Claims, its always possible that a highlevel russian defector will appear sometime in the future with documents proving that Jeff Sessions is in fact a foreign agent, perhaps of a sleeper cell sent to alabama during the cold war and activated at Vladimir Putins request during the last election, that would be a game changer. Otherwise the russian conspiracy seemed to hit a culdesac this afternoon in the senate, but that doesnt mean there are no scandals for congress to investigate. Maybe the biggest one about, our Intel Services are corrupt and politicized and theyre making very hard to run u. S. Governmen government. They are running it themselves to some extent. Consider how much of American Politics now revolves around information that has been strategically, often misleadingly and illegally released for political effects. If the hearing he watched today are just one example. They took place in part because former fbi director jim comey told senators last week that sessions may have
Down. Sounds seedy and weird, of course it is. Still not the strangest thing happening in washington right now. Tonight we have more on the ongoing saga of the trump dossier. Senators Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham have launched a probe into former National Security advisor susan rice. In the very final minutes of the obama administration, just afternoon on Inauguration Day 2017, rice sent herself an email on the white house computer system. In it she describes a meeting she had attended just two weeks before on january 5th. At that meeting were president obama, Vice President joe biden, fbi director jim comey, deputy a. G. Sally yates and susan rice herself. According to rice in this email, obama instructed the officials in the room to consider Withholding National intelligence from the Incoming Trump administration in case they were compromised by russia. In other words, almost two months after the president ial election, barack obama viewed trump not as his democratically elected
Up 10 points. That has now evaporated. Interesting to see who turns out, a testament to the excitement level. Thank you all. That is all for this evening. The Rachel Maddow show starts right now with ari in for rachel. Good evening. Rachel has the night off. We have a pretty big show. Today was day two of the federal criminal trial of the campaign chairman. The witnesses were several people who sold the defendant clothes and houses that he bought through secretive International Wire payments. One important thing we learned from what happened today, this judge is holding muellers prosecutors to the line, limiting their questions and how they present key evidence to manafort to the jury. A former prosecutor who tried these kinds of cases and inside that courtroom today joins me to explain if what the judge is up to could hurt muellers case. There are reports tonight about the russian woman charged with trying to carry out the government influence campaign through the nra in the u. S. And
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
think when you listen to it, do you know okay. that one s a hit, that one s a hit what do you think? well i, think the. way tell us what rights these days she s not just looking for hits, she s looking for things that last that song you just played florida features florence the machine sort of between taylor and machine. so i think that shows that she s willing to reach out across genres, find other kinds of artists to work with. rock artists folk artists, and that s what makes us album such so unique so different and shown her pushing your boundaries. there are a lot of sounds like here. so long london, but daddy, i love him. this is some called the smallest man that ever lived that has some of the the most dramatic lyrics is just end where she says, were you sent by someone who wanted me dead? did you sleep but gun underneath are bad. we writing a book where you were sleeper cell spy and 50 years old, just be declassified i would hate to be the person be the person