team. joining us now is the state department employee who broke this story. he spoke first to yahoo news, former u.s. ambassador dan freed served as chief coordinator for sanctions until he retired recently in february. thank you for being here, ambassador. my pleasure. let s go through this bit by bit, detail by detail. what did you see, and by whom? in the early days and weeks of the trump administration, a number of colleagues throughout the government approached me to say that they believed the trump administration was planning to unilaterally lift sanctions on russia. now, lifting sanctions on russia is something we want to do when the russians have, well, met the conditions and solved the problem for which sanctions were put on in the first place. but lifting sanctions without the russians doing anything, as a free gift, struck me
president. dan pfiefer, i m curious what you re going to be looking for next thursday at this time, remembering james comey, we think, is going to testify that the president tried to get him to back off the michael flynn investigation. and when he says that, he ll no longer be an anonymous source, or there won t be anonymous sources feeding that story. it s going to be someone saying it under oath in front of cameras, in front of the whole nation. yeah, i ll look for a couple things. one, see how comey recounts the dinner they had, the conversation in the oval office. whether his details matches up with reporting we ve all read in recent weeks. the image of that is potentially very powerful for people around the country and will be played on a loop on tv and the internet. i m also curious to see how republican members of the committee react, because we should be very clear that this is basically the textbook example of abuse of power. it is what when we think about watergate, what
some other things. he must wonder, you know, why am i taking this beating as i am inside here? and maybe there s a better way to handle this and take a temporary leave of absence while they clear the air, and i do agree, transparency should be the friend of this administration. yeah, it s mind-boggling jared hasn t given an interview since these accusations were first raised. the american people should hear from him directly, and he should answer these questions. and then we can move on. he is on the cover of time magazine this week. remember when that was steve bannon, when he wasn t in a great light not that long ago. we ll watch. guys, thank you very much. have a great weekend. alex conant, david gergen, dan pfiefer. it could be the most significant congressional testimony since watergate. fired fbi director james comey set to testify six days to the hour from now on capitol hill. the journalist who blew the lid off watergate, carl bernstein, joins us. a little something a
david chalian, dan pfiefer, alice stewart, great to have you with us this morning. have a terrific weekend. thanks, john. the president threatening to cancel white house briefing, and as we ve been talking about, he is threatening the fbi director that he just fired. we ll have more on what just is a wild morning, and a new player at the center of the controversy. well, the attorney general, jeff sessions. he said he had recused himself from anything to do with russia, but did he in the end? we re going to hear from him in just a few minutes. excuse me a minute. hi dad. no. don t try to get up. hi, i m julie, a right at home caregiver. and if i d been caring for tom s dad, i would have noticed some dizziness that could lead to balance issues. that s because i m trained to report any changes in behavior, no matter how small, so tom could have peace of mind. we ll be right there. we have to go. hey, tom. you should try right at home. they re great for us.
his position, and we re going to put someone at the head of the fbi that will restore confidence in this important aspect of our government. you know, dan pfiefer yes. is the argument over honesty? and i ll let you explain why you re laughing in a moment, but is it argument over honesty what s important, or is the argument over whether or not firing james comey was the right call? is that what s important or are they both important? they re both important. let s be clear what happened here. donald trump, by his own admission, said he wanted to fire the fbi director to put the russia investigation behind him. but, so, the white house staff gets together, they realize you can t actually say that publicly. they concoct a totally fake reason. they get rosenstein to write a fake memo coming up with the justification. they put it out. all the circuits make that point. trump decides not to abide by his own lie and actually tells the truth and says why he doesn t it puts alice and