devin nuness. it s allegations of fbi abuses tied to the trump russia dossier. here to discuss that and a lot more, democratic congressman jim himes of connecticut. we ll get to the memo in a moment. you have seen a lot of documents and heard days worth of testimony from so many people, now we know the president will likely be questioned by special counsel bob mueller and maybe it will happen in a few weeks. it s going to focus on the firing of comey and flynn. if you were mueller and his team, one of the lead prosecutors on the team. what would be the number one question for the president? i think it s the classic question, right, what did you know and when did you know it? because of course the firing of comey, the pressuring comey on treating michael flynn lightly or gently, whatever it was, if he knew that flynn had lied,
own trip to moscow in the summer of 2016 where he met russian officials and we know sessions chaired a meeting attended by george papadopoulos in march 2016 as you can see there on the screen. papadopoulos spoke about his efforts through russian kaks to set up a meeting between donald trump and vladimir putin. sessions later claimed under oath he couldn t remember much about that meeting except, except his own response. i pushed back. i ll just say it that way. did anyone else at that meeting including then candidate trump react in any way to what about papadopoulos had presented? i don t recall. okay. so your testimony is that neither donald trump nor anyone else at the meeting expressed any interest in meeting the russian president or had any concerns about communications between the campaign and the russians? i don t recall it. i remember the pushback. then there s the second track of mueller s investigation, the question whether the president or aides committed obstruct
sessions later claimed under oath he couldn t remember much about that meeting except, except his own response. i pushed back. i ll just say it that way. did anyone else at that meeting including then candidate trump react in any way to what about papadopoulos had presented? i don t recall. okay. so your testimony is that neither donald trump nor anyone else at the meeting expressed any interest in meeting the russian president or had any concerns about communications between the campaign and the russians? i don t recall it. i remember the pushback. then there s the second track of mueller s investigation, the question whether the president or aides committed obstruction of justice which is a flown under felony law by pressuring comey to end the investigation and firing hip when he refused to comply. the attorney general is elbow deep in the firing of comey, one of the officials asked to leave the oval office before the president asked comey to let the flynn matter go. come
from january 20th until may 9th when he fired jim comey that really are at the heart of the obstruction of justice piece of this investigation. that s when trump was pressuring comey to back off on mike flynn. calling around the intelligence community trying to find anyone that would irpt ven intervene ae fbi and get them ta back off. it s hard to imagine he called all these other people and didn t call his targ aexert his influence. that s a confirmation. and he may be able to get away with that on the hill but he s going to have to talk to bob mueller s team. if he declines to answer that question in an interview, he s going to get a grand jury subpoena and be forced to answer it on the record under oath. john? you got something else on your mind like old men throwing food at pigeons. i like the questions. i want to ask you if you think jeff sessions sort of personally and constitutionally has had enough of putting himself on the line and getting
in trouble for lying to his former colleagues in congress and if he simply department answer that question because he s as exposed as he wants to be legally in front of his former colleagues in the house and senate. i think jeff sessions there are a lot of problems with jeff sessions as attorney general. one thing that s relatively clear on the basis of his behavior is that he wants to keep that job. he doesn t want to go to jail. he doesn t want to perjure himself. i think matt is right about the fact that in that period if you think about this mueller investigation having the two tracks. the collusion track and the obstruction track. in that period, given how close trump was to sessions throughout the campaign and throughout his political life and given the where sessions sat, i mean physically in some cases with respect to the meeting trump had with comey, it seems hard to believe that sessions does not have information that was not called upon to do things that were problemat