i want to read from the new york times. two days an aide to mr. sessions approached a capitol hill staff member asking if the staff member had any derogatory information about the fbi director. the attorney general wanted one negative article a day in the news media about mr. comey according to a person with knowledge of the meeting. now, we knew that the white house instructed rosenstein and others to find cause to fire comey, but going to dig up dirt so there s negative news stories day in and day out, your reaction. it s very scary we are even discussing that in this day and age. and when you look at it in the face of it, it speaks to the very depths of the depravity i think we re seeing from this white house. not have we seen anything like this. this is only the third day of the year. jason, i have to ask you what s interesting about this is this sounds a lot like the white house is doing to james comey
justice is. i don t think this would amount to a crime in and of itself. when you look at the pattern of behavior. firing james comey for conducting this investigation, telling lester holt, the russian visitors, that he fired james comey because of the russia investigation. all of it adds up to the potential for a charge of obstruction of justice against the president. and the times reporting today is another brick in the wall. how do you see it? well, donald trump as a candidate and now as president has a fundamentally flawed understanding of the role of the attorney general and the role of the justice department. he thought on the campaign, he apparently has still thought that throughout his first year as president, that the department of justice and the prosecutors and investigators are an arm of the white house.
actually tell the president there is an ongoing investigation. dealing with the fbi over the years, the fbi is always i remember the standard rule of thumb is neither can confirm or deny there s an investigation and thank you very much and we ll see you. that went out with james comey. that s true. that s very true. one thing that is clear here is the question of obstruction of justice is still very much alive. certainly in the especially counsel investigation here, whether he gets there. and i know it s a very high bar because do you not, laura coates, have to prove intent to get a case? intent i know it s a hot topic for many people, but it s very rarely the end game in a prosecution. obstruction would be like watching someone speed away from the scene of the crime, giving them a speeding ticket but ignoring what they re actually running from. it could be a stand alone as well, but to suggest the goal of the mueller investigation is
just trying to no, you are. the simple fact is, this president has never properly. at all in his entire year about. i m sorry that you hate the president so much. i don t hate anybody. i m just the guy asking questions. how could you make that judgment that i hate the guy, simply because i ask a question about him because you absolutely started off he hasn t been truthful. let s listen to what jason has to say this. this is a pattern of the president taking multiple steps by his own admission to get in the way, it seems of the russia investigation. he said, for instance, with the firing of james comey, that s why he did it, he instructed his attorney general to try to get rather the white house council to instruct the attorney general or encourage him not to recuse himself, it s part of a pattern here, is it not? it s his prerogative if he wanted to fire the fbi director. there s nothing wrong with that, the legal experts have come on
he thinks of himself as a december pot despot or a king. jason, i have to ask you, this is part of a pattern of this president seeking, it appears, to undermine this investigation, right? whether it s telling his attorney general not to recuse himself. whether it s directing the attorney general to look for dirt on james comey. and then he fires james comey. he s said as much in public that he fired james comey because of the russia investigation. i have to correct you, i did go through and read the story twice to make sure i was getting it right. not only does it not say in the story that the president asked for someone to go and look for dirt on comey, the allegation was that someone in the justice department asked some low level staffer to do it, and the justice department has flat out denied that. and said it did not you re just parsing words. no, it s very important, if it s not true, we need to make sure we re being clear here. please don t try to throw shade, because