were possibly tied to the Trump Campaign that could have been leaked, similar to general flynn, and secondly, the unmasking of americans names potentially for political purposes, which were continuing to ask more about that. Mr. Schiff and i are sending a letter today to director comey, pompeo, and admiral rogers, asking for the total number of names that were unmasked over the course the last six months. And that letter, i think well pass that letter out to all of you so that youll have it. Lastly, the third issue that i have to bring to you today is, we are a little uncomfortable with the odni, and whether or not theyre going to let us have the proper Computer Technology that we need to go through the evidence that exists out at the cia, out at langley. And we are trying to work through that. I can tell you that it has become a bit of a stumbling block for our investigators to actually be able to compile and cull through the information. So those are the three issues that i have for you today. And i would like to ask mr. Schiff if he would like to say a couple of comments. Thank you, chairman. I want to join in saying that to date ive seen no evidence that supports the claim that President Trump made that his predecessor had wiretapped he and his associates at trump tower. Thus far we have seen no basis for that whatsoever. We still want the Justice Department to respond to our letter. Weve given them until march 20th. Were both willing to use compulsory process if thats necessary, although neither of us believe that will be necessary. Certainly at the open hearing that we have on march 20th, well be asking the director if he has seen any evidence that substantiates the president s claim. It deeply concerns me that the president would make such an accusation without basis. We think its in the Public Interest that this be addressed very openly by the director, and we certainly expect that he will. Its my understanding that the three witnesses who have had conflicts or other issues with the march 20th hearing are all available, and i believe committed to the march 28th hearing. So the following week well get the remaining testimony from those witnesses, and well have as much time as necessary at the hearing for our members to ask their questions. Obviously theres an essential amount they may not be able to answer in open session. But we want to conduct as much of this investigation in the open so the public is informed of the progress that were making. Our members are going to the agency to review the documents. Our full committee now has access to the gang of eight materials that underlie the assessment that the Intelligence Community put out. I spent a few hours there yesterday and would encourage all the members to spend time out at the agency reviewing those documents. And finally, you know, i think we are continuing to make progress and the chairman and i are doing everything that we can to keep this investigation bipartisan or nonpartisan, to make sure that we follow the evidence wherever it leads. And that is certainly our hope. And it will continue to be our effort to do so. Were happy to respond to any questions. Reporter what information about Trump Associates gathered through incidental collection are you satisfied that this information was used lawfully . We know for a fact, because its out there in public, incidental collection on general flynn was picked up. What i remain concerned about is whether or not there is additional incidental collection that we are not aware of. And then if any of that information was put into any types of Intelligence Reports. And then, you know, whether or not additional names were unmasked. If additional names were unmasked, were going to have to understand where the proper procedures followed, and did additional names get leaked to the media or were people using that information for other purposes that wouldnt have had intelligence value. And thats what i remain concerned about. Thats why the letter that you see today, were asking for all of those names by friday. Reporter is that also your i think its certainly an appropriate part of our oversight to make sure that the agencies are following the correct procedures when it comes to unmasking any names of americans that may be gathered through incidental collection. I do want to underscore that this is a separate matter from whether the president s allegations have any truth. Were talking about both these issues, but the two are not related in the sense that theres no evidence that there was a wiretap of trump and his associates at trump tower. Reporter you said it pretty clearly that you do not think trump tower was tapped. What gives you that confidence to say that i actually said that last week. I think the challenge here is that president obama wouldnt physically go over and wiretap trump tower. So now you have to decide, as i mentioned to you last week, are you going to take the tweets literally, and if you are, then clearly the president was wrong. But if youre not going to take the tweets literally and if theres a concern that the president has about other people, other surveillance activities looking at him or his associates, either appropriately or inappropriately, we want to find that out. Its all in the interpretation of what you believe. Reporter is there anything youve seen in the evidence so far that suggests that there were any conversations between people affiliated with the Trump Campaign and russian officials who are