sean spicer were among those who participated in calls between the white house and the justice department. democrats claim this is further evidence that trump s white house was trying to get in the way of a fair investigation. this excellent reporting certainly indicates a key element of an obstruction of justice case. jeff sessions ought to explain this kind of contact from the white house. the white house staff ought to be called before the grand jury. and i would predict there will be convictions and indictments early in the new year. julie, this was partly your excellent reporting, and the piece very much talks mostly about obstruction of justice. well, right. i mean, you heard the president say earlier there has been no collusion. that s not a conclusion that bob mueller has come to, what he s looking into is another issue altogether, whether the president and the people around him tried to obstruct justice. one of the key pieces of information he s looking at, one
that mary katherine and jeff both talked about, you never want to say that someone is totally out of the trump orbit because people come in and out in unpredictable ways, but, yes, steve bannon was going to be a huge thorn in mitch mcconnell s side and the side of the mainstream republican, possibly even the entire rnc this year as they look toward a very difficult environment for midterms where it was going to be a real war that bannon was holding up one side of against the establishment. they could have had some very nasty primaries with bannon being a key player. i think with him diminished, the likelihood he plays that role is less, although it s not clear to me that somebody else isn t going to come in and play that role. certainly we know that donald trump is conflicted about this. we might see the alabama situation replay itself many times over, but it s probably not going to be steve bannon who is in the pole position on those races. we haven t heard much from bannon since th
and in theory, everybody tells me i m not under investigation. maybe hillary is, i don t know, but i m not. we have been very open. we could have done it two ways. we could have been very closed and it could have taken years. sort of like when you ve done nothing wrong, let s be open and get it over with. honestly, it s very, very bad for our country. it s making our country look foolish and this is a country that i don t want looking foolish. jeff, how effective is that? i think he may be right in terms about making the country look foolish here. this has been sort of a central thing, but the president has said repeatedly he s not under investigation, again, sidestepping the point of obstruction of justice. that now appears to at least be a central focus of this mueller probe, but by the president standing in front of the house and senate leadership, who both have investigations and inquiries going on about the russian meddling, he says, you know, it just simply isn t true that we
news and say they got him for lying to the fbi. the thing he lied about isn t collusion. no one gets prosecuted for the logan act. you guys you, who are believers in the collusion case, i count you in that group, there still is no evidence. i m actually in the conspiracy camp because collusion is a nice word but it s a law. it s way too light. let me tell you something, he has bigger issues and as you re seeing in the mueller investigation, they re going after low-hanging fruit right out of the box. with manafort, low-hanging fruit was international money laundering. with flynn, it was this phone conversation. let me tell you, i ve done a boatload of wiretaps and that conversation had five points to it. he called them five times that day and that means, in call number one, initial consultation, call number two, agenda and prove officer, call
it is an astounding action to take. yeah. it s astoundingly stupid action to take. dumb thing for him to do, knowing that there would have been u.s. intercepts that would have heard his call. but the other part about this is, so after he lies to the fbi and sally yates comes over two days later and gives the warning to dawn mcgahn, the question has been, why didn t the white house do something about this? because the white house was in on that lie. that s exactly right. we don t know whether they knew that he was lying to the fbi or not but the lie that he told the fbi is the same lie the white house had been telling since sean spicer said it in the clip you played on through the vice president himself saying it on the sunday shows in january. this was a lie that was being told from the top on down. malcolm, what do you say to people today who react to the news and say they got him for lying to the fbi. the thing he lied about isn t collusion. no one gets prosecuted for the log