say, release it. and by the way, he has absolute authority to control what is classified and what is not classified. here he has asked the attorney general to work with the heads of the intelligence community, including the director of national security to look at these documents, redact what needs to be redacted and release what can be released. i see that as a thoughtful approach to the classification issue. tucker: so if you are the head of one of these agencies. if you are chris wray for example fbi he is fighting against any declassification effort, that s kind of the classification posture of a washington bureaucrat of an agency that he wants to protect his own people and
oversaw this is in there with barr now. as far as further questions i would want to know more about the influence, the foreign influence still going on in this white house. that could continue as counterintelligence investigations and can continue after robert mueller. is there something affecting how policy is being conducted now because of people in the president s orbit? i think that s the lingering questions that might not be answered at the end of this. i think she s given us the perfect red carpet where we want to walk next and i think with respect to the classification issue, you know what, if not now then when? are we going to have this this is the most important thing to figure out. what did a foreign entity do to interfere in our election and did they have any sort of part in coordinating it? why are we keeping anything classified at this point? i know the people that i talked to and the law enforcement people i know are going to be
and to what degree, i guess we don t know this if we don t know what s in it, but what is the white house in your opinion or your understanding able to edit or restrict the release of? that s exactly right. that s a great point. they re not able to edit the content of the mueller report. what they will have a say in, presumably, is what gets sent over to congress because they will be able to claim executive privilege or may make claims of executive privilege on some things, and there will also be a classification issue. some of the report may be classified but there s a separate avenue of reporting. the intelligence communities in congress have a right to be briefed about intelligence developments up to the highest classification levels and adam schiff s position, he s the chairman of the house intelligence committee is the fbi has to tell him what they found in their investigation of whether donald trump was compromised in any way by russia. they have an obligation to tell him tha
basically not be charged with that. what would it mean if he s charged and hillary is not or what means since hillary wasn t charged, he won t either? well, i mean, i think there s hypocrisy all over the place in these cases. you look at flynn get being charged for false statements and then you look at mccabe and whether or not he will be charged with false statements and you look at comey who arguably made false statements before congress, so i think that, you know, it gets people very frustrated and continues this, this story line that all these investigations. unfortunately politicized and people were looking at whose ox is being gored rather than applying principle to everyone loved. eric: finally, do you think he will be charged? it s hard to know because there s technical aspellts of the classification issue that we can t know about now but i think it is very good chance that he will end up in the same spot mccabe is now a couple of weeks
in the ordinary course of business and if they are, they just walk down the hall or across the plaza and they can present it to the white house staff or the president himself at any time. so why all of the cloak house cooperation. no timeline? i m ready to go any time. on the weekend, friday? i m happy to go tomorrow. if they re ready tomorrow, i m ready to go tomorrow. do you think over the course of his statements on the matter the chairman has revealed any classified information? and do you think that the house ethics committee should be investigating that matter? you know, i don t know the answer on the classification issue. i don t want any involvement in any ethics questions. you know, i have a an investigation to try to run as the minority ranking member, and i m keeping my focus on that. so that s not an issue i want to