fancy version of this. kushner. who else lied about russia? don jr. flynn. the president. you trying to speak to all of these people? and it s a central question. how did so many people forget so many meetings with so many russians? how did they have so many contacts, a foreign adversaries when you re trying to get american votes. the number of times people are traveling over there meeting with russians over adoption when you re trying to get people in the united states to get behind your presidential campaign. it doesn t make sense. it could be the greatest coincidence in the world or a convergence. you and have i been around at the highest level of two presidential campaigns there are no russians. no russians. there. are no russians. i never saw any russians. zerlina, you were on the clinton campaign. yes. did you understand at the time you were up against not just an asymmetrical opponent, someone who lied with reckless
said only the mob takes the 50. if he didn t do anything wrong, he is not acting like somebody who has nothing to worry about. the way that they re obstructing and disrupting and i think trying to throw us off the case at least in the house investigation does not seem like somebody who wants to be cooperative. now, it does appear we re in a period where on the mueller side that they re producing documents and allowing witnesses to participate. but that s what innocent people do. steve? well, look, at the end of the day, we re going to find out everything that happened by the time these investigations conclude. the special counsel and the congressional investigations. you know, the one thing i know for sure is that 100% of the time, and i mean 100% of the time, 100% of the people who have been around this campaign in this administration asked a question about russia, they lie about it. every single time. so we ve got session. he lied. we ve got kushner. the vice president. we
you put up this is the people who were connected just that we know of to sergey kislyak. this is a washington post thing. i don t know if you see all the gray dots that may we may find out. you ve got kushner, carter page, donald trump with all these ties. now you have these new information that michael flynn is in need of money. michael flynn has started yet another consulting firm. he doesn t have the money to pay for his legal defense. there are all these places where trump would have to count on all these people going to jail for him. yes. it s sort of amazing. remember, none of these people ever remember meeting with russian ambassador. it was a memorable figure. a very large man, very loud, distinctive. so the level of duplicity here of lying about these contacts is one thing. and i think you ve hit the nail on the head.
ali. let s start with this donald j. trump meeting, the fact that we re up to five or six trump associates who have now been dishonest about the fact that there were contacts between trump associates and the russians. what s your first take on this? this culture of corruption is everywhere. you ve got flynn, you ve got manafort, you ve got donald trump jr., you ve got kushner. that s why we needed a special counsel. what we need to have happen in congress, ali, number one, the sanctions bill needs to be passed by the house. because that is very important to hold putin accountable. number two, we need to continue this investigation. because you see the lies permeating, and i m often asked, why does this matter? this is an assault on our democracy, ali. russia is our one of our most fiercest adversaries. ronald reagan wouldn t be acting like this. barack obama certainly didn t act like this.
and be more presidential. jonathan, the trump administration s line about the washington post report is that back channel communications generally speaking as we saw on meet the press would be a good thing, however, if this is true, this isn t back-channel. this is covert, to avoid detection of american intel during a transition period which basically undermines the current sitting administration. so if true, how serious is it? i think it s very serious. there are a couple of distinct issues that are brought up here, number one, you ve got a private citizen of the trump administration not actually come into office conducting foreign policy that might have been at odds with the existing administration s. number two, jared kushner potentially attempting to have meetings or discussions, if the story is true, between the trump administration or transition and russian officials on russian property where the russians would be able to monitor but maybe not the american side, and then