russia. the comey transcript reads in part that s the way we treated the russia counter intelligence investigations. we opened them in late july 2016. didn t know whether we had anything. when i was fired as director in may of 2017 i didn t know whether there was anything to it. after the six-hour friday session comey was pressed why some questions went unanswered. the republicans came out and said the government lawyers ran interference and shut down specific lines of questioning. did that happen and if so, what topics were not discussed? when you read the transcript and you will not see that happening. according to the house government oversight committee chairman what really happened is that on more than 200 occasions the former f.b.i. director could not answer questions saying he didn t know, he couldn t remember or simply could not recall. meantime the incoming democratic chairman of the committee jerry nadler said when he takes over the gavel a few weeks from now he will sh
sandra: thank you. bill: more to talk about. with us is kevin mccarthy in new york. good morning to you. one of the many things we discovered on the comey testimony is that four were under surveillance. four trump campaign officials. as opposed to two before. what does that tell you if anything? does that change the story? it goes to show the discrediting of comey. where he sits in this hearing but he says i don t know 166 times as he goes through. he wrote a book, he goes through. one thing that came to me is there is no collusion with this president and comey, i don t know why he is still out there talking about things he is discredited for. bill: when he says 14 russians had contact with trump campaign officials in 2016, is that an issue or just how washington works? if you re in an international city, people interact with a lot of individuals. i don t know what he is referring to here.
if i was asked at the time did i think it was a campaign contribution i would say no. it was a private matter protecting someone s reputation. he happened to be in the campaign for the presidency. even if not the same action would have been taken. an alleged payoff to a porn star after all the years and millions of dollars being spent that shows what a failure this investigation has been and really what a disgrace it s been. sandra: how do you tell the american people what has changed then since james comey sat down with house lawmakers, answered these questions. we saw the testimony over the weekend. here we are this morning. where does this investigation stand and what has changed? well, the bottom line is the mueller investigation is going to go forward. hopefully it will end soon. i think what you ll see is what dershowitz said. you ll find the report which finds no criminal activity as far as collusion with russia. no collusion with russia whatsoever but raising all
them. these are people who just had a terrible mid-term election. they ought to drop it. they ought to move on and talk about the economy, things that work for them and quit doing i heard today hillary they re having a reinvestigation of hillary clinton. it will really harm her reelection effort and put her in jeopardy. bill: here he is on checking the president from last night as well in that same interview. we have to remind ourselves the president of the united states of america is publicly announcing that people are committing crimes, they should be in jail, private citizens. that s not okay. if we become numb to it we risk surrendering the norm. there is no one in washington with less credibility than james comey. he almost reminds you of ben franklin s line about overnight guests and fish. after three days they both start smelling bad. this is an overnight guest that has stayed way too long.
point he makes? no responsible lawyer would charge that as a crime? well, an iffy case. it is not open and shut. in 2010 the justice department indicted john edwards who ran for president and made a similar allegation to them that he had against him that he had actually gotten contributions to pay off an extramarital affair he had in which he had a child. and it was a stretch of the campaign finance laws to say that against edwards at the time and indeed the jury acquitted edwards on one count and then deadlocked in edward s favor on the rest of the counts. it was not a success at all. so i think that you might make the argument that outside of this political context right now this is not a case based on the edwards precedent that the justice department would try to prosecute. bill: here is the tweet from the president. one of the few earlier today.