January 23 - Trump's War on the FBI; Russian Money Funneled Through the NRA to Help Elect Trump; How Right-to-Work Laws Are Disadvantaging Democrats

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Part 1	We begin with the nation’s Attorney General Jeff Sessions acting as Trump’s hatchet man as he conducts a purge of the FBI to validate Trump’s narrative that the special counsel’s investigation into Trump’s Russia ties and obstruction of justice are a Democratic-inspired witch hunt by a bunch of sore losers out to delegitimize Trump’s glorious victory in the Electoral College. Asha Rangappa, Associate Dean at Yale Law School and a former Special Agent at the FBI specializing in counterintelligence, joins us to discuss how Sessions has leaned on the Trump-appointed FBI Director Christopher Wray to fire the Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe and the FBI’s former general counsel James Baker, both of whom were close to the fired FBI Director James Comey and are witnesses in possible obstruction of justice charges against Trump. We will also examine warnings given to Jared Kushner from the FBI that his friend Wendi Deng, the former wife of Rupert Murdoch, could be working for the Chinese.
Part 2	Then we speak with Peter Stone, a special correspondent for McClatchy D.C. Bureau who since 1990 has covered a wide array of lobbying, legal and campaign finance issues in Washington, about his article at McClatchy with Greg Gordon, “FBI investigating whether Russian money went to NRA to help Trump”. We look into an FBI inquiry into a former Russian senator with ties to organized crime who is close to Putin, suspected of funneling money through the National Rifle Association to help elect Trump.
Part 3	Then finally we speak with Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, a Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University who is a co-author of a new study at the National Bureau of Economic Research “From the Bargaining Table to the Ballot Box: Political Effect of Right to Work Laws”. We will discuss how the increase in the number of states adopting right to work laws has hurt Democrats by diminishing their fundraising, their ability to organize and get out the vote, and their fielding of blue collar candidates who can relate to working class voters, many of whom voted for Trump.