Talks about the latest on the investigations involving the Trump Administration and russia. From this mornings washington journal this is 30 unts. Back to our table whereby jonathan turlay, constitutional professor to talk about the latest on the investigations. The Washington Post front page this morning is that the president crafted donald trump jr. s statement on his russian contact on the sidelines of the g20 summit and there was a strategy that was agreed upon, according to the reporting from the Washington Post reporters that they would get ahead of the story and tell the truth. That strategy changed by the president and that he within hours the president changed the plan flying home from germany on july 8th on Board Air Force one, trump personally dictated a statement in which trump jr. Said he and the russian lawyer primarily discussed a program about the adoption of russian children. Those in the inner circle fear now that the president has put himself and his inner circumstance until legal jeopardy. What is your take . First of all, releasing misleading statements is itself not a crime. Otherwise half of washington would be in jail. But it does create certain legal issues for the president. When he decided to do this, there was a special counsel in the field looking at obstruction. There were allegations that the president had already put pressure on cabinet officials to terminate the independent investigation. And in that context he then took it upon himself to personally direct how to respond to perhaps the most damaging piece of information thats come out with regard to the russian investigation. That is truly breathtaking. It basically did everything wrong. A myriad of options for the president to take. This was the worst one. When youre in this type of situation, everyone understand lats the president. The last thing you want to do is to have the president involved in issuing a statement that would clear be part of the investigation of mueller. And many of the staff appeared to be following that. So whats fascinating here is that there are people in the team, which is actually reassuring, who are suggesting good courses of action because that hasnt been clear until now. There were penal that got it. They said we have to get ahead of that. We have to be transparent. We need to control the release of information and we need to be absolutely truthful. Those are all of the correct answers. The president , according to this report then said, no, im going to take personal control and im going to draft this statement. And the result was that he deepened and prolonged the scandal. Now in terms of the legal ramifications of that, while its not itself a crime, this is clearly related to the russia investigation. Mueller is clearly investigating whether there was an effort to, instruct what the president has done. Here there could be a legitimate allegation that there was an attempt to mislead and the special investigator wants to know why. Why would the president not repeal what occurred. At the end of the day that doesnt make this a crime. Ive been skeptical that theres a crime. We have a scandal in search of a crime. But the president gives this appearance of a guy who goes running down the street every time a car alarm goes out. And it may be that he has the worlds worst sense of timing. What do you make of that news from the Washington Post and then the interview that followed this news with the the New York Times where he told them about his sideline meeting that had been previously undisclosed with vladimir putin. Hes at a dinner, gets up and walk to the end of the table. He tells the the New York Times, you know what we talked about . We talked about adoption. And that was the same thank that donald trump jr. Talked about. Thats part of the problem when you get personally involved in these types of spins of a controversy. Is that it mean shades everything that you do. When the story came out that there was another meeting between trump and putin, vi to say i was underwhelmed. This is a meeting of world leaders. They met. Okay . And im actually surprised there were only two meetings. And so in a perfect world, this wouldnt have been news. But its becoming news because how the white house is stumbling around on this scandal. This is probably the great irony for President Trump. For those of us skeptical about the evidence of a crime here, theyve done everything they could to look incriminatincrimi. The president criticized sessions of course for his decision to recuse. That was the best decision he could have done. It is by recusing himself sessions actually brought greater control over this controversy. And thats what worries me about President Trump. Is he doesnt seem really to get the fact that having control, directing events is not always a good thing. What you want in washington is distan distance. You want whats called crush space and thats both a legal and political, you know, strategy. Right now we dont have a strategy. We just have a bunch of tack call most and theyre not going tactics. Why do you say that youre underwhelmed or that you see the lack of evidence of an actual crime. Explain that. Ive gotten a lot of heat for this because from the begin people kept on talking about theres a collusion, theres a crime of collusion, maybe we should indict or impeach the president. There is no crime of collusion. Now fortunately some commentators have come around to that. Weeks of coverage, people are talking about collusion as if its a crime. Theres no such crime. You can talk about conspiracy but you have to decide, conspiracy to do what . What are they conspiring to do . Its not a crime to receive information like this from the russians. People have said this should be treated like a financial contribution. No court has said that and if they did it would raise very serious First Amendment questions. There are some collateral crimes for some of