level. it s a different kind of conversation. if you re talking about that, jonathan, then it s hard to say anything other than what s been said, and that is, oh, my god, the president did something wrong, but it wasn t impeachable. well, the standard is, let s look at the facts, let s look at what the president did, and then assess whether or not it rises to a high crime or misdemeanor. i would say that when the president uses his power to benefit himself personally in an upcoming presidential election, yeah, that s a pretty clear case right there. one more question real quick, chairman steele. are you surprised i mean, you know all these people. you know everybody who is in that mash-up we just played. yeah. you know matt schlapp. are you surprised, given all your years in the republican party and all of the values and things that it stood for and stands for in your mind, that these people are siding, despite all the facts that we know that have been released by the president
witnesses to testify, we retain the power to take away these rights. wow. i have another question here for you, mya, because, you know, when you are hear are here at 3 you get to talk and make you a very good point in the makeup room which i think that the audience needs to know. when trying to evaluate the charges back and forth about this isn t fair and the president is being mistreated. this is not a criminal trial. and that is the way we ve been talking about it as citizens, as members of the media, and just as part of the conversation. this isn t a criminal trial. talk about that bit more. yeah, i think this is really important because there are lots of aspects to this which may include articles of impeachment that would be considered crime. but this is not a criminal proceeding. because at the end if he is convicted, his biggest konsz
open mind and waiting for the facts. joining me now, dean obeidallah, host of the dean obeidallah show. tarrant o dell, john harwood, cnbc editor at large, natasha bertrand, politico national security correspondent, and as if that s not enough, michael steele, former chairman of the republican national committee. thank you all for being here. chairman steele, i m going to start with you, but before that, let s play this sound bite, this interview that matt schlapp did on another network. what s good about it is that if there are no crimes and if they don t come forward with articles that show any criminality but just like your polling matt, it doesn t have to be a crime. that s just misleading. they talked for two straight minutes let me talk you know that a crime is not the standard, matt. don t have an asymmetrical
department said when the inspector general passed this along is, well, because it doesn t involve any function of the intelligence agency or of any intelligence entity or any intelligence agency employee, it didn t fit the very narrow standards for what s called an urgent action to pass it along immediately to congress and that s why instead, the director today said the acting director said it was referred to the justice department which concluded there wasn t a crime. we ve learned that there were two referrals actually that the ig seemed to make, there was a separate refer made to the fbi. there was some confusion with director maguire today, justice, fbi and everybody seemed confused. can you clear this up? is there they re both right. it s two in one. what happened is we were told yesterday by a senior justice department official that in late august the referral was made one to the justice department and one to the criminal division and two to the fbi but we were told that the fb
trump s willingness to abuse his power and abase our country. let s start filling in the blanks with two top investigators. we have preet bharara and andrew mccabe. thank you both. preet, when we are looking at this situation and trying to understand what matters, what pops out to you first? you have, as you discussed in the intro, a repeat situation. you have someone who has taken the country through whatever you think about the results, whatever you think about bob mueller, we ve had two years in which there s been an amazing amount of scrutiny and discussion about the sitting president of the united states when he was a candidate and thereafter trying to gain an advantage electorally against an opponent with open arms asking for help from a foreign power at the end of the day there wasn t a crime, at the end of the day the office of legal counsel says you can t indict a sitting