national security, do people really need to know? is there some line out there? so, i think there is an ethical line. and i ve criticized wikileaks for publishing, for example, information from john podesta s e-mail inbox that had no public interest or from the dnc. but that s not what they re talking about. that s not illegal to publish to make a bad editorial judgment. what they re talking about is publishing top secret information from the cia, from the pentagon, and that s when you get into the traditional reporting that the the new york times and the washington post and nbc news does all the time. you know, i was a little bit suspicious listening to his response about whether assange should be charged or not. i m suspicious, only suspicious listen to the director today there is a sealed indictment for him. are you at all suspicious there is a sealed indictment? completely. he said, you know, they said why haven t you prosecuted julian assange. he didn t say heare are t
compare that, which we didn t hear a press conference about, we didn t know about. and let s just leave aside the trump/russia piece. even if you leave that aside, compare that with the enormity of what he himself just said, not me. you and i have talked about it many times. he just said it himself in testimony to the nothingness, the nonevent of those e-mails of anthony weiner. and to suggest that somehow we really needed to know about those, but we the american people did not need to know about this threat, i just don t understand that, i don t understand the logic. let me take it one step. are you saying that the director is political over his head? i don t want to put words, but what s your thought looking back now? well, again, logic suggests to me let s just even suggest these were the same scale of things for a moment, right? logic suggests to me you either announce both investigations before the election or you don t announce either investigation
involved in either one of them. all right. do you have any question in your mind whether or not director comey is made these decisions for political reasons or other? do you think he can do the job? i have to accept the fact until i know otherwise that he s doing exactly what the fbi should be doing, and that he did it and the rationale behind it particularly as he explained today, the situation just before the election, getting involved in the e-mails once again. and, so, i m willing to accept that until i get different information, but i know this, that he he s trying to play it down the middle and he gave good explanations of why he reopened it in late october. all right. well, moments ago we learned that former national security advisor susan rice has refused to testify at a hearing held by
they probably got information from the rnc, you know, from maybe the trump campaign. malcolm, you ve been following this for awhile now. yeah. what struck you today about these two bombshells? i think the most important thing that struck me today because people have been characterizing this all day as democrats having one position on this and the republicans having a completely different alternate version of this going after leaks and the democrats putting out this timeline. but i saw three entirely different groups aligning today. democrats, the press, and the entirety of the u.s. intelligence community as represented by these two chiefs were all saying one story that the russians had attacked the united states, they had verified all of that by the questioning comey and admiral rogers. then there was this other story about, you know, are leaks bad and should they be prosecuted? i don t think that was an alternati alternative. that was to distract.
details on the investigative steps taken and number of e-mails involved. congressman steve cohen called on comey to resign. the congressional black caucus defended clinton on saturday, questioning comey s actions. this letter, i read it over and over and over again. provides little new information to the public. all it does is give republicans a new basis of which to attack hillary clinton. why would the fbi director go so far as to send this high ly unusual letter? it does not make any sense to me. now, on top of that, you don t hear the director talking about any other investigation he s involved in. is he investigating the trump foundation? is he looking into the russians