disagreement as to the direction that was provided but your earlier suggestion was that this is being done as an illegal activity, which has yet to be determined. it has yet to be determined let me just say this. the justice department guidelines are the president can t be indicted so prosecutors may not look to see whether the president broke the law here, they may not investigate it any further. the constitution says it s congress s job to provide this oversight. why not look for the answers? can t congress look for the answers? they re phototally legitimate questions. so having a hearing. you have a hearing going on right now with mr. miller who has started the process. he will do a report to congress based upon whether or not there was any activity with the russians concerning the campaign that mr. trump ran and to this point there has been no evidence of any collusion there. this isn t about sorry, this isn t about collusion. this isn t about collusion.
have these papers from small towns in middle america and everywhere else join your effort? it was very important because this isn t about the globe, this isn t about president trump. this isn t about one paper or another newspaper it was about racing voices and saying we re not the enemy of the people and again as we have noted before the threats or threats of freedom of the press or defending a free press looks very different in boston and new york than he does in the middle of the country. for us it was important to use representation for most of the state which is we do, we have representation from nearly every state and also red and blue states. i would read what the san francisco chronicle editorial page editor john diaz wrote. this is what he s predicting as a result of this. trump will call it collusion and attempt to cite this day of editorials to discredit criminal and factual news stories in the
gina haspel, like all her predecessors, reached out to the former directors of central intelligence to talk to them as she started her job to say what are the things you wish you would have known earlier, what are the mistakes you made that i can avoid early on? those conversations can still happen. she can call in john brennan to her office anytime she pleases. but it s a little bit easier with a security clearance. this isn t about john brennan, it s actually hurting the u.s. government by creating this new this new world that is hard to believe in where your political speech affects whether you re able to hold a security clearance. and as you put it, that speech is, itself, a constitutionally protected right. i think you put it very well and give us a crash course on some of the issues here. tim, when you look at this, this is also politically an example of the kind of thing that the white house uses to threaten to abuse power and then sometimes it s dismissed as well don t give
it s not a witch hunt when some of the most senior members of the trump campaign have been indicted. paul manafort has been charged with conspiracy to commit fraud against the united states of america. this trial does not allege facts that the government says occurred during the time that paul manafort was the campaign manager. really, this trial has zero to do with donald trump the person or donald trump the president. shannon: a lot of folks are conflating the two so let s talk about it with our panel. charles lane, pinion writer for the washington post. tom evan, real clear politics cofounder and president. welcome to all of you. these are smart folds, firemen, talking about this trial what it is or what it isn t about. are any of them connected to russian collusion?
people of our country. let me pickup on that, you mentioned party bosses. you have been relatively critical of nancy pelosi, the democratic leader. what is your relationship with her like? well, i guess it s been better, but this isn t about, this isn t about any one person. this is about a new generation of leaders. it s about a time in our party s history when it s time for a new generation of leadership. and although i don t know who the next leader of our party will be or who the next speaker of the house will be, i have given a lot of thought to the kind of leadership that we want, what we want to see in our new leaders. one thing is we have to have leaders who have vision, talk about the future, not just criticize trump and the republicans. talk about what democrats stand for, how we re going to bring jobs back, how we re going to be strong and safe with national security. second, we need leaders who will actually bring the party together and will build a strong bench. i wa