these individuals, like manafort. Does appear to be a Foreign Agent without registering. There is a law called fara, Foreign Agents registration act and he might be in violation of that flynn, general flynn might be in violation of that. The problem is theres only six or seven cases in history under the newly written fara that have been prosecuted. Its not a serious offense. Its handled inside. Same thing with jared kushner. Hes omitted stuch from his sf 86 form. Thats not a good thing. Ive filled out that form many times and it does say right above the subject block that youre subject to prosecution. People arent prosecuted. The penalty is generally you dont get a clearance. Thats not going to happen either when your fatherinlaw is the president of the united states. He controls who has access to classified information. Lets go to peter in valley cottage, new york, a republican. Hi, peter. Caller hi, how are you doing . Morning. Caller good morning. Professor turlay, i just called to thank you for being one of the few voices out there talking about this whole situation. Ive seen you on a lot of the talk shows. Youre a liberal guy standing up for the law trying to put this insanity into some kind of perspecti perspective. I heard it said that was possible for the president to move Jeff Sessions the department of Homeland Security and put this woman braun from the Justice Department in his place and that she could keep mueller on a leash and only investigating the russian situation without going off on a tangent. Thank you. Go ahead. Thank you, peter. The answer of course is he can. Sessions could be moved over to homeland. The idea is that if you brought someone up to the attorney generals position who didnt have involvement in the campaign, they would not have a need to recuse themselves, as did sessions do. In my view, he did so correctly. The problem is all of the broken china you would leave behind. The president had just been talking about or allowi lewding to firing sessions. It was a real mistake last week when he started to suggest that. Sessions have a lot of friends in congress, even among democrats. People who disagree with him. On a personal level, people like him. If you start to move sessions over to homeland, theres going to be a lot of questions as to whether the president is back trying to manipulate things with mueller. Its not going to held. You bring up a new attorney general until the new attorney general is going to restrict the mandate given to mueller. Mueller is pretty much on his own right now. He was given a onesentence mandate. In my view that sentence was too broad. I was surprised at how ambiguous it was. Id been surprised if a new attorney general would try to pull back that mandate and put in a more restrictive one. That would trigger a lot of folks on capitol hill. The answer is yes, he can do that, but then you would have to have the political costs that you have to deal with. Sterling heights, michigan, a republic republican. Caller i want to ask mr. Jonathan to tell, president obama destroyed the country. He said to the russian collusion, all this stuff, im going to have a better flexibility. All of this stuff he did. Now mr. Trump, mr. Trump to the end, when it come up to final, i dont know how its going to be, its going to be zero, nothing. But like i said, mr. Jonathan, please answer me why did nobody talking with everything democrats did, anybody, you guys never talk about that. Please be nice and answer me for that. Jonathan turlay, be nice. First of all, i should say, i havent liked president s since james madison. I think weve gone downhill since madison. But the fact is that this issue of collusion, i think youre correct in a sense. I think what youre seeing with this idea of collusion is that its not so exclusive or restricted. I think youre seeing that on capitol hill by the way. As we get into russian connections, theres a growing unease that i sense in congress that this cannot be confined. There is that question of the dossier that was allegedly created for democrats. They may have gotten information from russians. Theres ukrainian controversy. The fact is that this town has a lot of influences. You could surf down capitol hill on the russian money in this count. Theres a lot of russian money, a lot of russian connections. Its a huge country with a lot of connections to the united states. What youre seeing on capitol hill is a growing unease that this might not be contained. Its like all wars when the generals say well lets get this war over by christmas and they find out theyre engulfed in a world war. The democrats are beginning to get the sense that this thing is going to go much broader and the republicans may not be the only ones bearing the costs. Lets go to david, panama city, florida, a republican. Caller i just wanted to say to all of my republican friends, our president is clearly lying and we are pretending as if we dont get it. He lied about comey and the meeting that he had. Hes lied about what he did at the meeting with manafort. Jared kushner and his own son. Theres in way that four russians show up to anyones home address, and thats the president s home address, and these guys, all of them work for him. They work for donald trump. The name on the building is trump. Four russians show up and he has no clue that they showed up there. All right, david. Well take your point. David says hes lying. Is that a crime . No, lying is not a crime. In fact in washington its an art form. But one thing that i think youre absolutely right about is if i was counsel to the president , one of the things that i would say, besides we could do with fewer tweets, is from this point on, weve got to be transparent and absolutely truthful. Part of the problem in washington is youve got a city filled with a personality types. Theyre used to control events. Particularly someone like donald trump, whose strength is marketing. He