in his memo, comey said the president told him, i hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting flynn go. he is a good guy. i hope you can let this go. a source told cnn, comey was concerned that the president was trying to stop the investigation. did you at any time urge former fbi director james comey in any way, shape or form to close or back down the investigation into michael flynn? also, as you no. no. next question. reporter: despite that, just days after firing comey in may, president trump dropped this bombshell. suggesting he let comey go because of the russia investigation. when i decided to just do it i said to myself, i said, you know, this russia thing with trump and russia is a made up story. reporter: of course, that only raised more questions about the possibility of obstruction of justice. given comey s testimony before congress we re conducting an
i hope you can let this go. a source told cnn, comey was concerned that the president was trying to stop the investigation. did you at anytime urge former fbi director james comey in any way, shape or form, to close or back down? no. no. next question. reporter: despite that, just days after firing comey in may, president trump dropped this bombshell. suggesting he let comey go because of the russia investigation. when i decided to just do it, i said to myself, i said, you know, this russia thing with trump and russia is a made up story. reporter: of course, that only raised more questions about the possibility of obstruction of justice. given comey s testimony before congress. we are conducting an investigation to understand if there was coordination with the russian efforts and anybody associated with the trump administration. reporter: ben whitlock is a
jurortive term, but the political forces in the executive branch, and that s why the director is given a tenure term, so it is guaranteed that you ll span presidential administrations to make sure that you re leading in a way that s not influenced by the political winds. richard painter, to you, with your hat on as a former white house ethics lawyer. is there, given comey s comments about why fbi directors have ten-year terms and why they have to be beyond politics or even the appearance thereof, do you believe that anyone with a political background can be tapped and be trusted by this president at this point in time? oh, i think they can. i ve worked in republican politics for about 30 years. i know some of these people. they re very good people. i think they could do an excellent job as director of the fbi, but it s going to be critical that there will be an independent prosecutor for the trump/russia connection investigation. that should not be handled by the fbi director. and
director told him three times he was not under investigation. could you conceive of any plausible scenario in which that might have happened? no. i can t imagine why the director would say that other than his testimony where he confirmed that they had some active investigation going on with his campaign. that s the only time he did that, and director comey is particularly careful, as we just heard with his words. he s not going to make these statements which put him in a position of his own compromise. given comey s level of skill in navigating this that you have identified, matt, and it s really a remarkable thing to go back and look at his 2007 testimony when he talked about that famous night at the bed of john ashcroft. he has an ability to preserve his reputation amidst many controversial things. what do you anticipate the next chapter of this story is? well, i mean, look what we ve seen in just the last 24 hours. we ve already seen leaks about this loyalty request.
testimony where he confirmed that they had some active investigation going on with his campaign. that s the only time he did that, and director comey is particularly careful, as we just heard with his words. he s not going to make these statements which put him in a position of his own compromise. given comey s level of skill in navigating this that you have identified, matt, and it s really a remarkable thing to go back and look at his 2007 testimony when he talked about that famous night at the bed of john ashcroft. he has an ability to preserve his reputation amidst many controversial things. what do you anticipate the next chapter of this story is? well, i mean, look what we ve seen in just the last 24 hours. we ve already seen leaks about this loyalty request. we ve already seen leaks about the request for the dinner came from trump. we ve seen a number of pieces of information already. but i think given look, he does like the spotlight. that s one thing about him that i thi