target of the investigation. listen to what kasowitz said on that point. mr. comey has finally confirmed publicly what he repeatedly told president trump privately. that is that the president was not under investigation as part of any probe into russian interference. mr. comey s testimony also makes clear that the president never sought to impede the investigation into attempted russian interference in the 2016 election. kasowitz handled the bulk of the response from the white house. the only thing the white house would say is the president was not a liar and raised the question it was insulting. a lot of republicans say that answer as weakened nixonian. shep? shepard: anything else from the president s team so far, john? yeah, one of the other things
it was almost theatrically awkward. even more chilling was his conversation about the february 14th when this was i thought his most powerful point. the supposed conversation where the president asked him to let the flynn matter go. he talked in great detail about the fact that the president ordered the attorney general, the vice president and the chief of staff and jared kushner, his senior adviser and son-in-law out of the oval office when he resisted to meet alone with comey. comey said why would he do that if it was innocent. shepard: he seemed to be saying, donald trump is a man that lies, you can t trust him working at the matter of credibility. with a he said he said, it comes down to that. yeah, that s part of it. also, you have the memos. at some point we ll look at it. i don t expect they ll be anything very different than what he s told us and what he said in his opening statement.
myself this way when president obama was in the white house and clinton was running for president. obviously he was tough on pete sessions today as well. the first thing he said coming out of the gate was that the whole reason the administration gave that for why he was fired is a lie, plain and sessions. anyway, he said it was a lie. plain and simple. that was something that jeff sessions had put together the reason for firing him, saying that he was fired bus fbi agents didn t trust him and the fbi was in chaos. he said that was not true. so he was definitely pushing back on jeff sessions. shepard: if that s true about jeff sessions, was jeff sessions is he in the midst of this so much that the recue sal makes sense and his hands are dirty here? shepard: at one point, comey was asked, why didn t you tell the justice department that trump had asked you for loyalty that he was asking you to drop the flynn investigation.
former attorney general loretta lynch told him to down play the clinton e-mail investigation. instead of calling it investigation, call it the e-mail matter. let s bring in rachel bade from politico. there s one kind of investigation, a criminal investigation. there s a reason that didn t want that word used. that s a bridge too far for an attorney general, isn t it? i think comey s team expressed frustration in that record. his weariness to both bothses, sessions and lynch was on full display today. he thought politics was influencing the way they were thinking and telling him to act where you mentioned loretta lynch, tolding him to worse matter instead of investigation and hillary clinton and her e-mails.
comey leaked before the tweet actually happened. shep? shepard: john roberts on the north lawn. thank you. more ahead on james comey s testimony today. chris wallace will be with us from fox news sunday and have his take coming up from the fox news deck. all finished.