shapes messages, shapes products. He views himself as a product. Thats a really tough guy to convince, in saying, look, youve got to step back, you cant package yourself, you cant control this message. The problem with the Trump Administration is the same problem i have with dancing. Theyre three beats behind. They constantly are behind the scandal. The only way to get ahead of it, the only way to control it, and this may seem counter intuitive is stop trying to control it. When you have bad news, the only option you have in washington is when and how it gets released. But you always have to release it before the other side. And so thats been the problem. Theyve been reactive. And also, there have been untruthful things said, misleading things said and thats deepened and prolonged the scandal. Does it go to obstruction of justice . It can. Thats where its difficult. Ive been skeptical of the obstruction claim. As a criminal defense attorney i tend to view these things as what is a real case here. There are dozens of obstruction crimes on the books. Two of them would seem to be relevant here. But generally for obstructing in investigation, you need to obstruct a grand jury proceeding. Many of the meetings occurred a bit too early for that. There was a grand jury that was ramped up. Theres not a real close nexus to that. Courts are very reluctant to allow prosecutors to bring obstruction claims at the earliest stages of investigations. Obstruction claims are a little dangerous because you can charge tons of people as a criminal defense attorney, you know, targets, potential defendants say stupid things all of the time because theyre not lawyers. If you allow these charges to happen too early, you allow prosecutors to pressure witnesses saying i can send you to jail for obstruction. So courts have been very reluctant to extend that definition. Pat in keyport, new jersey, republican. Caller my question is really legal. We live in an era of globalization. For the last 30 years or establishment has been working to break down International Barriers and how is it suddenly a crime for us to talk to someone from another country. We have businesses in america dealing with Stateowned Enterprises in other countries. Thats why i question manafort being in legal jeopardy. We live in an era of globalization. How can it be a crime to talk to someone of another country. Its not a crime. And russia is a big market and big country. And the Obama Administration had lots of communications with russia. This is part of governing. Whats also curious about this by the way is that when we talk about russias interference with our elections, theyre sort of novices at it. The champs of interfering with elections is the united states. We wrote the book on it. We have hacked emails, including of our allies, like merkel in germany. We have intervened in elections. And so when you see some of the response from russia and other countries that is, you know, maybe not as upset as we are, partially its because we have a reputation for doing exactly this. So that doesnt make it right, but the senators and members of congress in the house are fully aware of our long history of interfering in other elections. Countries do that. They try to do things to help out governments that they want to see in place. Weve seen that in israel and other countries where we have important interests and it happens in lots of different subtle ways. We generally dont hack emails and give Opposition Research to the other side. But we have a pretty checkered history in terms of that. Charles, columbia, south carolina, republican. Caller yes, mr. Turlay, i just had a couple of comments about some things that i think should be getting a little more coverage that arent. And one is, i listen to William Browder before Congress Talk about how the russians had hired glen simpson with gps to lobby on their behalf trying to get the magnitsky act knocked down. But we also know that the democrats hired him to do the dossier or someone in the democratic party. So it looks like there was some collusion there. Also, one thing that bothers me is the dnc email. When it got hacked, when their servers got hacked, they would not turn over their servers to the government. But now we find out a pakistani has been arrested at the airport in washington that had the key and the passwords to all of the dnc servers. And we dont seem to have equal coverage of Different Things related to the russians and foreign governments. I was going to get your opinion. I do think thats a fair criticism. I dont have a dog in this fight but there has been a bias in the media with regard to the coverage of donald trump. Now some of that is self inflicted. Some of this is real news. Its ridiculous to suggest that the media is inventing all of this stuff. These are major stories. But i think there has been a on the exclusion of other stories. The dossier exclusion is a serious one that does appear to have fingerprints of democrat operatives on it. And i think that is something that people on capitol hill are saying if youre going to investigate influence on u. S. Elections be fair and take a look at that. With the pakistani issue, that involves Debbie Wasserman schultz and others. Thats a weird hat should be getting a lot more attention. What we have, guy and his family millions of dollars, largely from democratic members on the hill to maintain computers. The f. B. I. Has accused them of stealing equipment, double charging, but this family had array of other fraudulent that went on eged for sometime, including court cases, arrests and yet they get all of these contracts. Many family members were working wife, a son, a brotherinlaw, arrests, and yet they got all of these contracts. Law, many family members were walk on call toll hill, a wife, son, brotherinlaw, sisterinlaw. It was bizarre. This happened in january. Im on, and Debbie Wasserman schultz declined to remove