Analysis and discussion of the days top stories and compelling issues from Lawrence ODonnell. General under president clinton and former federal prosecutor. Julia, i will have you play a few roles for me tonight because you do also cover the Justice Department. Jeff sessions in the room with the president when he is told that Robert Mueller is going to be Special Counsel, according to bloomberg news. Jeff sessions offered his Rec Resignation in that moment. I think the idea that Robert Mueller had been appointed was pretty obvious right there. He saw the writing on the wall, that it was because he had recused himself from this investigation that this had been allowed to happen, that Rod Rosenstein was allowed to appoint this Special Counsel. The way we all see it and the logical way to see it is the appointment of Robert Mueller was because of the firing of jim comey. It was actually the president s decision to fire jim comey, not Jeff Sessions decision. But knowing donald trump and i
Rachel Maddow takes a look at the days top political news stories. Whether a person is too close to the subject of the probe, whether Jeff Sessions would beak be more of a Trump Campaign surrogate who happened to be Attorney General rather than acting as an independent Law Enforcement officer. If sessions didnt recuse after that statement, it would have made him look even more like he was doing trumps bidding. And trump apparently didnt know that making that statement would also as just a general matter of embarrassment, make him look weak and out of the loop about a decision that was already done. Because there were reports that show the Internal Doj Process had already resulted in sessions accepting that nonpartisan Recusal Recommendation from the career staff earlier that week and that Jeff Sessions was already working with doj officials op writing the very rationale they would soon release to the public. In fact, it was barely an hour after trump put that public pressure on session
Analysis and discussion of the days top stories and compelling issues from Lawrence ODonnell. Jeopardy for the president. Were learning more about the trumpmueller relationship. The day after he interviewed Robert Mueller to be the director of the fbi, trump was in an Oval Office Meeting when an aid announced that mueller had been appointed the Special Counsel to investigate the Trump Campaign. Trump and Attorney General jeff session, who attended both meetings were blind sided according to a person familiar with both meetings. The president immediately blasted sessions for not knowing the announcement was coming and challenged how the person he just interviewed for the fbi job and who trump had said he had a past dispute with over Golf Club Fees could now be investigating him, the person said. Now, we dont know if trump had turned down mueller for the fbi job at this point. But we do know that Christopher Wrey wasnt named until a month after. Read on the man, he knew he would also be
Rachel Maddow takes a look at the days top political news stories. By the letters, chs. Confidential human source. Now, the trove of documents detail reports of payments to steele, mostly redacted. You can see there, thats a lot of white space. There are two exceptions. The final page is information from a document, from february 2016. Of course, thats long before the russia probe began. It says steele was, quote, verbally admonished by the fbi and that steele acknowledged the admonishment and even signed a document noting it. Now, from this excerpt, which obviously is tantalizing, we dont have the wider context of why. The other item comes from page two of these new documents. It concerns the fbis decision to terminate its relationship with steele. Guess when . Just days before the 2016 election. Now, this document says steele had confirmed his relationship with the fbi to an outside party. And that he was a source for a, quote, online article. In addition to revealing his relationshi
Rachel Maddow takes a look at the days top political news stories. They are known as the steele dossier. They allege, among other things, that the Trump Campaign had organized collusion with the kremlin. Quote, this is something of huge significance. Way above party politics, that Intelligence Officer told corn, that would be steele. Quote, i think trumps own party should be aware of this stuff, as well. The official confirmation of the fbi investigation into the Trump Campaigns contacts with russia was not confirmed for many more months. Its even easy to forget that, because its the kind of big information thats the center of American Politics, so we all talk about it. People who dont even follow the news know about it. But lets be clear. It was not until march 2017, many months later is, thats after the inauguration, after the election, when fbi director james comey went down to the hill, where he was testifying and said, yes, there was an open probe. By that time, the fbi had also i