A recap of the days news. That is a lot to get to in one hour. I want to bring in a man who can make sense all of this. He know pwaoutz white house under siege. Dan rather the host of tvs the big interview. Im grateful to be here. Before we get to the stuff we had ready for you. Is this madness . Well, it is a kind of madness and what goes through my mind with events of the last 24 to 48 hours with cohen and manafort is president Abraham Lincoln had his team of rivals and trump had his flock of fellows. He had what turned out to be felons. Theres never been anything like this in american history. Watergate is the closest thing weve had to this. Evidence abounds. Yesterday he implicated the president in a crime. He became an unindicted Co Conspirator in a criminal case. You have a conspiracy to defraud the American Voters a criminal conspiracy to win the election campaign. This is to say serious understates it. I come back to mueller has been digging away and to kphb who thinks yesterda
you know steve breyer so well from your years working together, as you point out on the committee as well. and one fact of history is that he got to the federal bench because jimmy carter had an opening, a nominee, and didn t want to go along with ted kennedy, a fellow member of the committee. his initial preference for arch bald cox and came back with the recommendation for the general counsel, steve breyer, supported by straum thurman and at the behest of allen simpson. do i have that history correct? that s basically correct. he got strong support. there had been some delay by one senator, who, a democrat, who had been discouraged by the fact that steve breyer had opposedthem review of posing his nominee to a federal court. in fact, i agreed with steve
0 retirement. after nearly 28 years on the court, breyer will retire in june, allowing president biden to name his replacement and fire up his shrinking support among black voters ahead of the midterms. while democrats still control the senate. this would pea the first conformation in the supreme court justice in the history in a 50/50 equally divided senate. at the south carolina presidential debate, under pressure from congressman clyburn, biden promised to nominate a black woman to the court. i m looking forwardo making sure there s a black woman on the supreme court. that we in fact get every representation. also this hour a massive escalation in russia s front line mobilization. war ships in the black sea, tanks rolling across the frozen tundra. multi-front threat sending shock waves through the european capitols. ers and in a letter to the russians proposals for a diplomatic off ramp but a flat rejection of vladimir putin s call of sweeping reversal 06 nato s expansion. and e
water gate prosecutor nick ackerman. we re happy to have you. this is an interesting discussion. we have to talk about the biggest difference is, of course, the lack of special prosecutor. president trump has bill barr which is extremely different. right. arch bald cox was the water gate special prosecutor was independa independant. we didn t have indictments approved by the department of justice. we didn t have a bill barr making a spin. we had total independence and we put together the entire case along with the senate select committee that ultimately went to the judiciary committee for impeachment. by the time they got it, there wasn t a question about someone like the people in the white house who were directed not to testify. i mean all the testimony was taken. in fact, what happened during the nixon era was most of the nixon people went into the grand jury, before the senate committee and lied.
way to fire arch bald cox, and leon jaworski. when they finished their work, they compiled all the evidence that they and the grand jury had obtained over the course of their investigation. they compiled it all into a confidential report, went to a federal judge with the support of the justice department and asked the judge for permission to please convey that information to congress. because congress had a judicial proceeding underway. congress was considering articles of impeachment so the justice department and the special prosecutor went to a federal judge and said, please, can we convey this grand jury information to congress so congress can make a decision as to what s been turned up in this investigation and whether it amounts to high crimes and misdemeanors for the purposes of impeachment. and the judge said fine and that was conveyed and that became the basis for the articles of speec impeachment that caused richard nixon to resign. in this impeachment process, there s no spec