Congressional correspondent mike emanuel, live on the l. on the eve of the big day. a whole lot of memos flying around here on capitol hill that of tomorrow s open hearings. we ve got a memo from chairman adam schiff. in that, chairman schiff writes, there s a long bipartisan history of protecting whistleblowers, including threats to threaten, intimidate, retaliate against, or undermine the confidentiality of whistleblowers. on the other side, house republicans put out a lengthy strategy memo. as you mentioned last night, they wrote, the july 25th call summary, the best evidence of the conversation shows no conditionality or evidence of pressure. president zelensky and president trump have both said there was no pressure on the call. ukrainian government was not aware of a hold on u.n. security systems at the time of the july 25th call. president trump met with president zelensky and u.s. security assistance flew to ukraine in september of 2019.
Complaint to congress. it s not there. he does not have that authority. so he s broken the law. he needs to explain himself on that. and then he needs to tell us the substance of the complaint. because again, none of us know what s in there. it may be nothing. this press speculation may be nothing, but here s why this is important, kate. our entire structure of protecting whistleblowers is at stake. right now there is a whistleblower out there who is thinking, oh, my god, this process got short-circuited. my career might suffer, i might be in danger. and the problem with that is if whistleblowers think that way, misbehavior in a very, very dangerous world, the intelligence world, won t go reported, or it will get reported the way edward snowden took his space to the public, by blowing important secrets. that is not a good outcome. that is a very interesting perspective in this. congressman, many more questions. not for today, though. thank you so much. i appreciate it. the press co
Seeking, this is not a new thing. and this is important history, especially for those people who don t like me. for those people who doubt me, who have heard terrible things about me. it was never my intention to end up in russia. i was going to latin america and my final destination was hopefully going to be ecuador. i applied for asylum in 27 different countries around the world. places like france and germany, places like norway, that i felt the u.s. government and the american public could be comfortable, that was fine for a whistleblower to be in, and yet every time one of these governments got close to opening their doors, the phone would ring in their foreign ministries and on the other end of the line would be a very senior american official. it was one of two people. then secretary of state john kerry or then vice president joe biden. and they would say, look, we don t ware what the law is, we don t care if you can do this or not, we understand that protecting whistleblowers i
Back with me now, let s talk about michael flynn. we learned a whistleblower told a member of the house oversight committee michael flynn texted a former business partner on inauguration day saying get rid of u.s. sanctions on russia was a priority for the trump administration. if that is true, what does that tell you? so there s two things you need to take away from this. the first is the incredible importance of protecting whistleblowers. really, that s just absolutely paramount to any integrity or ethics program in the federal government. it looks like this person whose name has not been revealed publically has so far been protected. once it comes out it will be incredibly important to protect this person because if anything happens to him, no one else will come forward with the truth. the underlying issue is also really important. you know, we talk a lot about
Some of his predecessors have done a poor job of protecting whistleblowers. at the fbi oversight hearing on may 3, i said that a cloud of doubt hangs over the fbi s objectivity. the previous director, james comey, said that the people at the fbi don t give a rip about politics, but mr. comey installed as his deputy director a man whose wife ran for the virginia state senate, accepted almost $1 million from the virginia governor, terry mcauliffe s political machine. that s a lot of money for one state senate seat. governor mcauliffe is a long-time friend and fund-raiser for the clintons and the democratic party. deputy director andrew mccabe met in person with governor mcauliffe about his wife s political plans. his official fbi biography was used in setting up the meeting and the goals and the goal was for mcauliffe to close the deal and get his wife to run for