this guy. Kept him on. Even though he was told he top. Couldnt have access to computers any more. Wouldnt give approval caller to the, Capitol Police to looko her laptop. All of that is serious stuff. And i agree with the caller. I dont understand why this is not on the front page. Florida, fred, a republican. T caller herehey. Thank you so much for taking my call, cspan and professor hanson within thanks for being on there. I voted for donald trump because hes a better candidate than hillary clinton. Not because russia switched my vote. With that being dsaid, ion wan . To ask you, number one, do you believe that donald trump will , be impeached and then i want to follow up with another questionn as too. You look at susan rice, even le barack obama having some type oe collusion, not just in russia but with, i guess, leaks as well. Should the democrats make it a point to investigate themselves, as aggressively. Hillary clinton emails, you know, whether they were hacked from russia, whether they were given to the Trump Administration,o yo there wasu damning information, as well asi the dnc colluding against someone like bernie sanders. Do you think for a sign of goodw faith that they should also investigate their own party for their actions and for all of the listeners who are democrats, trust dome, your party needs te held accountable as much as ms donald trump. I dont have a of dog thank you fred. Jonathan turlay. Angl fred, ines terms of the investigation of the clinton angles, particularly dossier mak in fact be investigated. Th but i dont think there is an n interest, including on the republican ranks of going back i into the election to investigate some of those issues. But i think there is a in legitimate question here if youre lookingfl at particularl russian influence, you probably need to look at the russian influence generally. That can be done in congress e, regardless of what the special counsel does, to look at whethet in fact there was information coming on the other side as well. Joe, indianapolis, independent caller. Caller yeah. G, i thi good morning. Ed yeah. I think that Wasserman Schultz is going to be something. I think its related a lot to real estate deals. But my main question is about sessions. Now friday he is going to be assigned maybe the were not used to seeing republicans go ot the offensive against the dnc, but he goes on the offensive chd against the swamp. U i mean, lobbyists which is our main problem. I mean, health care hasou been chewed up by lobbyists. He and if youve got the swamp and youve got the rhinos. I mean, mccain, what he did is inexcusable. Joe, im not following. On or can you get to your question . Caller yeah. Givew8;c an anticipation or a guess of what sessions is going to do when wewe go on offense n against the pain stream media and what the democrats have my done. I dont think sessions is going to go onion he offense i t sense. My understanding on friday, he going to talk about leaks. The president has been hammerinl away at members in his cabinet s saying i want someone to deal t. With these meddlesome leakers. And i think that sessions is likely to talk about that. There seems to be a coordinated effort now to deal with these le leaks. Theres two typesgt ofon p leak. Some are coming from the white house itself. In the Washington Post story that hasnt abated. I the Washington Post had people obviously on the plane with trump. The most damaging leaks are er coming from the Intelligence Community where youre seeing a lot of information that is being rather strategically released to the media. Those are the ones most likely to be prosecuted because youree dealing with National Security l type of information. As to the white house, thats clearly the mandate of general kelly, to get those leakers. Thats tough, though. Because, you know, this city, you know, floats on a rolling sea of leaks. Thats always been the case. Cas it also has reporters who are trained to be able to get leaks. And so since the white house ts a ton of calls all of the time fromwa reporters, you can use a pen register to simply say well, you got a call from the Washington Post because the person says yeah, and so did my dog. Nd inter i mean, everyone in washington gets calls from reporters. So it requires something thats difficult and it would be tappi interesting to see what sessions says. Unless youre going tough do ram polygraphs or start tapping everyones phones, its really i tough andrm you have to wonder, are the costs too high. And abc confirming that attorney general sessions and other doj officials to make rep announcement friday regarding ch efforts to fight leak to the media. To charles in california. A republican. Hi, charles. Caller how are you doing. Wastmorning. Caller why arent theyyelec spending more time dealing with whats going on in north korea instead of wasting so much time onwi this election, being there no evidence. U th and weveis got serious things going on in north korea that we need to deal with. Let me ask you this. It is legitimate to have a special prosecutor, robert mule center. Bewas i think it is. I actually was skeptical of the special counsel. Look, someone has to give me a crime first. When you appoint a special t counselhe under doj rules your supposed to state what the crimp is. Thats why i was uncomfortable with the mandate given. We investigating, the election or the russian part of it. B thats othdangerous. Bef i changed my point of view when the president fired comey. Thical i have been critical of comey both before and after his firing. I thinkbut in comey has done soh unethical things, including leaking the memos to the media. But in my view this president should not have fired him. And when he did it meant thatthe really did need a special counsel to assure the public the theres nothing here. What the president should have understood is that this is goodh news for atyou. Aking al i think the president