president obama said intelligence activities were going on there. russians didn t escalate. in the midst of that, we know that mike flynn made a series of phone calls and had exchanges and i suspect somewhere we have the transcripts of those calls because the russian ambassador is someone who would fall under the national security agency s watch list. i think that will be interesting to find out whether the signals intelligence on that activity produces transcripts that eventually see the light of day. and the big thing was we don t know whether mike pence lied to the american people or mike flynn lied to vice president pence. that s the key thing. the legal part of this is that people keep saying the logan act was never enforced. the logan act basically is a provision that says that if you are a u.s. citizen, you cannot go negotiate private deals with foreign governments particularly ones with whom we have an antagonistic relationship. this looks like a textbook violation of the logan
counselled doesn t mean necessarily anything that terrible. paul, i understand what you think of president s term? i think the president doesn t get it. the federal rules say that you cannot use your federal employee position to advance a product. kellyanne conway said go buy ivanka s stuff. that s a textbook violation. and here s why it matters. it is like the white house is paying attention to the trump s businesses. if you re an employee of the united states, thosere the interest that is you are supposed to serve. you are not supposed to be hustling up some money for the boss s daughter. textbook violation. it is really concerning that the president does not understand that. and norm, wouldn t the best course of action for a federal employee not to take the question in the first place and asking me about the private business of another federal official, in this case, the president. i don t have anything to add
concerns being raised after a top white house adviser used a national tv interview to plug the trump brand, even touting it as free publicity. here s kellyanne conway earlier this morning on fox. go by ivanka s stuff. i m going to get i hate shopping. i m going to get some myself today. it s a wonderful line. i own some of it. i m going to give a free commercial here. go buy it today, everybody. you can find it online. top democrat on the house oversight committee now calling for disciplinary actions saying conway s remarks are textbook violation of government ethics rules. our money correspondent cristina alesci is joining us right now. so are ethics rules or laws for that matter being violated? wolf, the law is very clear on this. it s call the use of public office for private gain. it s a section of the u.s. code, and it essentially says, there s a lot of legalese, but the essential part of it is, it says
in the pros ses cess of that inw which she did from the white house she promoted ivanka trump s apparel line. elijah cummings called this in his words, a textbook violation of government ethics law. the white house press secretary sean spicer today said she has been counseled, he used the word counseled, on the subject. is that enough? well, it was totally inappropriate for kellyanne conway or for any public official or public employee to use the white house or office for personal gain for themselves, their families or people that they know. so, i think this was totally inappropriate. i think there will be the ethics there will be ethics committee that will look into what she s had to say and it s up to others to determine whether she should be counseled beyond that and whether there should be some other action taken. is congress doing enough right now to deal with potential conflicts of interest in the