guardrails, dawn mcgahn acted as a guardrail time and time again. you have the director of national intelligence who has acted as a guardrail. you have the cia directorer, past and president, acting as guardrails. the fbi director came out in this piece that michael wrote that donald trump is very disappointed that christopher ray is, quote, weak. his definition of weak is someone that won t be a hatchet man for him. time and again, there have been people around this president who have acted as guardrails. let s hope the elected republicans in the house and the senate will will start perhaps following their examples and putting their country ahead of their political parties. still ahead, federal judge deals another blow to president trump s immigration agenda. we have new reporting about how the courts are also providing resistance, a formidable obstacle to the administration ser hard line
addition not to do this, can you tell us why mcgahn told the president not to. the acting attorney general, mr. whitaker, is someone the president views as an ally. so what the white house counsel s office did is they wrote this memo about the problems that could come of having the justice department investigate things. they said, look, you have the authority to say to the justice department, hey, will you look at this issue, will you investigate this thing, will you look at this problem. but they said that is not a great idea because you can get into all sorts of problems. congress could come after you. judges could throw out charges. you could be impeached. voters could vote you out of office and get rid of you. you need to stay away from it. this is a bad idea. now, this has not stopped the
president from trying to weigh in on criminal investigations. mcgahn, the white house counsel who left about a month ago was seen as a guardrail. he was seen as someone that stopped the president from doing a lot of the things that he wanted to do that may have been illegal or unethical or politically problematic. famously, mcgahn was not able to stop trump from firing the fbi director jim comey. that went forward. you know, mcgahn essentially joef saw the process of how they were going to explain that to the public. but since then, mcgahn was much more insistent with trump and was able to sort of curtail his desires to do things that could get him into trouble. at the same time, along the way, mcgahn racked up a a lot of things he stopped the president from doing. michael schmidt, thank you very much. we greatly appreciate it. great reporting again. and it is important to remember the people that have acted as
documents. it is unnerving for us lawyers to think of waving an available privilege but i think it might deserve the message pretty well for the president overall, witches, even though he doesn t like this probe, he s willing to be cooperative and give them what they want. jason: james, is giuliani right? if mcgahn had evidence of a crime or something going on in the white house, he wouldn t be here, right? i think is a pretty good assumption. i think that s probably right. i hesitate only because rudy might change his comments any minute. but overall, i think you ve got this one right. jason: scott, do you think giuliani made the right assessment and his comments right? i don t think he knows what he s talking about in the sense that he doesn t know what mcgahn said for those 30 hours, neither does trump pray they know what his lawyers aside. the fact that he took a lawyer in shows that he was concerned about not only maintaining his integrity, but also the fact that he did ha
overhyped a mueller probe story. the new york times put out a piece over the weekend that said white house counsel dawn mcgahn spoke to special counsel robert mueller s team for about 30 hours, revealing new details about the president s attitude toward the russia probe. that prompted some to speculate that mcgahn had turned on donald trump. but the washington post is out with a new report stating that mcgahn does not think he put trump in any legal jeopardy. citing what mcgahn s attorney has revealed to president trump s lawyers. earlier tonight, trompe l oeil or rudy giuliani made this key point. here s the most important thing, i knew not to worry about it because of the president had said anything criminal to the council of the white house, mcgahn wouldn t be there now. mcgahn has a would have to quit. jason: good point. joining me now with reaction from washington, d.c., are james, white-collar litigation attorney, and democrat attorney