cofounder of axios, mike allen. good morning to you. good morning. thanks for having me in the house yesterday. we love having you on set as always. talk to us about the one big thing today. the axios one big thing is the republicans new impeachment argument. axios obtained an 18-page staff memo that went to the committee members who are going to be at the open hearing tomorrow making the republican case. and there s a key phrase in that memo. and that is the president s state of mind. so this memo argues that you need to understand the context of the president s state of mind when he was talk together ukrainian president. why does this matter? this matters because republicans are not going to context the mount tac mountain of facts out there with lots of corroborated facts. if they can make their argument about the president s state of mind and whether or not something seis impeachable that
joining us is democratic congresswoman katy porter of california. she is on the house financial services committee. she did hear from secretary mnuchin this morning. did any part of steve mnuchin s argument satisfy your questions about why he will not it uturn these returns over? it did not. the law is clear. it says the secretary shall provide the tax returns. the fact that the staff memo is absolutely correct in its legal interpretation. so what it says is what we all believe, what we know to be the law. in fact, secretary mnuchin was before the committee today because of the statute that says he shall appear before the committee. shall means you must do it. and so that s exactly what this irs staff memo says. so it s very clear he must turn over the tax returns and there is no excuse for that. here is the issue. if he must turn them over or else, he made the argument there is no have i have reason, the
british spy, christopher steele, was being paid for, driven by the dnc and the clinton campaign. the reason that s important is that the national security court is what s called an export tight court. only one site is represented. there s a special burden on the government to present evidence to the court that is very broad. so the court has really all the information it needs. even information that may undercut some of the intelligence in the application so that they can make a full and - - decision on whether the warrant is justified. the other central findings for the republican staff memo is that former fbi deputy director andrew mccabe, in december 2017, testified before the house intelligence committee in a closed session and told the committee that if it hadn t been for the trump dossier, they would never had sought a surveillance warrant for an american citizen, carter page. this is a very big headline.
british spy, christopher steele, was being paid for, driven by the dnc and the clinton campaign. the reason that s important is that the national security court is what s called an export tight court. only one site is represented. there s a special burden on the government to present evidence to the court that is very broad. so the court has really all the information it needs. even information that may undercut some of the intelligence in the application so that they can make a full and - - decision on whether the warrant is justified. the other central findings for the republican staff memo is that former fbi deputy director andrew mccabe, in december 2017, testified before the house intelligence committee in a closed session and told the committee that if it hadn t been for the trump dossier, they would never had sought a surveillance warrant for an american citizen, carter page. this is a very big headline.
page if they didn t have the trump dossier. they would never have gone to the national security court. when you read the democrats memo here, they cite the mccabe interview and how he felt christopher steele was credible and had a track record of solid reporting and worked with the fbi. this was the democrats opportunity to challenge the central conclusion of the republican staff memo and for some reason, they chose not to do it.i don t know what the transcript is but this was the opportunity. that was the mccabe interview and they chose not to challenge it directly. that was the central finding of the republicans on the fisa review. on the bottom of page one it says the doj s applications did not otherwise rely on his reporting including any quote, salacious allegations about trump and the fbi never paid christopher steele for this reporting.