evidence that the president met or took direction from russia. white house press secretary sarah sanders calling the times story, quote, absurd. secretary of state mike pompeo calling it silly on its face. today, the president spoke to the press prior to his departure for an event in new orleans. mr. president, yes or no, have you or are you now have you ever worked for russia, yes or no? i haven t worked for russia. you know that answer better than anybody. i never worked for russia. not only did i never work for russia, i think it is a disgrace that you even ask that question. it s a whole big, fat hoax. it s just a hoax. that question coming from our white house correspondent kristen welker there. let s go to nbc s julia ainsley. she covers intelligence and the justice department. you heard the president there talking about the times report. how does that square, what the president just said, how does that square with what the times actually reported. explain to viewer
what was in this post report that we did not know before. okay. so these two together really give us a lot of context. there s reasons why phones were just buzzing this weekend over both of these stories. it puts the president in a different realm for the first time. we ve known for over a year now, he s the subject or there is a criminal investigation being run by robert mueller. this now makes him the subject of a counterintelligence investigation. that s very different, craig. i want to explain why. a counterintelligence investigation doesn t always end with criminal charges. sometimes, it can last for a decade, as the fbi gathers more evidence of players in a particular scheme, from a foreign government who is trying to use certain people to infiltrate our government. that can go back the other way. they can try to find people who they flip to become, you can call them spies, for the united states. it is kind of this game that goes back and forth. it is really unusual, when t
years that are racist, why is it different this time around? we ll dig into that. we start with breaking news on president trump s nominee for attorney general. one day before his confirmation hearing, william barr has released his prepared opening statement. in that statement, he says that he supports and has confidence in the mueller probe. barr saying, quote, i believe it is vitally important that the special counsel be allowed to complete his investigation. nbc justice correspondent pete williams is standing by. pete, do we also know whether mr. barr says that, when finished, it should be made publish? what he says is, my goal will be to provide as much transparency as i can, consistent with the law. that does seem to suggest he believes the report should be made public, or at least most of it, the parts that aren t redacted. that ll be his decision, if he is confirmed. it seems clear that the mueller
general sanction that firing. i think the people in the fbi were nervous about both what was happening substantively, with respect to whether the president was an agent of a foreign power, and also what was happening to their investigation. this was the step they took, both out of substantive concerns and because theye police politically, it d be hard to end the investigation. a statement from hillary clinton on this, and we have her tweet there, like i said, a puppet. betsy, for folks who might not be familiar with precisely what mrs. clinton is talking about, what is she talking about? she s referring to comments she made on the campaign trail and subsequent to trump s inauguration, where she accused him of essentially being a tool of vladimir putin s government in russia. one of the core arguments democrats made in the closing of the 2016 presidential campaign
it always struck me as an absolute necessity that they ask these questions about the president s conduct and about the president s words. so why is it coming out now? my guess is that some of the testimony that fbi officials gave on the hill are now being provided to the press. i don t know that. that strikes me as logical. these are the types of questions that the fbi has to ask, readless read le regardless if it is a counterintelligence or fbi investigation. this is what the president said about trying to conceal the readouts of his one-on-one meetings with putin. here s his response. well, jeanine, i would. i don t care. i had a conversation like every president does. it was a great conversation. i m not keeping anything under wraps. i couldn t care less. anybody could have listened to that meeting. that meeting is open for grabs. again, no good answer. what are the ramifications, matt miller, for our national