is here legally? will a judge go along with this? alisyn is, i think there are bigger questions that have to be decided. the trump team is making the case this should not be in federal court. this should be be referred to the the original nondisclosure agreement. they will have to first make the decision, foundational decision about jurisdiction. is this a matter and everything related to this, including discovery such as a deposition, should that be decided but a private arbitrator, or is this going to remain in federal court, at which point the judge will allow the parties to move forward with discovery. but i think that fundamental question has to be decided before the judge allows that team to depose the president or michael cohen. this is a some tphaoufr by avenatti. he wants to get away from this deal. he said it wasn t signed, so it
the right, we don t know exactly what the charges are. but knowing who is charged matters. is critical. i thought the critical as i said earlier this morning, i think the critical question here is not how the president reacts, it s how the republicans react to whatever the president does. because, alisyn, your question at the end for all of the talking points, whether you want to talk about uranium one, the dossier. the place where there is a blade, where there is actual action from the congress is whether they will signal to the president that if he moves to end this special counsel investigation, they will, in some way, vote to reinstate it. and i think that everything else from the hill, at this point, is kind of talking points. something you have to talk about you heard them, sticking like glue. when you go on television. the key question is, everything that we see from this president, and brings it into a closer relationship everything we ve seen from him is that
that i think that mueller should stay in place. and we should and you would take action to try you would take action against the white house if the president made some sort of move to get rid of robert mueller? listen, as facts change, so, too, can my opinion. but at this point, what we see this morning, i think that we should continue on. but, alisyn, what i think is important is, let s look at manafort. let s look at president trump. but, i mean and i get frustrated sometimes when i hear some of your reporting this morning. we also have to look at what impact did russia have with hillary clinton? and her campaign and the dossier. and uranium one. these are all big and bold questions. i hear you, i understand. it just feels like a diversion and a deflection this morning as we watch paul manafort surrender. no, no, i ve been talking about this for weeks. the only collusion point we do have is the sense of dnc and hillary paying money to a law firm that went to fusion that
donald trump? well, that s a large leap to make, alisyn. i just, i can t make that one with you. and so to taint donald trump with things that manafort did before the campaign win, i thins a leap too far. but listen, we re going to look at this full picture, and as you reported, we ll see what the charges are for manafort, but we ll also look at the campaign with regard to the dossier and the clintons, we ll look at uranium one. the whole spectrum should be looked at and i think americans should know, what involvement russia had in our elections, who were they partnering with or colluding, and what tools or techniques did they use to influence or change our election. yeah, but the fact that the chairman of the trump campaign today surrendered to the fbi, in terms of significance on scale of 1 to 10, you think that s what? i don t know yet. it depends what the charges are. but alisyn, let me tell you this. what concerns me the is leaks that happened. that cnn, and good for you guy
then paid russia agents to provide information and dirt on trump. i mean a british i don t want to go too far down this rabbit hole with you. i don t either. but i think my point to you, alisyn is, i want to look at all of it. and i think fair-minded americans say look at trump, look at clinton, look at the dnc, look at the rnc, we should look at all of russia s involvement here. but as you pointed out, as we ve seen this video of manafort this morning, it s serious for him. and me as a republican congressman, i look forward to see whing what the charges are how serious this is and does it bleed into the campaign of president trump and where does it go? thank you very much for joining us this morning. chris? duffy would be a lot more upset if he were as curious as these charges as he is about hillary clinton and the dossier. i ll tell you that right now. let s bring in some people who aren t going to be motivated by politics on this, but we now know as fact. cnn senior poli