After he pled guilty, they did not lock him up. in fact, they didn t even sentence him after his guilty plea for more than ten years. they arrested him, they secured his cooperation, they got him to plead guilty to something but then instead of sentencing him for that guilty plea, instead of putting him in prison for that guilty plea, they turned him back out into the wild. they let him go back into new york city so he could become an informant for the government about organized crime. he did that work for, again, more than ten years. he actually ended up becoming a side bar minor controversy during the confirmation hearings for attorney general loretta lynch because she had been the prosecutor in brooklyn who had brought that big mob case, and who had overseen this case, but for that decade, while prosecutors left him out there
President from the top of an agency all the way down. andrew johnson violated one of those laws in 1867-1868. he was impeached, almost thrown out of office for that. in any case, you ve seen examples of republican presidents, especially reagan. nixon tried to shut down lyndon johnson s old war on poverty. the difference we re seeing with trump is another new trump innovation this year, that is this idea we re seeing in the epa, scaring out people with enormous expertise and experience, making them want to leave, and then not refilling these positions, so you impair what the epa is supposed to do, we re seeing the same thing at the state department, where as you have talked about a number of times. the top positions are not getting filled, and the idea presumably is, so there will not be diplomats there to make deals that donald trump doesn t want made much. it s a very good point.
Mr. york describes the republican members of congress who are leaking this information to him as frustrated. you see that there in the headline. clearly these republicans are not getting what they want from senior fbi officials when they re hauling them in for testimony. but even though byron york is i think somewhat sympathetic to the intentions of his republican congressional sources who are leaking stuff to him, byron york is also a real reporter, an actual reporter who faithfully conveys information that he has obtained. in this case the information that his republican sources have given him is not information that is necessarily going to help their cause. from byron york s piece today, quote, the dossier portion of the interview began with fbi deputy director andrew mccabe being asked if he thought the trump/russia dossier met the standard of credibility the fbi required to open an investigation. fbi deputy director andrew mccabe said he believed it did.
Scandal, he s the person, the american reporter, who first reported before the election, on the existence of christopher steel s trump/russia dossier, which republicans are putting a lot of work into trying to turn into a scandal. i m not sure if we understand enough about these leaks, what s motivating them or what the context is for why these communications have been obtained, but would it be wrong, unethical somehow, for a general counsel at the fbi to communicate with a reporter for any reason? there are all sorts of legitimate reasons that the general counsel might have had a conversation with david corn. it could have been on another matter. it could have been a request from the office of legal affairs that he explain to mr. corn the proceedings in some case or some type of fbi process. i know we won t hear any comment from david on that other than his statement that mr. baker was not his source. it seems like that should be good enough to end the inquiry here without any other
Anything improper took place. this is one of those things where eventually we re going to get this story and a lot of blanks are going to get filled in and it will still be an intriguing story, but right now, with this mad libs narrative that we ve got in terms of what happened here, it s raising more questions than i feel comfortable with. joyce vance, former alabama u.s. attorney, thank you very much for being with us tonight. i really appreciate it. thanks. and i will just reiterate something that joyce vance just said there. david corn, as i said, a national treasure of an investigative reporter, he says unequivocally tonight and it s unusual for him to comment on his sources, he says tonight that in no uncertain terms, this fbi official, jim baker, was not his source for the dossier story. republicans are implying that with this leak tonight to politico.com. david corn says that s absolutely not the case. much more ahead tonight. stay with us. your insurance company won t