it would be him because the offenses are certainly stacking up. this latest is just so conspicuous that one wonders what he had in his mind when he was filling those forms out. john john barrett, also cnn is learning tonight the senate judiciary committee is now going to look at obstruction of justice allegations. do you think that s the right move? it s within their oversight jurisdiction, obviously, and the sort of watergate precedent, john dean, forgive me, is special prosecutor and the senate committee investigation proceeding on parallel tracks. and, you know, there s serious evidence that indicates possible obstruction. it s, i think, obvious that mueller is investigating it for law enforcement purposes and it makes sense that the senate and, indeed, whereas the house should dig into it for congressional purposes. is that the right move, do you believe, matthew? this is where i have to disagree with the professor. as i said the other night, the only difference between t
if one sense, but can you imagine if the obama administration had done this. and other administrations previously. people would be calling, you know, for the president s head or for the press secretary it doesn t matter that it s cnn, if it happened to any other news organization, it would be outrageous that they re not calling if it happened to fox news, happened to msnbc, happened to abc, nbc, whatever, it s outrageous. or the new york times or whatever. but here s the thing. i don t think this white house understands that sean spicer actually works for the american people. he doesn t work for the president. reporter: he does. we pay his salary. and part of his job description is to give press briefings. and if he s not going to do that, is he going to give some of the money back that he s making from the off the backs of the american people? reporter: i couldn t agree more, don. and i think what this is going to boil down to, and this is something that mainstream news
today. at the same sometime, we should point out sean spicer, even though this wasn t on camera today, is limiting the number of questions being asked. for example, today, i m not making this up, a russian reporter asked a question at the press briefing today of sean spicer, but he would not call on cnn, yours tru s truly, sittinge press briefing room. that to me is sort of staggering. i talked to a friend of mine who works at fox news last week, whose name i will not mention on the air. he said during the obama administration he could only remember one time when the press secretary under barack obama would not call on fox news. it was because he left the press briefing early. this routinely happens to cnn, and it is part of an ongoing scaling back of press freedoms that we have inside the white house here. shutting off the cameras and the audio is just part of the deal these days. this is america, jim. reporter: yeah. we you don t shut off the and i m going to bring the pane
arabia and russia s nuclear power agency. let s discuss now, john q. barrett is here, who was associate counsel for the iran-contra investigation. matthew whittaker. and cnn contributor, john dean. former nixon white house counsel and author of conservatives without conscience. i love having you on together or individually. john barrett, i m going to start with you. your reaction to this. flynn may have misled officials on his security clearance form about two middle east trips during the presidential campaign. one of hitch involved russia and that $100 billion nuclear deal i talked about earlier. i just mentioned. what do you think? well, forms are hard to fill out. it s laborious. but they re very high stakes and they re very important. and security clearance personnel position clearance form is something that someone like general flynn knows to take seriously. it s a problem. okay. so here s the thing.
with, and the purpose of the trip and in addition to that, the fact that on that security clearance form, general flynn did not list any meetings with foreign officials for the seven years prior to his application for the security clearance to enter the trump administration. all these things required by law to report on what s known as your sf-86, your application for security clearance form, they re asking for details. i contacted flynn s lawyer today. he would not comment on the letter, but he did confirm that they received the letter from house democrats. interesting. jims cnn is also learning the senate judiciary committee widening the scope of their investigation. they re now going to look at obstruction of justice allegations? reporter: that s right. a moment, it seems, of bipartisanship, or at least some bipartisanship. the ranking democrat on the judiciary committee, senator dianne feinstein, and the chairman, senator chuck grassley, agreeing on the outlines of their probe.