administration, from mccabe to rosenstein to comey, to basically pledge their loyalty to him personally. and not understanding that their loyalty is to the constitution or to the agencies they have served. that has again become one of the key buckets mueller is looking at in his probe. ashley, let s turn the corner into this memo, which is likely to be the lead story tomorrow, though predicting that kind of thing these days is fraught. especially with the fbi director now kind of on the record saying, please don t do this. using words like, grave. which gets your attention. why the zeal, why the urgency to put this memo out, knowing the damage it could cause to our institutions as a precedent? the urgency is that president trump had been telling his team as early s last week, before he had even read the memo, that he believed it would vindicate him in the mueller probe.
and he s always asking these people who serve in his administration, from mccabe to rosenstein to comey, to basically pledge their loyalty to him personally. and not understanding that their lowellty is to the constitution or to the agencies they have served. that has again become one of the key buckets mueller is looking at in his probe. let s turn the corner into this memo which is likely to be the lead story tomorrow, though predicting that kind thing these days is fraught. especially with the fbi director now kind of on the record saying, please don t do this. using words like, grave. which gets your attention. why the zeal, why the urgency to put this memo out, knowing the damage it could cause to our institutions as a precedent? the urgency is that president trump had been telling his team as early s last week, before he had even read the memo, that he believed it would vindicate him in the mueller probe. and he would also last week complaining about rod rosenstein
people who serve in his administration, from mccabe to rosenstein to comey, to basically pledge their loyalty to him personally. and not understanding that their lowellty is to the constitution or to the agencies they have served. that has again become one of the key buckets mueller is looking at in his probe. let s turn the corner into this memo which is likely to be the lead story tomorrow, though predicting that kind thing these days is fraught. especially with the fbi director now kind of on the record saying, please don t do this. using words like, grave. which gets your attention. why the zeal, why the urgency to put this memo out, knowing the damage it could cause to our institutions as a precedent? the urgency is that president trump had been telling his team as early s last week, before he had even read the memo, that he believed it would vindicate him in the mueller probe.
i don t believe it is. here to talk about it, all three reporters have been covering this news all day long, the aforementioned michael schmidt, new york times washington correspondent and an nbc contributor, and joshua gerber, white house reporter for politico. welcome to you all. mr. schmidt, since it s your conclusion that we start with, fill in the blanks on this story. why were they both talked to when they were talked to? why were they staggered? why one in 2017, one in 2018, and what are the questions in content? there are two buckets mueller is looking at, one is the collusion bucket, the other is the obstruction one. for an interview with sessions, he falls into both of them. he was part of the campaign. he can speak about the contacts with the russians, he can also speak about the firing of comey, what the president s true intentions are, why did he do
without talking to the president. but what the terms are remains to be seen. do you think they re focusing entirely on obstruction if the only subjects they want to talk to the president about are the firing of flynn and the firing of comey? that would suggest they re not interested in talking about, you know, the meeting in trump tower with donald trump jr., et cetera, the meeting with george papadopoulos, et cetera. our reports are that the main two buckets mueller has said they want to ask trump about are those two firings and the events that preceded and followed those twoe different events. the flynn firing early and the comey firing later he that spring. and they ve indicated to the president s lawyers, john dowd, ty cobb, those are the two things they would want to lead the question with. do you think the signals, i m trying to look at how this was done with previous high profile