believes that there isnt any crime heren thats why hes making all of these statements because heconte views it as a political issue. But you can create a legal issuo if you continuen is f to try to manipulate. Youre right. T but the first solution is for the president to stop ma lip s nating the bainvestigation. Thats what is putting it on the front page want all of these tweets. If he stepswi back andll cha fo north korea, i think hes going to find that the news cycle will change. Muellbruce, oklahoma city, independent. Question or comment,hat he wbr caller my question is related to muellers mandate. If it seems that, you know, he was hired to investigate the election fraud, if there was okg some, the collusion with the fia russians. But theress been media reports would that hes also looking into trumps finances. Isnt that going too far and ren wouldnt that be i reason enoug to fire the guy . Thanks. You know, bruce, i dont t think it would be. Rosens the reason is because of what k Rod Rosenstein gave him. Rod rosenstein gave him a single sentence saying, look at the tih russian investigation. Muellers people can say if were looking at russian influence, we need to look if there was Financial Relationships between some of these people. Increas did the influence including ist blackmail or economic or financial ties that were increased or used as lenverage. So the problem with the broad mandate is you can fit a lot under it. All independent counsel or speciall counsel investigationsi tend to texpand. Expan if you start with an ambiguous mandate like this, youre going to see it expand. Its like gas in a closed room. If you have a big room, gas will spread evenly in the room. This is as big a room as you could have given mueller. Milwaukee,e, wisconsin, joseph on our line for democrats. Ent your turn, joseph. Caller yes. My name my comment involvingo thosest leakers joseph, go ahead. Caller yes. My comment. Erred my comment being that in the 1980s Patrick Buchanan was referring to whistleblowers as being scum. 1998 Ronald Reagan side the act. And . Caller and today because of the leakers, their levels of doctrines and psychologies. Which way that are as far as being pro or against, but nonetheless the levels within wh the white house. Is the whistleact,blower th problem . It does notex apply the same way in National Security cases. There are exemptions. And so ive represented National Security whistleblowers in the National Security field andn you dont have those protections. Those folks that are leaking stuff out of the intelligence i. Community, they are pretty bare in terms of vulnerability to ncn prosecution. And theyre not going to get a e lot of sympathy if theyre discovered. You have to distinguish betweenm leakers and whistleblowers. The folks in the white house are leaking are more classic assi leakers. They may or may not be covered, depending on where they actualla work. People work in the white house assigned too different agencies. Nia so their legal status is a little different. I have to say that the mania about leakers in the trump degre administration is understandable. I can understand why its fr frustrating. A president needs some degree o confidentiality. No matter howt. V. , you feel ab is not the way to have a conducive work environment. But its like complaining about the weather in washington. I think that what you want to do is focus on getting good messages out. Things like north korea which are important stories and i think what youre going to find is its going to push a lot of leakers off the front page. Lets go to joseph. Silver spring maryland republican. High joseph. Thanks for taking my call this is joseph. Like five years ago you know. I think the that play without because all this drip drip drip it is time for the both parties to come together and its a waste of time and important things which are the focus of things right now. All that okay, joseph and ill jump into that part. I want you to respond to the drip drip drip. If you can go back to the machine a couple of thing would be for what sessions did, which was recused himself and the president should stay out of it. The president should have said oak lets give it to someone to investigate and stay out of it, i think the russian thing would have been over by then. It has been prolonged because of the pick pick pick from the white house. That, i think is part of the selfinflicted wounds. As part of the dripping, that is part of the problem with the special investigation. The investigation is here its a reality. Certainly the president can trigger what i wrote, i call it the dooms day. He can go in and fire mueller and if he did he can make his whole administration worse. Really quickly jonathan, what are you watching for on this . The most important thing is if President Trump will try to take out and restrict mueller that will resolve in a clear revoft on capitol hill. Republicans are already distancing themselves from the president. We have to see what general kelly can do not only in discipline control but the heeding of advice from his aids. To step back and let this investigation go forward. I think there have been mistakes on the other side. I think Rod Rosenstein has a conflict of interest he shouldnt be involved. I think mueller is not a great choice because of his relationship with comey. He spoke with trump about getting comeys job. Theres a lot of things in trouble here that President Trump might be right about. But being right about something doesnt mean you get to control events. The test would be to tell the president we have a world at issue here. We need to focus on it. Jonathan turnly a law officer at washington university. Thank you for your time this morning. Thank you. Announcer Vice President pence is finishing up his Eastern European tour. He talked being sanctions against russia. President trump sent
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