Were going to continue our breaking news live coverage of this. I wanted to amplify for you what andrea was just telling you about the Wadirector Comey former Director Comey found out about this, the New York Times account of this is just stunning. He was addressing a group of fbi employees in los angeles when the television in the background flashed the news that he had been fired. In response, mr. Comey laughed. He said he thought it was a fairly funny prank. And then his staff started securing around in the background, told mr. Comey that he should step into a nearby office. Mr. Comey stopped addressing the group. He proceeded to shake hands with the employees he had been speaking to and he stepped into a side office where he confirmed that he had been fired. At that point, he had not heard from the white house. Shortly after that, rachel,
after all of that, its been on television, a letter from the president was delivered to the fbis headquarters just 7 blocks from the white house,
act to impede the investigation, which is to fire the fbi director. i want to go to a moment where director comey was asked how you make the transition to a special prosecutor investigation. this is senator heroino in the recent hearing where she asked him what happens when you are in the middle of an investigation and then you bring in a special prosecute prosecutor. let s listen to that. so in the investigations that you are currently doing on the russians interference and the trump team s relationship, are you coordinating with any u.s. attorney s office on those investigations. two sets of prosecutors. main justice, the national security division, and the eastern district of virginia u.s. attorney s office. has this happened before, where you are doing an investigation and the attorney general appoints a special prosecutor to conduct the same
to him and he doesn t know who is running the fbi as of that moment. i don t know the timing. i don t know when he went to the white house. i know that when we first heard about this, which was i m trying to think back now, it s been a while, 5:30 or so eastern time tonight. approaching about 5:45. that was before it was on any of the cable networks. when i reached out to senior people at the fbi, they said we don t know what you re talking about. what are you telling me. so i don t know, but i don t know when mccabe went to the white house for his meeting. i do know that justice department officials tell us that sessions and rod rosenstein called him to tell him about this, so i m i gather that he found out about it before jim comey did. pete williams, thank you very much for joining us on this long and important day. really appreciate your time. you bet. she s the president of the center of american progress. she supported hillary clinton. also joining us for msnb
white house and as you have documented and reported tonight is immediately and swiftly turned into a giant decision. this does not add up. that does not mean that i ve as i ve been reporting that we know where it ends or we assume rather than guilt or innocence. it does mean based on what we know the history and it does not run this way. that, i think, brings more questions. i don t so much care, quite honestly, whether the white house was or was not expecting a political reaction. i do whether there s a nonpartisan power of concern here. that goes way beyond politics. looking at this as a legal opinion, as it were, restoring public confidence in the fbi. it s an extra legal concept to begin with, so this is basically, it s a public relations exercise. we want to restore public confidence in the fbi. we want to do that by firing the fbi director. and then you put in the reasons, here is why we want to do, the hillary clinton investigation. if you re talking about
recusal that or what i should call, partial recusal that jeff sessions committed to, which is regard to russia campaign issues plus another person, jim comey who is overseeing that investigation. so that, again, i think raises why very few observers, whatever your politics are going to believe this reasoning, but part of the reason it s so awkward, because rod is a good lawyer and he knows if he even addresses or mentions it. then jeff sessions can t be involved. david, big difference in the speed of the firing of james comey ver us the speed of the firing of general michael flynn. the president by the way continues to defend. with this one, it does look we ll learn, what, 7:00 a.m. tomorrow morning, the depth of the president s emotional