misdemeanors. my fear is, and americans need to grapple with this, i am not sure given today s politics, given the extent to which the predhas done everything he can and his people, by the way, and his supporters in the congress of the united states, having done everything they can to delegitimize mueller, to delegitimize the fbi and the department of justice, i fear there may not be anything, anything that mueller could report that would cause enough republican senators to decide that the president should be impeached. and that is along with everything else we have been talking about tonight, a truly scary thought. indeed. and as we exit, i m going to let you go, but i have to ask you, just from what you know as of now, what you have learned about the president of the united states so far, do you trust donald trump with the national security of the united states? i absolutely do not. you know, i mean, i don t even know where to begin, right?
letter for the president. you don t need to send that letter. i ll come up with a letter for you. you don t need to mention russia. the letter from rosenstein comes back the following day. it says comey mishandled the clinton e-mail investigation, sort of a different reason than trump ultimately wants to get rid of comey. that s the letter that is sent, but trump is irritated with rosenstein for not mentioning russia in the letter. trump ultimately when he sends his letter to comey, says, you know, dear mr. comey, thank you so much for telling me three times i was not under investigation in the russia inquiry, and what happens is the fbi finds out about that in the following days and they re perplexed as to why is it that trump wanted to mention russia in the letter. what was it that was really driving that? the second thing, as you were pointing out earlier, were his comments to lester holt where he appears to say russia was on his mind when he fired comey. you have in here, it is e
many thanks at the last minute joining us. the rachel maddow show now starts with joy reid in for rachel. good evening. good evening. thanks very much. big night. thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. rachel has the night off. she will be back on monday. we begin tonight, of course, with that breaking news from the new york times. here is the headline again. fbi opened inquiry into whether trump was secretly working on behalf of russia. quote, in the days after president trump fired james b. comey as fbi director, law enforcement officials became so concerned by the president s behavior that they began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of russia against american interests. that is according to former law enforcement officials and others familiar with the investigation. the story continues, the inquiry carried explosive implications. counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether the president s own actions constituted a possible
consequential as this fact is, it s not vising. a lot of the story hinges on the private testimony of james baker who was the fbi general counsel that he gave to house oversight and house judiciary. have you, sir, seen that testimony, or is that testimony that you expect your committee to get hold of? well, i have not as a member of the intelligence committee seen that testimony. it was other committees in the congress. you know, i think we re still at a point, joy, where the answer here, and the answer becomes all the more important given what we learned from the new york times. the answer here is that we need both to preserve the mueller investigation and then to make sure that every aspect of the mueller investigation becomes public. whatever is in there. if it exonerates the president or if it indicts the president, it needs to be made public. if you sort of step away from your feelings about donald
had these foreign adversaries into the oval office? why would he be so willing to do this? and also willing to tell them that by firing comey, he had alleviated pressure on himself. extraordinary reporting. new york times reporter michael schmidt, one of three reporters who broke this really blockbuster story. congratulations, michael. really appreciate your time tonight. thank you. thanks for having me. thank you very much. responses are pouring in to this breaking news. including from the white house. we just got this moments ago from white house press secretary sarah sanders. quote, this is absurd, she says. james comey was fired because he is a disgraced partisan hack and his deputy andrew mccabe who was in charge at the time is a known liar, fired by the fbi, unlike president obama who let russia and other foreign adversaries push america around, president trump has actually been tough on russia. that s the first official quote from the white house. joining us is barbara m