not the ambassador to russia, whether anyone tied to the kremlin had ties to the Trump Campaign . Do you have any evidence of that . Not that im aware of. I wouldnt answer that question as categorically as my colleague. Were not privileged to talk about the contents of the investigation, but, you know, i think we need to be very precise when we talk about this. And i just dont think we can answer that, answer categorically, and not in this forum. Reporter mr. Chairman, the white house has said they are extremely confident that the president will ultimately be vindicated in his claim. Youre obviously pressing doj to release any evidence that they may have. What about the white house . Are you also pressing them and encouraging them to reveal what the president knew, his grounds for making this claim . Were going to continue to follow the facts. Were not going to make any assumpti assumptions. But as ive said before, for a long time here, ive been very clear about my concern about, number one, the incidental collection on general flynn, how that was put into a product, how it was unmasked, how it was leaked to the public. Several crimes have been committed here. And i want to make sure that i dont want to get into mr. Schiff, i dont know if you want to respond to that also. I would just say, i do think its incumbent, if we get to march 20th and we have the testimony, i think we all expect from the director that there was no substance to the accusation that barack obama illegally wiretapped trump tower, that the president explain himself. I think you cant level an accusation of that type without either retracting it or explaining just why it was done. And i think that there are, from a National Security perspective, great concerns if the president is willing to state things like that without any basis, because the country needs to be able to rely on him, particularly if we have a crisis that is an external crisis, as every president does within their term of office. So i think it is a serious matter. I appreciate the chairmans willingness to have an open hearing on this. I think the testimony will be very important. Reporter do you have any reason to believe that the president himself or anyone working for him in the white house would be one of these names that may have been swept up in something that could then have ultimately been leaked, like what happened with Michael Flynn . I think its very possible. But like i said, we should know that by friday. Reporter you think the president himself might be one of those people that was swept up . Its possible. You know, look, we know we think we understand how general flynn was picked up in incidental collection. Perhaps theres additional incidental collection or there was unmasking that occurred. This is why were sending a letter, get it all out in the open so that we understand. Like ive said many times, im concerned about unmasking of americans names. As youll see in the letter, as they relate to either the Trump Campaign and his folks or Hillary Clintons campaign and her folks, we would like to know if any names were unmasked. I think that would help answer these questions. Let me, if i can, also respond on that in a couple of ways. First, mr. Spicer has represented that he is not aware of any investigation that was targeting the president , and presumably no courtordered surveillance of the president. He has also said that he is confident that the president was speaking accurately when he said he was wiretapped by his predecessor. Those two things cannot both be true unless he is suggesting that the fbi was engaged in a rogue operation, unsupervised by a court, to wiretap trump tower. There is absolutely no evidence of that. And no suggestion of any evidence of that. I think to even put that forth was irresponsible of the president and his spokesman. And i also, in terms of our oversight responsibility, want to make one other point, and that is, while i think it perfectly appropriate that we oversee the fisa process and the unmasking of any names, if whan of that is implicated in any way, i have seen no evidence of illegality in terms of any electronic evidence, pertaining to your question. So i dont want anything to be surmised that were suggesting otherwise. Reporter if you dont get those names by friday, will you subpoena that information as well . Most likely, yes, if they dont have a good reason for not giving us that. Fisa is a critical tool that our intelligence agencies use. We want to make sure that its done lawfully and legally. And part of that is going to be, even if it has to be at the gang of eight level, just mr. Schiff and myself, that would be fine. We need to have a good understanding of how that process worked. Reporter mr. Chairman, are you driving at here that you think that Trump Associates were reverse targeted without a proper warrant but they were tapped to basically look at anything that was incidentally collected and that was disseminated . Is that what youre looking for . Look, lets wait until friday for them to come out with the information and well have the open hearing on monday before we start to speculate. Clearly i just want to make sure the fisa processes were properly followed and that the unmasking the names did not occur improperly. And i just want to add that i certainly have seen no evidence of that. Reporter can you elaborate a little on the concern you mentioned earlier about od i not giving you the technological setup to review the conclusion . The office of the director of National Intelligence which is overseeing how we have access to these documents, one of the simple things that i think everyone should understand is that we should be able to get a basic type of Computer System out there to be able to catalogue all of the data that went into the Intelligence Report that was produced at the beginning of january, whatever that date was, january 6th or 7th. I just think thats a nobrainer. Why they would even stop us on this is beyond me. Reporter is there any reason . Are they stalling . Are they saying you cant have access to those . The bottom line is that we dont have a computer out there to actually catalogue the information. If i could add too, one of the reasons why this is significant, and obviously there was a big issue with the agency over the senates use of a computer and whether that computer was viewed by the agency while it was in the process of review of the enhanced interrogation techniques, we feel a real sense of urgency about conducting this investigation not only thoroughly but as swiftly as possible, given the magnitude of the investigation. So anything that slows us down is a problem. Im confident this will be ultimately resolved, but the longer it takes to resolve it, you know, the longer it takes us to do our work. And we had to work through the issue of gaining access to the full committee of the gang of eight materials. Now we have to work through the issue of getting access to computers to do our work. Were also working our way through the budget process here to get increased staff to help us with the investigation. Its going to take time to get those staff cleared. So these are all some of the challenges were dealing with in trying to do this expeditiously. Reporter how will you get the information . Right now, i was there yesterday taking a lot of handwritten notes, which is not ideal. And obviously we have to leave our notes behind. At the end of the day, what we hope to do when the investigation is finished is compile a report. And having the information that we go through indexed with our comments will be very important in terms of putting that report together. So this will be resolved hopefully, what the chairman and i are saying today will help nudge the agency along in making it happen. Reporter has the fbi actually confirmed there is an investigation ongoing into russia and the Trump Campaign . Look, were not going to get into what the fbi tells us or doesnt tell us, as the Ranking Member said earlier. But as you can imagine, this committees long has a long track record of trying to shine the light on the russian government and their activities. We as the House Intelligence Committee have long had an investigation into russian activities, especially cyber activities. That continues. And clearly i think the concerns weve raised over Cyber Attacks alone, we would hope that many throughout the ic are conducting investigations into the russians and their ongoing bad activity around the globe. Reporter do you have any evidence that there were contacts between the Trump Campaign and russia . I dont have any evidence of that. Were not going to get into this gets to the whole issue of incidental collection, who else was talking to the Russian Ambassador. This is a slippery slope. I think you just need to let the appropriate agencies get us the information in a timely manner, which i agree with the Ranking Member on, the more they stall, the more they make it more complicated for us, the slower the investigation goes and the longer it takes to answer your questions. I do want to say on that question, because director clapper was asked a similar question. I cannot answer that question in the same way. Certainly not with the same categorical nature of the response. So i dont share that summary conclusion. Thats about all i can say on that subject. Reporter have you been able to get access to odni computers in past investigations . Is this something you typically get stalled on or is this unprecedented . This is a little unprecedented in terms of the whole committee now has access, all the members on the Intelligence Committee have access to what are called the gang of eight source documents. We now have investigators out there, many members from my side and the Ranking Members side have been out there. And the challenge were having now is that we need to be able to catalogue all of this in a simple way. If not, its going to take us longer to get through it if we have to do it all by hand. Reporter you said several crimes have been committed here. But its not illegal to unmask a name if it deals with an investigation having to do with National Security, right . So i wanted you to expound on that. And secondly, congressman schiff, you said that the fbi hadnt been cooperating, and then you said that they had started cooperating. What has occurred if betwen bet those two statements . As it relates to crimes that have been committed, i am quite confident that it is illegal to leak fisacollected names of americans. Thats illegal. Its also illegal to leak any classified, additional classified information. So that has happened. It remains the crimes that we know that have been committed, which im sure well get into more of that on monday. Mr. Schiff . There was a second question. With respect to the second question, the concern that i raised a couple of weeks ago was that during our hearing with director comey, a number of the questions members