Dispute. Now turning attention to the ron johnson letter if i may. Yes. On august 31st, Senator Johnson is getting ready to travel to ukraine on September 5th with senator with murphy. And he wanted johnson wanted the aid released so he calls the president and sought permission to be the bearer of good news. Right. The president said im not ready to lift the aid. They had this Senator Johnson, he writes a tenpage letter, very detailed, and he gives some remarkable detail and i would like to read it. Its on page 6. I this is Senator Johnson speaking, he said i asked him whether there was some kind of
arran arrangement where ukraine would take some action and the hold would be lifted. Without hesitation, Senator Johnson says, President Trump immediately denied such an arrangement existed and he started cursing. He said, no way. President trump said no way. I would never do that. Who told you that . And Senator Johnson goes on to say that President Trumps reactionnt here was adamant, vehe
because past is precedent. i want to bring in former deputy director andrew mccabe. director mccabe, obviously you re familiar with the types of meetings paula is describing that happened today between the doj and trump s legal team. can you take us inside what it would be like? sure, erin, i m very familiar with these meetings both as an investigator and leader in the fbi and my own unfortunate experience being investigated for several years baselessly and i should add fruitlessly, i had the experience of sending my own attorneys into a meeting like this. the way these meetings work, they go with the request of the defense attorneys. they re allowed to come in and meet. they typically meet with some high level justice department person. this case is a little bit different because it s in the hands of the special the special counsel when we know jack smith is there today. the defense attorneys are basically given the floor to present whatever they want to present. it s usually they
gave the former president until thursday to appear in front of the grand jury. he very skillfully did not answer that invitation and basically was able to use each one of those days as essentially additional delay. if he d said right off the bat i m not going to come in, he would have sped things up. i think prosecutors anticipated after that period they would receive a request for a meeting like the one they had today, so it is my guess, my speculation that they factored all of this into their timing as to when they want to bring the actual indictment anticipating each one of these moves that the defense would probably make. where does that leave us now? i think the indictment could happen as early likely tuesday when the grand jury reconvenes. but we ll have to see. it could come at any point after that as well. thank you, director. i appreciate it. karen, what do you make of the timing as director mccabe is
amassed a powerful case the president showing he knew these documents were classify. director mccabe, we were told on the recording trump said he would like to share the document, but knows there are limitations on his ability to declassify the documents because he is no longer president. that seems to contradict what he s said numerous times to kaitlan collins, to sean hannity. is it a smoking gun? it is. it directly contradicts all that. it establishes many things that could have been defenses. one, he had classified documents there. he s admitting it. two, he knew what he had was classified. it establishes that knowledge. it establishes he knew he had it to declassify those things. it s devastating to the many defenses that jack smith has