so favorably inclined to russia and there was this quid pro quo. that s a loose narrative. you need more than someone like michael cohen or these dates to make out that type of allegat n allegation. the problem is president denied that he had knowledge about the wikileaks issue from stone. that he had knowledge of the trump tower meeting. if mueller doesn t knock those statements down and if he does, we have serious crime in terms of false statements. if he doesn t knock them down, it s hard for him to keep this narrative going. it s not like having he needs to start with something that is the reason for all of this obstruction and all of these other alleged crimes. martha: jonathan, great to talk to you. thanks for being here tonight. thanks, martha. martha: so whatever happened to that congressional hush fund? you remember this story? it was used by members of congress to settle cases of sexual misconduct. they only have your tax dollars to spend money on, so that s how
california, eric bowman will resign. he was accused by ten political activists and staff members of engaging in unwanted touching, making crude comments, other lewd acts. so it raises the question, whatever happened to the congressional hush fund? this paid to settle allegations of sexual abuse by members of congress and used your taxpayer money to do it. a new bill is underway that would lift that veil of secrecy and could be one of nancy pelosi s first tests if she wins her speaker battle. here she is earlier this year on it. i think that the elected officials, the members of congress should be held accountable. there s possibly legislation that says that anybody that has done this or does it in the future, this will be made known to the public. as long as the victims agrees to that. and you support that? yeah, for sure.
he had to be himself. he had to defend his own honor. he doesn t get to act. that s what really does bother me about hollywood. greg: emily, i m just bringing data. trust me. since 1997, the oc paid more than $17 million for 260 port settlements and awards for the government, congressmen and senators. i wonder how many think that was unjust, the accusation was unjust but they paid? just like celebrities do. emily: absolutely. remember the hush fund that we learned about. greg: i should ve just said hush fund. emily: that s exactly what we were talking about earlier. the notion that this person is not going to be human or the notion that one can subscribe, how vehement and how angry they are. i don t understand it has no basis in his argument. but it s been reduced to a
misdeeds than a man that was a billionaire that did this and they knew when they elected him. with all due respect, congress didn t do much with that hush fund. capri? capri: one of the things that you are ringing up here is the concept that there is a pattern of private citizens from paying off women or doing whatever, so that is a pattern and it therefore would not be a violation of federal election law because basically you are saying that this is in the basic course of business. however what president trump just said they are, i asked whether or not it was campaign money but i paid for it myself so it makes me wonder, that kind of sense that it was somehow related to the campaign and, harris: simply because he ask for clarification? capri: why would have to o with the campaign if it wasn t involved in the campaign? let me talk about that one very quickly.
business expense. this happens all the time and, in fact, jo john edwards had his campaign contributor. steve: he did. and president obama during his campaign there were hundreds of thousands of dollars worthy of violations and he just got a fine. he got a fine, which is not unusual for the federal election commission. his error there was reporting those late. so, in the bigger picture, you know, that doesn t bother me so much. what does bother me is that we had exposed last year that $17 million over the course of 20 years was paid out by a congressional hush fund to settle to settle sexual abuse or mismanagement issues. and that s clearly not a campaign violation. steve: interesting stuff. mark, we thank you for joining us live with your point of view on what the president is telling ainsley. all right. thank you, sir. thanks, steve. steve: coming up, more of ainsley s exclusive