of the water gate scandal. the press or media didn t know anything about the taping systems. until alexander butterfield, white house aide, in july of 1973, told the senate water gate committee, told the staff, that there was a taping system. that point, richard nixon had the opportunity to destroy the tapes. he decided not to. as for one on onebetween tru white house, former staffers tell us they don t know of any built in systems in the dining rooms to tape conversations. they say the president could bring in a recording device or have an aide take notes on the conversation but it is unlikely he would. could comey have taped the phone conversations on his end? we got no comment from the fbi. former top bureau officials tell us that would only be allowed if the president himself was under investigation. which trump says he s not. and if the fbi chief got a warrant to tape him.
evan, what are you learning? wolf, at this point the attorney general rod rosenstein doesn t see anything in this investigation that requires him to step aside, to recuse himself from his oversight of the investigation. it s being led by the u.s. attorney general in alexandria, virginia, and he s also serving as the leader of the national security division at department of justice headquarters. he s looking to see if there s any sign that the investigation is imperilled, and there s no sign of that. the fbi has assured him that they are going to pursue this investigation where it leads, and he s going to he s assured members of congress that he is going to make sure there s that nobody is going to interfere with it from the white house or from anywhere else. reporter: and he ll appear with senators next week. he s pected to testify next week to members of congress. that will be behind closed doors. yes, it. thanks very much.
wouldn t be inappropriate if he did. what do you make of that? there are two components. hypothetically that president would ever ask the director of fbi for a loyalty pledge is just outrageous. the fb i director, any fbi director, is not loyal to any president. he is loyal to the constitution. to our laws. and any president should know that. but it s clear donald trump, based on what he said on this interview on fox, does not recognize that or didn t say so in that interview. that s significant. but then there s also this he said-he said component. did james comey ask for this or did the president ask james comey for his loyalty? the president has a credibility problem right now. we re told as journalists to always consider the source. the president has fallen short of the truth in the past. lied outright. so if we re asking to choose between james comey s version of events or the president s, the
process. the white house, if they asked, would know about that. you know, later on in the interview with andrea mitchell, he talked about some evidence. right. but it was not evidence that they had high confidence in so maybe he did see a little bit in his investigation but nothing with high confidence,ing into he thought was evidence of collusion. yeah. not hard evidence. susan, how do they clean this up right now? let this investigation go forward with credibility? well, first, they will have to appoint an independent credible fbi director. this will be an incredibly difficult confirmation fight. he might have to appoint a democrat or someone acceptable to both parties in order to get this passed and the other element they will have to appoint a special prosecutor in order to assure that this is a legitimate investigation with credibility. notably if they don t do that, it might actually harm president trump because if nobody believes in the integrity of the investigation
that s not to say there wasn t evidence. but not that met that threshold. during the white house press briefing, white house says clapper is changing his story. it is interesting how the story changed. now suddenly saying i wasn t sure about it. the burden seems to be on him, not us. today director clapper also expressed doubts about mr. trump s version after dinner with fired fbi director james comey in january. he wanted to have dinner because he wanted to stay on. a dinner was arranged. i think he asked for the dinner. clapper says it was trump who invited comey. he had been invited to the white house to have dinner with the president. and the former fbi chief was uncomfortable with the invitation. you re in a difficult position to refuse to go but i do know he was uneasy with it. for just for the appearance of compromising the independence of the fbi. the dinner came just one day