it just was outside of your scope. that s correct. your reaction? it s outside of his scope, so the fact that the president was use clapper to say there s no there there, there s no story, this is all ridiculous doesn t hold water. he didn t poke holes through it and drove a mack truck through that line of argument and when sean spicer was asked about it. you have to ask clapper, asked and answered. as an intelligence official he s not supposed to know about law enforcement investigations, domestic investigations of u.s. citizens, and he said he didn t even know that the fbi had launched a criminal investigation as far back as july. he hasn t been on the grab suns donald trump was inaugurated president. the white house is essentially cherry picking, right, cherry picking what clapper said at one point and not paying attention to what clapper said today. you can see that in the press
can t be attacked and, you know, this could have huge consequences as we ll see. all right. congresswoman, thanks so much for joining us. thank you for having me, wolf. coming, more on the breaking news, president trump hinting there are tape recordings of his conversations with former fbi director james comey. why won t the white house clear things up? are there recording devices in the oval office or in the residence? as i said for the third time there s nothing to add. does he think it s appropriate to threaten mr. comey not to speak? i don t think that s not a threat. he s simply stating a fact. the tweet speaks for itself. i m moving on. we know how to ct anything. even a coupe soup. [woman] so beautiful. [man] beautiful just like you. [woman] oh, why thank you.
joining us it is democratic congresswoman kathleen rice of new york, a member of the house homeland security committee. congresswoman, thanks for joining us. thanks for having me, wolf. as you know, the president tweeted today comby in his words better hope that there are no tapes of his conversations. do you think this indicates that the president records conversations snm. i think he s duty-bound now to say that he does or not. it wouldn t be unheard of what this is to me, it shows a president in my mind that s becoming increasingly more unhinged. to say something like that to someone in a threatening way, what is the point of that? you know, during this whole we can this was all going on i was a bipartisan group of my colleagues in ukraine, and they know better than anyone what russia meddling in their lives, what cost that comes at, right. you look at poland and the recent elections in france. everyone knows what russia does to try to influence democratic elections all across
of echoes of nixon, right, and you had the white house today with sean spicer getting this question three, four, five times and essentially every time punting, not really wanting to say, you know, definitively whether or not there is a taping system, and it s also i think drawing out james comey, right. i mean, you have, as gloria said, donald trump is somebody who has bullied people. that s sort of his business style and now you have james comey saying i m not going to be bullied f.there s tapes out there he doesn t seem to be too worried about them. put up or shut up, donald trump. it s incredible that he hasn t learned his lesson about doing these vague tweets. we saw the consequences of thark obama wiretapping at trump tower tweet. it s sort of amazing that we re back again. this is the pattern that we keep talking about. he twreeeets and says some outrageous things whether it s about the crowd size during the inauguration, about the president wiretapping him, 3
subject now to the presidential records act? would the congress be able to get those recordings? the presidential records act certainly covers audio recordings, a 1978 law passed in response to watergate so the fact that it s covered. interestingly the president can destroy records related to his own presidency unless it has evidently value. the question is whether or not the congress can subpoena these will get into a complex issue of executive privilege. not sure whether the president would be able to keep these secrets. white house press secretary sean spicer refused to confirm or deny the existence of a taping system. what the president said the president said and he ll let the tweet leave for itself. why are we even discussing thames ? we re discussing it because once again the president has made this claim that everybody is wondering about whether or not there s actually a taping system in the white house, sort