had, the director declined to answer. It wasnt that i was unsatisfied with the content of the answer. It was that he simply declined. And i expressed it at the time, my hope that the director would go back to the department of justice and be prepared to come back to us and respond more fully to the questions were asking. The fbi has now been more forthcoming on an a number of the issues i was concerned about. There are still a number of other issues that remain to be ironed out. But were certainly getting more cooperation than we were initially. Reporter does any of the incidental collection the defendants include two officers of the Russian Federal Security Service and intelligence and Law Enforcement agency of the Russian Federation and two criminal hackers with whom they conspired to accomplish these intrusions. The two, both fsb officers, protected, directed, facilitated, and paid criminal hackers to collect information through computer intrusions in the United States and elsewhere. They worked with coconspirators to hack into the computers of American Companies providing email and internetrelated services to maintain unauthorized access to those computers and to steal information, including information about individual users and the private contents of their accounts. The defendants targeted yahoo accounts of russian and u. S. Government officials, including cyber security, diplomatic, and military personnel. They also targeted russian journalists, numerous employees of other providers whose networks the conspirators sought to exploit, and employees of Financial Services and other entities. One defendant has been indicted twice before in the United States for e dsheintrusions i companies. He has been one of the fbis most wanted cyber criminals for more than three years. The other defendants notorious criminal conduct and a pending interpol red notice did not stop at the fsb officers who instead of detaining him, used him to break into yahoo s networks. Meanwhile, he used his relationship with the two fsb officers and his access to yahoo to commit additional crimes to line his own pockets with money. Specifically, he used his access to yahoo to search for and steal Financial Information such as gift card and credit card numbers from users email accounts. He also gained access to more than 30 million yahoo accounts whose contacts he then stole to facilitate an email scam. With these charges, the department of justice is continuing to send a powerful message that we will not allow individuals, groups, nation states, or a combination of them to compromise the privacy of our citizens, the economic interests of our companies, or the security of our country. For those who may not be familiar with the fsb, it is an intelligence and Law Enforcement agency and a successor to the soviet unions kgb. The fsb unit that the defendants worked for, the center for information security, also known as center 18, is also the fbis point of contact in moscow for cyber crime matters. The involvement and direction of fsb officers with Law Enforcement responsibilities makes this conduct that much more egregious. There are no free passes for foreign statesponsored criminal behavior. Through the work of the National Security division, the fbi, the United States attorneys offices around the country, we continue to pursue National Security Cyber Threats using all available tools to investigate malicious activity and attribute it to the country, agency, and even the individuals involved. When possible and supported by the evidence, we intend to charge those individuals and bring them to justice. As i wrap up, i am also pleased to announce that a fourth coconspirator charged in the indictment was arrested just yesterday in canada on a u. S. Government provisional arrest warrant. I would like to thank all of those who worked diligently to bring the investigation to this point, including the men and women of the National Security division, the fbi, and the u. S. Attorneys offices for the Northern District of california and the criminal Divisions Office of International Affairs for their tireless work. I would also like to extend a special thanks to yahoo and google, whose customers were targeted and who cooperated with Law Enforcement. It is very important for corporations around the country to know that when you are going against the resources and backing of a nation state, it is not a fair fight and it is not a fight you are likely to win alone. But you do not have to go it alone. We can put the full capabilities of the United States behind you to make cases like this. But we cannot do it without your help. At this time i would like to introduce fbi executive assistant director all right. So weve got two big headlines that have happened just now in these dueling press conferences. First, what you just saw, the department of justice bringing charges against four individuals, announcing formally charges against four individuals including, importantly here, two officers of the fsb, two russian spies. That is a very big deal with regard to the breach, according to this case, at least 500 million yahoo accounts that were hacked, a story that was covered in a very big way, but now we are hearing the formal charges. Thats happening at the department of justice. The other big headline we need to return to, though, is from capitol hill, the heads of the House Intelligence Committee speaking with reporters and for the first time in the most definitive manner we have