it is behind the scenes. trump s reaction is to call the director of national intelligence and ask him to speak publicly. if he would just leave this investigation to the side. let me bring in my former national security officials. i want to know what kind of stranl it puts on foreign policy responsibilities, directly tied to our security at home and our standing in the world, to have a president whose personal lawyer goes out and says, we ll prosecute and hunt down anyone who is leaking conversations with the president, that the president has already tweeted about. what does it do to the men and women? i ll thinking of dni coats, h.r. mcmaster. people who have had the jobs that you both have. what does do it to people like that when we have a president around the world who doesn t always look like someone who could be taken seriously or trusted, even by his own fbi
agencies demand it. but after this frustrating hearings as you can see, these witnesses participated in a closed door classified briefing with the committee and dni coats could have answered the question there, did trump ask him to downplay the investigation? his answer would not necessarily have been classified. no word on if he did answer that question, but there was a comment from senator john mccain that it shows what coined of orwellian existence we live in, the fact that they weren t answering the questions and yet he read the answers to the questions this morning in the washington post. the post saying that they were asked to do this. they said no, we were never directed, but never said you were directed. and that coats discussed this with several associates. weird. brianna, thank you so much. next, we ll talk to one of the senators who will question james comey tomorrow and who was in that closed hearing with those top jens chiefs. stay with us. [ dog whimpers ] man
giving misleading testimony to the senate judiciary committee, the statements about the president s efforts to reach out to dni coats and rodgers and get them to undermine the investigation, the firing of comey, this isn t about the election any more, this is about the election and about the transition and about the administration and whether there s activity underway that would be unprecedented in american history. what else would you need to see, senator, before you could make the determination that there was obstruction of justice? that s a legal term, wolf, and when i went through the scenario that i went through with the facts there are a couple of facts in there that i mentioned that though they had been publicly reported the white house denies them. the white house has not has not acknowledged that it made the efforts to reach out to dni coats and admiral rodgers to get them to undermine the investigation with comey. they haven t admitted that yet.
course, just how combustible this issue is of course on capitol hill. now on the other side of the hill, that was with members of the house. on the senate side, you had director rogers speaking of course about what we have been hearing in the last 24 hours, those reports that he was potentially in contact with president trump, dni coats as well, director of national intelligence, and that there was a request that they intervene once that fbi investigation, the existence of it became public. coats declined to comment on that saying he didn t want to comment on personal conversations with the president, it wasn t an appropriate forum. but he was pressed on it by john mccain, a republican, who of course has been willing to be critical of this administration, especially on this topic. he and senator lindsey graham particularly hawkish on issues related to russia. kasie, let s hear that sound of john mccain. i have always believed that given the nature of my position
to know about that before they went to the polls? i d actually dispute the premise of your question. voters did have an opportunity to know it. did they know it did they know the significance of it? were they really forcefully made aware of it by u.s. officials? well, katy, we can only do so much. i ll tell you what we did. on october 7th there was an unprecedented statement released by the dni and department of homeland security that made very clear the fact that we had information leading us to believe with high confidence on the part of all 17 intelligence agencies that russia was involved in this effort, sanctioned at the highest levels of the russian government, to interfere in our electoral process. to let you know how we got there, it is very important that you follow a formula in cases like this. and that formula first rests upon the intelligence community coming to this high-confidence assessment. you want that information to be bulletproof because you know it will be