i ve actually called the justice department to look into the leaks. those are criminal leaks, the leaks are real. you know what they said. you saw it. and the leaks are absolutely real. the news is fake. because so much of the news is fake. we re going to find the leakers. we re going to find the leakers. they re going to pay a big price for leaking. again, this gets caught up in the politics. so help me from a legal perspective. is there anything wrong, try this one yes or no, the president calling his attorney general, saying these leaks are damaging, you need to do something. anything wrong with just that? ? i don t think there s something wrong with the president asking the attorney general are you looking into this? if the president says i think it was schiff or swalwell, go get them. that s a problem because that is political influence on an investigation. unauthorized disclosure of classified information is a crime. the justice department does have an obligation to condu
it must follow. we know #00 plus accounts targeting schiff, including a minor, a gag order on apple, at least three times, saying you cannot share you cannot publicly talk about this. where s the line? where is the line between a legitimate leak investigation and something that crosses into an abuse of power? so, every time there is an investigation that in any way involves members of congress, that is the highest level of sensitivity in any criminal investigation, including a national security investigation. so first of all, it would it should, in the justice department, go up to the highest levels of approval, including the attorney general, to approve some type of action like that. second of all, there s two warning signs that i see in this not being handled in the way that i would want to see something handled. number one, it looks extremely broad. so if we re talking about 100 potential accounts. multiple members, their staffs, potentially family members, that indicates to m
mitch mcconnell and key members on the judiciary and house and senate side, we have not also heard back from them. it s also unclear whether or not there was if this was clearly seems like a partisan investigation going after the then president s very foremost critics but there s still questions whether republicans were swept up in this investigation. even the democrats say we don t know if the republicans were swept up in it. we ve reached out to the republicans on the house intelligence committee and others as well. we have not heard back if any republicans were affected by the subpoena so it does, at the moment, suggest there is another example of the justice department going after its perceived critics and the people that donald trump were calling out, and news organizations, that donald trump was calling out time and again. and at least so far, forgive, the grand ostrich party sticking its head in the sand. whether it s a republican president, abuse of power. we knew at the
department, to look at the handling of this, especially, i think, the part that i think a lot of people in the justice department are uncomfortable with, and are concerned about, is the fact that this was a very broad, frankly a fishing expedition that targeted not only the members, but current and former staff, and even their families, the fact that there is someone who was a minor, someone who s a teenager, whose device was part of this dragnet of metadata taken from apple back in 2018, it s something that s raising a lot of concerns, the question, of course, is why didn t the department do this earlier? we now know this is being referred, i think democrats are very, very upset that the attorney general merrick garland has not gotten on the phone with them to explain what happened here, what the scope of this was and they don t really understand even still what exactly was under investigation. there s been a lot of displeasure on the part of
the trump justice department did raises severe questions, including this one. whether this crossed the line from a legitimate leak investigation into an abuse of government power and just this past week there have been a number of revelations about conduct at the trump doj that raised questions including about whether it goes too far in its efforts to investigate leaks that angered mr. trump. wall street journal white house reporter with us, and abby phillip, and washington post congressional reporter as well. this is a tough subject. i want to start with what we heard there. because the president was never shy. like him or not, watching at home, he was transparent all the time about what he liked, and what he didn t like. he named adam schiff several times. he names the house intelligence committee. we now know house intelligence committee democrats are meeting in a few minutes to find out how many of them were targeted. the question is, where s the line between a legitimate