heard yesterday, i would argue, we heard from the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee saying this in part, i dont think there was an actual tap of trump tower. Thats a very big deal. Lets discuss this right now. Mark preston, cnn political analyst, mark, lets start here. I think its important, manu raju had a great question to devin nunes, trying to clear up exactly what he was saying. I want to play this for our viewers, because this was a key moment, then lets discuss. Listen here. Reporter you said pretty clearly that you do not think that trump tower was tapped. What gives you that confidence to say that i actually said that last week. I think the challenge here is, is that, you know, president obama wouldnt physically go over and wiretap trump tower, so now you have to decide, as i mentioned to you last week, are you going to take the tweets literally, and if you are, then clearly the president was wrong. But if youre not going to take the tweets literally and if theres a concern that the president has about other people, other surveillance activities looking at him or his associates, either appropriately or inappropriately, we want to find that out. I think its all in the interpretation of what you believe. But now i would say, mark, for the first time, what is this, now 11 days after those tweets, you hear both the republican and democrat on this committee saying in their own way that they see no evidence to support what the president has claimed, that Obama Wiretapped him in trump tower. Right. And lets add to that, within the hour we saw attorney general Jeff Sessions in richmond at a conference speaking to reporters, when asked if he had briefed donald trump on any of this, he definitively said no. This is where we open the pandoras box of questions. Why did President Trump do this . Where did he get his information . What is going to be the white house reaction in the next hour or so . Exactly. And really, whats going to happen when President Trump lands in detroit, michigan, or when he heads down to tennessee where he goes to these Campaign Rallies . Is he going to try to turn this inward and say that this is the Mainstream Media going after donald trump, that this is a political witch hunt . I put my money on that, actually, that he will try to embrace this still and not back down. He can embrace it all he wants, but he now has the facts are the facts, and the statements coming from the Republican House chairman of the Intelligence Committee speak for themselves at this moment. Patrick healy, new york times, weve got a whole host of folks who popped up, patrick, now to you, to marks point, what we heard from the white house yesterday from sean spicer is that the white house is extremely confident that the department of justice has evidence to support what theyve been claiming. This seems to fly in the face of this. And this isnt just the end of it. They are now going to have the fbi director, james comey, will be testifying in a public hearing on monday, and you know hes going to be asked this. Absolutely. I mean, its going to be the major question, the major headline coming out of this. And its going to be, you know, is director comey now saying what attorney general sessions was indicating today, which is they dont know where the president essentially was getting his information. But comey may say it was wrong. You go to the comments that we just heard at the press conference, and were left with the question, you know, should American Voters take the president i guess at his word. You know, what does literal mean . For decades weve assumed the president and the white house chooses their words carefully. Usually their words are parsed with a microscope. What donald trump is trying to do with the presidency is say, i can tweet however i want, i can make whatever claims i am twant baseless or otherwise, but from his point of view, as long as hes getting a message to his supporters, as long as hes making the point to his supporters that the media is beating up on him or president obama is somehow, you know, wiretapping him, that is his goal, that is sort of the achievement. I think what youre going to see today, maybe in detroit or when he finally takes questions about this, is really him answering in a way that he thinks will at least please or rally his supporters to his side. But again, the Intelligence Committees are also to investigate leaks. Kristen anderson, this was not a leak, it was an accusation, an explosive claim raised by the president himself, and also raised by the president himself is that Congress Needs to look into it. Well, congress has looked into it and it seems they have the answer. Should the president apologize here . Right now this investigation has about eight different angles to it. At first it was an investigation into whether or not russia was trying to meddle in our elections. Then the investigation became about whether or not the investigation into whether or not rush was trying to meddle in our elections broke laws in the process of the investigation. Thats why i think when it comes to what President Trump is going to do when he handles this, i would completely be surprised if he apologized for anything, in part because of what you kept hearing the chairman say there about incidental collection. So its one thing to allege that the president , president obama had gone out of his way to wiretap trump tower. Its another thing to say there were people from our campaign