this already weighed down situation. russia is an albatross around the neck of this administration. and if this is indeed true, it is a very bad situation for jeff sessions and the relationship with this president. if you re just joining us, the washington post has some breaking news this evening. according to former and current u.s. officials, there are intercepts of conversations in 2016 between the russian ambassador sergey kislyak and others, presumably back in moscow in which kislyak is reporting on conversations that he is said to have had with then senator and trump adviser, now u.s. attorney general jeff sessions in which they did discuss campaign-related matters and things having to do with trump s position, mr. trump s position when it came to russia. as dana bash has pointed out, these intercepts are what
security forms as to what these contact were. but they re also highly damaging to donald trump because they are evidence that the special counsel or prosecutor bob mueller will certainly use as evidence of collusion or conspiracy between the trump campaign and the russians in interfering with the election. ironically, they confirm or support jeff sessions decision to recuse himself because clearly he had no choice given all of these contacts with the russians. and i opposed jeff sessions in his nomination. i was the first judiciary committee member to speak out against him. but he should not be forced to resign for his doing the right thing following the rule of law and the ethics standards. he may be forced to resign because of these contacts and because of his lack of truthfulness before the judiciary committee. and the intelligence committee.
for him to name a new attorney general. and that attorney general general would not be recused. keep in mind that sessions recused himself. but that only applies to him because of his role in the campaign. a new attorney general who doesn t have any ties to the campaign is not at all involved would you would say come sit with a clean slate and isn t recused. and essentially oversees what mueller is doing. and then would be the person who would decide whether mueller stays or goes. i think you keep an eye on that because it does present the president with an opportunity to get what he wants, which is an attorney general still in full control of this investigation. evan perez, thank you so much for calling in. senator blumenthal is back with me. and senator, obviously, a lot of people on capitol hill are very concerned about the messages president trump is sending about general special counsel rather bob mueller and his
would testify wednesday. cnn s phil mattingly is outfront from capitol hill. thanks for joining us. clearly this doesn t seem to be what chairman grassley was hoping for. he seemed to want manafort and donald trump jr. to testify next week publicly. yeah, no question about it. but according to sources, this was kind of a case of something is better than nothing. they believe the threat of the subpoena, the threat of the public hearing was enough to kind of bring paul manafort, donald trump jr. and their lawyers to the table. flow is a negotiation. they have said they will negotiate to provide documents. they will negotiate to have a closed door interview. and chuck grassley took to twitter, the chairman of the judiciary committee and said there will at some point be an open hearing. now the schedule for the interviews, the documents and the public hearing that supposedly is in the works, that has not been set yet. but they do feel like they have some leverage. they used some levera
they use that to extort people. this is one of their hallmarks of their trade craft. and so i had 9 1/2 years of experience going toe to toe with russian intelligence. to me, it s pretty clear, stay far away. congressman, thank you for your service with the cia and thanks for joining us this evening. always a pleasure. now to more breaking news. new details on jared kushner s wealth, president trump s son-in-law and senior adviser just submitted revised financial disclosures, detailing his extensive holdings and multiple changes, including omissions of some of his most valuable holdings. christina is out front for us. what have you found in these documents? reporter: these documents have just been released, so we re still going through them. but they re important, because it s a way to hold him accountable for possible