saying it would be improper and would cross the line and there would be severe consequences for the president to ask his doj to do that. of course, erin, there were supposed to be independence between the white house and doj, although they re both under the executive branch. for this kind of reason to prevent a president from ordering investigations, erin. all right. thank you very much, pamela. i want to go now to the former assistant u.s. attorney for the southern district in new york, former new jersey attorney and former adviser to four presidents, including nixon and clinton, david gergen. ann, what do you make of this? you know, he made the comment, you d be in jail. it was a laugh line at the time. yeah. he did then want to move forward with this. and i think even in the tweets, it was it seemed almost like like it was a laugh line or he was just venting. this is unbelievable. this basically is showing us that he s asked senior leadership at the department of justi
really, not a major ruling today. the big drama was certainly around sean hannity s name. let s go outfront now to david gergen, former adviser to four presidents, including nixon and clinton, and john avlon, editor in chief of the daily beast. brynn describes the drama around this. it s hard to describe, in a world where one can no longer be surprised, how surprising this moment was for those of us today. cohen is trying very hard to keep any communications he had with sean hannity private, claiming attorney/client privilege. it was a spit take. the last name we expected to hear was sean hannity. we know they re all really tight, but we never imagined the president s personal fixer was also representing his number one advocate on tv. it just it s the kind of stuff if it was in a script or a novel, it would get thrown out for being implausible.
espiblly when you say bad or sick guy. he s talking about the former president himself. it s not weird or random, it s purposeful donald trump s lying or maliciousness is intended. he s not interested in the truth, particularly about anything having to do with his own conduct. he s trying to deflect attention from the investigation going on into the russian hacking of the dnc and whether or not there is some connection with people around trump. he s got to be considering the lying of mike flynn, his chosen national security adviser, the lying of his own attorney general about how or whether he talked to russians in this case, the a.m. bass dwoer. we re looking at a presidency that s encased in a bodyguard of lies. that s donald trump s problem. we never had a problem in a fact free environment before. including nixon, including clinton, during the monica lewinsky thing. clinton lied, nixon lied.
history of the planet. there are different ways to look at transparency. he has got an lot of criticism with the civil rights people. he s invoked state secrets more than the bush administration did. thing he is criticize in the campaign like nsa wiretapping or interrogation, which he called as president to invoke the state secret to block cases. there were cases in the u.k. where one of the citizens said he was tortureed by the u.s. and they wanted to reveal some of that information and our government told them if you do, we will cut off sharing intelligence with you. it s hard to argue you are being transparent when you do those things. they also have been more aggressive than the bush administration going after whistle blowers. the new york times said even the most aggressive of any president including nixon. so these are areas where this is how information does get
they have been the best in the history of the planet. there are different ways to look at transparency. he has got an lot of criticism with the civil rights people. he s invoked state secrets more than the bush administration did. thing he is criticize in the campaign like nsa wiretapping or interrogation, which he called as president to invoke the state secret to block cases. there were cases in the u.k. where one of the citizens said he was tortureed by the u.s. and they wanted to reveal some of that information and our government told them if you do, we will cut off sharing intelligence with you. it s hard to argue you are being transparent when you do those things. they also have been more aggressive than the bush administration going after whistle blowers. the new york times said even the most aggressive of any president including nixon. so these are areas where this