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another seems to open. enter, the new york times front page story of a secret plan by trump associates said to be backed by kremlin about the armed conflict with russian allied forces within its own borders. in other words, while the fbi s investigating an alleged back channel during the election between russia and the trump campaign, there may be another previously undisclosed back channel between russia and known trump associates. but before we dive into the times report, a little context. throughout the entire russia controversy, the president has repeatedly denied having any russian business ties. i own nothing in russia. i have no loans in russia. i don t have any deals in russia. russia is fake news. russia is fake news. but that s a relatively recent claim. in 2008, for instance, donald trump jr. told an interviewer, russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets, say in dubai and certainly with our project in soho. we see a lot ....
mike chael flynn s contacts and were there any people in donald trump s universe as a candidate who were in contact with entities in russia, russian agents, that kind of thing. it is significant but it s also the standard way they would begin an investigation. the white house acknowledges it will preserve these types of records. i want to go to the white house. kristen, what do we know about these memos, signed by the secretary of homeland security? reporter: halle, these are draft memos, not etched in stones. the white house saying these are among the choices under consideration but it shows that the white house is looking to get tough on immigration. they include hiring 10,000 agents and officers for custom enforcement, expedite the removal of undocumented immigrants in the u.s. for two years or left. it would call for deputizing local law enforcement and then it would also potentially hold parents who pay smugglers to bring in their children accountable. they could face p ....
reporter: certainly. that will be a challenge for some of them especially in districts where the president is very popular. if members did not side with him on this. i think the big question right now is will it get to the floor? that s a decision that doesn t reside in the white house. it s really a decision for the majority leaders of the republicans, kevin mccarthy a long with the speaker, they run the floor. if they believe it is sort of a doomed bill, they ve got to make a calculation about tip typically you could see them not put it on the floor with that political exposure for each and every member to be recorded on something that went nowhere. that s typically how this goes. we saw the president saying he wanted a vote. that was a point of leverage. in the time we ve been talking about this and when we ve been updating our own whip counts and describing the mood and the atmosphere, i can assure you, if there were people in leadership who thought we had that wrong, they ....
if the administration was standing by that tweet which sean spicer said the president is, then why could congress then need to investigate if this information already exists? the press secretary talked a little bit about the issu i have to listen to the vshage again, the transcript, but he talked about credibility and the idea there is a separation of powers as well. we also talked a little bit about the idea that hey we are in tax season, tax day is just over month away. will the president release his returns from this most recent year? the president secretary said he would got back to us. and then is the president still under audit for past returns? the press secretary confirming he indeed is. a separation of powers, and they don t want to be perceived as directing congress to investigate in a certain way. harold ford is this going to dog them much longer? it will. the question by halle and the other young lady spelled i out. i think the health care the governors will be the ....
every single president and every single vice president has been audited by the irs every year of their time in office. and they all still routinely release their tax returns to the public every year so that excuse from trump and the trump campaign never made sense. being under audit is excuse for not releasing your tax returns as a candidate or certainly as president. also, the audit excuse never made sense for his past tax returns. even if donald trump wanted to release nothing under current audit, well, what about years for which the audits are completed and closed? any year of his taxes before, say, 2008, any year that was audited before then, those years presumably would be done being audited by now. those would be closed. so why not release those earlier tax returns even if you don t want to release the current ones for which there isn t an excuse not to do anyway? whether or not you are a supporter of donald trump in general, whether or not you care what s in his tax ret ....