between the russians and his campaign. this is the president openly acknowledging that at a a minimum, he discussed a political rival with the leader of a foreign government and i think if you think back to his interview with abc news in june, you ll recall that the president openly said that he may actually take dirt from a foreign government on an opponent and that he wouldn t necessarily report that conversation to the fbi. so i think when you re a republican, you have to look at the pattern of behavior on the part of this president and the fact that he doesn t think he s doing anything wrong even though as susan pointed out, this is really a potentially agree jous misuse of the power of the presidency. sx that s a really good point. there s a accepting dirt from a foreign power and actively going out to see it. if the president did pressure ukraine to investigate a
administration is move ng the direction of train sparnsy. we know the president and his white house have refused that whistleblower a complaint to go from the director of national intelligence to lawmakers on capitol hill who have been clamberering for that. we know however that the director of national intelligence is expected to brief senate intelligence leaders on that complaint. how many details he reveal still in question. absolutely right. the it s important to note the white house and department of justice told the acting director of intelligence not the hand over that complaint to congress so it s going to be a contentious week on the hill. thank you very much. now the it s important to look at the timeline. of this. so we re going to dig into this more with susan hen see, a former lawyer from the national security agency as well as sabrina from the wall street journa journal . i want to go to you first, susan. you were at the national security agency.
think is less political and that perhaps he feels he has a better shot at giving them the answers than anybody else. the other investigation, phil, is this u.s. attorney in connecticut, john durham. he s been ordered by the attorney to launch a separate investigation into the russia investigation. so three. so which one would you talk to? i would talk to durham before i d talk to inspector general. the inspector general is going to find something wrong. durham is looking at a bigger picture beyond whether t s were crossed and i s were dotted ab the origins of the investigation, but either way, either way i m going back to what susan hen see said. i would sign up to what she said any day. the question here is not just what steele found. if it s determined that steele had a bit of questionable information, that s fine. if it s found that that questionable information played into, for example, the fisa warrant to look at carter paige s e-mails, that is a hot mess, and i think that s
at the same time, susan the white house is now directing the former communications director at the white house, hope hicks and annie donaldson who worked in the counsel s office, she was chief of staff to the former white house special counsel don mcgahn not to comply with congressional subpoenas for documents. how do they justify that? well, the basic claim here is that documents related to the work that these two individuals did while they were in the white house are covered by executive privilege. now, that might be true for some of the documents, but again, this is a very broad assertion saying that they shouldn t turn over any documents whatsoever, now both hicks and donaldson have left government service, so if they were inclined to want to provide those documents to congress, the white house certainly couldn t do much to stop them. that said, like don mcgahn, they have both sort of signaled that they intend to comply with the white house request, at least for now. hope hicks
president trump for a while now. recognizing he needs the united states as an ally and at the same time having to protect his own interests. for japan, a ballistic missile test is a much more direct threat because of that proximity to north korea. that being said, i think what is maybe more distressing about the president s remarks that you played there, jim. is that the president wants to frame everything with his personal relationship to kim jong-un. in other words, no, no, i know this guy. maybe he s doing this to threaten people. maybe he s not. we re building this beautiful relationship. not to address this as, the united states interests. the interests of an ally and then be contradictory interests of north korea, which is clearly still an ad ver sea, even if there is not that direct threat right at this moment. susan hen see, your thoughts on the president echoing and going after joe biden with a low iq and individual. obviously, he s not. what are your thoughts on that?