who were caught up in the incidental collection. But those are two different things. I completely agree. The white house is moving the goalpost on this. I agree that those are two different things. I would suspect the white house will move the goalpost because most voters wont know the difference, theyll say, wow, why were they recording conversations with trump folks . It is that muddying of the waters that the white house will want to do. Well, its our job to unmuddy the waters, because these are two different things, one, an explosive claim, it sounds like the question was and had has now been answered by the Intelligence Committees on capitol hill tasked with finding an answer. The second is, what else is there in terms of this incidental collection, in terms of ties between trump advisers and russia . Maeve, i want to bring you in but im told adam schiff, the ranking democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, had Something Else to say after the press conference. Listen. My interpretation, frankly, of what the white house has been communicating since the president s tweets, were first, we dont want to talk about this, were giving it to the Intelligence Committee. Then, were not sure if theres any there there. Then, well, maybe he meant something different, to, well, maybe it was the tv or the microwave, to, no, we fully believe the president will be vindicated in his claims of wiretapping. So theyve been all over the map. The reality is, i dont think they have the foggiest idea what was behind the president s claim except maybe something he watched on tv. And i think the rest is designed to downplay, minimize, or obfuscate the fact that the president said something that was patently untrue. But that is my interpretation. Interesting analysis from adam schiff there. The white house has been moving the goal post. They dont seem to have an answer. Trump himself, President Trump, has been uncharacteristically silent when hes been asked by reporters during the photo sprays about all of this. I mean, if we end up, you know, having the question asked and answered and there really is no evidence of what President Trump tweeted, this is a very hard lesson for him that, you know, congress both parties are going to hold his feet to the fire when we tweets Something Like that and they consider it a very serious charge and that theyre going to unspool the investigation to the end. I think the white house will have to come out and answer to this possibly after monday or march 28th when we hear the final word in the committees. As former cia operative, we talked many times on the many kind of points of investigations now that this white house is facing and congress is taking on. Your reaction to what you heard here . In all of our conversations every time you said its near impossible that you would believe that president obama would be behind this hack. What do you think happens now, bob . Wiretap is what i meant. Clearly there was no wiretap. Devices are easy to find if one was applied for and executed. That was clear from the beginning. It would have taken a fiveminute call to the department of justice to figure that out. We know that obama didnt do it illegally. Theres no evidence of that. President trump is relying on altright sources. Thats what im going to base my policy. Hes doing it with climate change. Health care and everything else. Its a president thats taken a deep distrust to washington and now its hard to determine where this is going to go. I dont see this man backing down. The real question is what happens in case of an International Crisis involving a war. Can we trust President Trump and based on this wiretapping claim, i would say no. What do you make of a little bit of what we heard in that press conference about adam schiff saying they were frustrated that the fbi director was stonewalling them and not answering their questions and more cooperation from the fbi on this but that frustration from capitol hill and tension between what capitol hill wants to hear and what the fbi and the intelligence agencies are offering up is palpable. You heard similar things from Lindsey Graham as well. What do you whats behind that from your post . I can see it involves the case of flynn. The Russian Ambassadors phone was intercepted. It got leaked. How many more phone calls were intercepted. The fbi is in the middle of a very, very destructive storm right now. If you take these leaks and you hand them to congress whether its the gang of eight or the full committees, the chances of another leak happening are pretty good and talk about muddying the waters and this is what the fbi is scared about. Its not just the fbi. Its the National Security agency and cia sitting on this special task force investigating the russians. Theres a lot of very insensitive intelligence and frankly the fbi doesnt trust the committees. So we just got in some new sound from the attorney general Jeff Sessions when he was being asked by reporters about the wiretapping claims. Lets listen to that and then well talk about it. Listen to this. Look, no, but what happened in my case was that i was active in the campaign. I held a role in the campaign. Theres a code of federal regulations rules, statute really, that says if youre involved as a department of justice employee in a campaign, have a role in that campaign, that you cannot investigate your own campaign. Even though you may have had nothing whatsoever to do with anything improper, you should