president ultimately makes the decision. but we know through the excellent reporting of my colleagues evan perez and pam brown that rod roserosenstein w not particularly pleased to have jim comey s firing pinned on him. i asked sarah sanders if that was a mistake. here s what she said. was it a mistake to try to pin the firing of james comey on rod rosenstein? i don t think there was an attempt to pin the firing of i think his recommendation was extremely clear. the president, though, makes the decision, the buck stops with him. nobody s ever tried to say that this wasn t the president s decision, that he wasn t the one that carried it out. and to try to conflate those things, it s just not what took place. reporter: now, again, this is just the latest instance, and we ve seen it again and again over the last couple of days, of the white house struggling to get their story together on this bombshell decision.
president trump s a bombshell decision to fire fbi director james comey. that, of course, is sparking your concerns about the future of the russia investigation. we will continue to keep an eye on it. we are also live at the white house with a daily briefing is set to start any minute now. we could learn more about the president s decision to fire james comey and that search for his successor. after vice president pence came to capitol hill this morning and strongly defended the president s decision. i am grateful for the action the president has taken, and i am confident as we go forward that the president will choose an individual who will be able to restore the confidence of our nation and our leading law enforcement agency.
he should be meeting with the foreign minister, should be meeting with people like kissinger, and for them to try to attack him for doing his job, maybe they should spend more time doing their job that we would not have all the problems that we do. reporter: isn t it true that the president had already decided to fire james comey, and he asked the justice department to put together the rationale for that firing? no. reporter: why did he make the decision? he made the decision for the final decision to move forward with it was yesterday, but i know he s been cut to planning it for a while. reporter: how do you ask me what dianne feinstein says that the president told her that he was concerned with the fbi and asked the justice department? i cannot speak for senator feinstein, but i did speak directly to the president. directly from him, i heard that he again had been pretty much since the day he took office.
jenna: fox news alert, we are awaiting the white house daily briefing to begin and president trump s firing of the fbi director will be front and center during that. along with any political ramifications to that move including what it means to the fbi investigation of potential ties between the trump campaign and russia. democrats renewing calls for a special prosecutor while some republican lawmakers are defending the president s decision. james comey was a good man who made a bad mistake in the way he handled the clinton email scenario, and depending on who you were talking to one day, our democratic friends thought he was a night writing on a white horse, the next day, they thought he was the devil incarnate. the timing, of course, is right on the heels of the announcement there was going to be a grand jury to ask questions about the investigation into russia. to me, the timing of that probably was not the best, a little odd in my view in terms of when the white house did it.
interim director for the fbi, and that could happen as early as today or tomorrow. that would be a decision taken by those two individuals at the senior leaders of the justice department. now at the same time, they have to search ultimately for the replacement for the fbi director. that is something that would be appointed by president trump and then would need senate confirmation. there is an additional wrinkle here. if it turns out that the individual appointed as interim director for the fbi ends up being the president s choice to lead the bureau, they would then step aside and another interim director would be appointed, so we have a lot of changing of seats here at the bureau, and it is hard to argue against the idea that this will be disruptive to the russia case and other ongoing investigations. jenna: in the meantime, we take it step-by-step and continued to follow things as they come, thank you. director comey had lost the confidence of the rank and file