they never felt pressured by the president to do anything improper regarding the ongoing investigation. from there, they repeatedly refused to divulge, the content of their conversations withhe president. today i am not going to talk about theoreticals. i am not going to discuss the specifics of any interaction or conversations. can you if i could finish please. that i may or may not have had with the president of the united states. i m not going to talk about theoreticals today. can you set the record straight about what happened or didn t happen? i don t believe it s appropriate for me to address that in a public session. i am not asking for classified information. i am asking whether or not you have ever been asked by anyone to influence an ongoing investigation. i understand, but i m just not going to go down that road. why are you not answering these questions? is there an invocation by the president of the united states of executive privilege? is there or not?
tower. based on president trump s reaction to the briefing, i offered that assurance. the president s outside counsel, marc kasowitz, said in a statement, the president is pleased that mr. comey has finally publicly confirmed his private reports that the president was not under investigation in any russian probe. the president feels completely and totally vindicated. he s eager to continue his move forward with his agenda. i don t know what the lawyer is talking about that for. anyway, back in march, comey told the senate committee, the fbi was investigating individuals associated with the trump campaign. let s watch comey publicly. i have been authorized by the department of justice to confirm that the fbi, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the russian government s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. and that includes invtigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the trump campaign and the russian governmen
so he did the president a great favor there, indicating how much pressure he was under and how much pressure he felt. well, president trump insisted that comey had assured him three different times that he was not under investigation. let s watch that. he told me that. i mean he told me at. he told you you weren t under investigation with regard to the russia investigation? i ve heard that from others. was it in a phone call? did you meet face to face? i had a dinner with him, and i said you know, i ll consider. we ll see what happens. but we had a very nice dinner, and at that time he told me, you are not under investigation. in his testimony, comey says he did not tell trump on several occasions he was not personally under investigation. anyway, that started early. according to comey, prior to the january 6th meeting, i discussed with the fbi s leadership where i should be prepared to assure president-elect trump that we were not investigating him personally. that w
personal conduct. so one of those three so-called assurances is saying don t worry, just because this material is out there, that s not what we re investigating. then trump brings up that exact issue again at that private dinner. again he gets the reassurance from comey. what trump seems to be worried about are two things. thick numb thing number one, that dossier, because he brings it up again at the dinner. but recall comey won t give him the public assurance that he is not under investigation because he says it could change. he s aing com to investigate that. exactly. and comey says if i do that, the word will leak out that i m investigating you for that dossier. it s going to hurt you public-wise. comey has one of the key sentences in this entire seven pages, is when comey says on page 6, he wouldn t give those public assurances that donald trump was not under investigation because if he did, it would create a duty to correct should that change. i understand. i think th
relationship. comey also explains the reason he did not comply with trump s request to announce the president was not under investigation. quote, most importantly because it would create a duty to correct should that change. i m joined now by sean turner, former senior adviser to james clapper, cynthia objectikney, e columbus. in order, going across the om, what struck you in legal terms watching this thing? the president s determination to get some sort of oath of loyalty from james comey, the discussions of whether he would drop the case involving michael flynn, whether the president was personally a target of the fbi or just his campaign? so to be direct, all of the above. i think that what stands out to me most as i read this statement, chris, is if you look at comey s accounting of these meetings, in each and every case, there was a situation in which the president was making a request and looking for something in return. and i think that if you believe