not investigate your own campaign. So i have recused myself. Im not talking to the president or the people who are investigating the case. Im unable to comment on any of these details. I never considered meeting are the Russian Ambassador to be improper in any way. We didnt discuss politics or campaigns. We discussed he came in and we discussed issues like the ukraine and things of that nature like i met with lots of ambassadors. So you heard sessions hitting on quite a few things. The most important thing was one word at the very top where he said no. That was in response to a question have you had a chance to brief the president on these wiretap claims or if he ever gave any reason to believe he was wiretapped by the previous administration. You know what strikes me as werine sitting here now, these questions could have been answered just like they are being answered today ten days ago. Right when this happened. I wonder what is all coming to a head that now Jeff Sessions says i never had a chance to brief the president on these claims. Is it just that theres this public hearing coming monday and james comey is going to answer questions before congress . James comey will be on capitol hill talking to senators today in a private meeting, not a public hearing. This has all come to a head at this point. Whats important about what has come out of today are the statements by two people. One, Jeff Sessions. The attorney general. Two, devin nunez, the republican chairman of the house committee. Big supporter of donald trump throughout the campaign. Reluctant at the beginning to get involved in this. I think its important for our viewers to know because there will be a spin put on this by those supporting donald trump that congress did its job. This is what theyre supposed to do. This is an oversight investigation into the executive branch. Thats what congress is empowered to do. I also think credibility right now is really the biggest victim that could come out of this not only as he talks about perhaps going to war, dealing with allies, but also our intelligence agencies at this point that feel like theyre under fire and even though donald trump still enjoys high support among republicans, will he start to slip a little bit from their support as well . We wont know for a couple weeks or so. This is not good for him. This is an important moment and the person front and center in that moment was manny. I want to get your take there and what strikes you . It was a newsy press conference on a number of issues. The headline being that they are completely rejecting the suggestion that trump tower was wiretapped as president of the United States suggested. This was the most forward leaning that the republican chairman has been so far in saying i dont think theres any evidence that trump tower was wiretapped and adam schiff has been crit cical saying theres evidence whatsoever. Also the idea of whether there are any contacts that occurred during the president ial campaign between russian officials and anyone tied to the Trump Campaign. Devin nunez once again says theres no evidence of that yet. Adam schiff doesnt want to get as categorical on that issue. Interesting to hear that disagreement about roger stone, that trump associate and those conversations he had with alleged Russian Hackers during the elections. Nunez says i dont even know who roger stone really is. Not that interested in the topic. Schiff was concerned and wants to learn more about it. You see disagreements play out along partisan lines and also questions about whether or not these incidental surveillance tactics that were going on whether or not the president s communication itself were picked up during those surveillance techniques. Well still learn if there was any news there. A lot of different topics hit on. One thing they would not confirm is whether or not the fbi is investigating any campaign ties, talks between russian officials and Trump Campaign. Thats something senators want to get to the bottom of it. Theyll hear from comey today privately. Nunez and schiff would not confirm what they were told. To their credit, Top Republican and democrat on this committee appear together even though they have conflicting views on certain things. Important to give them credit they appeared together. I want to finish this out. The other big headline we cant forget. Doj filing charges against four individuals including two russian spies to be behind that massive hack into yahoo that happened. Thats amazing. Criminal charges against fsb officers. Your thoughts . Against kgb. The department of justice is taking courage in its hands going after these people because clearly they put this country under attack during the elections. It even goes back to the 90s. This has been a consistent pattern with the russians interfering in american elections in going after our computers. And its great an indictment. We should keep doing it. Amazing. A lot playing out this hour. Thanks for being along for the ride. Appreciate all you offered. Inside politics wi with john g picks up right now. Thanks, kate. Welcome to inside politics. Im john king. Thanks for sharing your day with us. Another busy one in the nations capital. The republican family feud over replacing obamacare is intensifying. House Speaker Paul Ryan under fire from trump loyalists who say its a mess of the speakers making. The speaker reminding anyone that asks the president helped draft the bill and time for republicans to stop