set forth in regulation. it is not to be done by the white house unless there is some emerging need for it. it s black and white law f president isn t aware of that, that failure son his white house counsel or his department of justice. not on the fbi director. in fact, the fbi director when the president tried to have these one-on-one communications with him told the attorney general to please make him stop because it s not protocol. with respect to the question of whether or not this is a violation of statutory obstruction of justice, that s still remains to be seen. there is a big debate about whether if the president does something which he has the legal right to do absent another criminal act, whether khe can b indicted for obstruction of justice. we ll see how that plays out over the course of time. but to put anything on comey as a matter of law because he
we have more now on the story we told you about at the top of the hour. senators on the intelligence committee are now debating whether to take embattled attorney general jeff sessions offer to testify before the committee tuesday. some committee members are concerned that sessions may be trying to avoid testifying publicly since he canceled appearances at the senate and house appropriations committees this week. a source tells cnn that sessions offered to testify caught intelligence committee members by surprise. joining us now cnn senior media correspondent host of reliable sources and cnn political analyst and washington post columnist josh rogan. starting with you, what do you make of some of this concern by senators on the intelligence committee that sessions might be trying to avoid testifying in public? sure. in his letter to the senators, jeff sessions said he was pulling out of his budget testimony because of what james
certainly senate investigators have a lot of questions for the attorney general. among them, they will talk to him about his involvement in the firing of james comey. and they may also ask him questions about whether or not there was any sort of third undisclosed meeting with russia s ambassador sergey kislyak. the department of justice denied. that i can bet that investigators are going to want to talk to sessions about it. right. on the heels of this comey testimony, another former justice department employee that was fired by trump is going public about his interactions with the president. what is he saying? right. you re talking about preet bharara, the attorney fired by president trump a couple of months ago. on abc s this week , he talks about private conversations he had with then candidate trump that made him uncomfortable. watch. so he called me in december
a much less public role. that was evident on the sunday shows. internally, there are power dynamics going on. but they re not going to do this thing where they drum a lot of march a the love people out the front door because that would give the media, you know, what it wants and prove us all right. that s the last thing they want to do. i thought it was eye opening. we did not see trump on the circuit shows today. we did see over the weekend a couple days ago donald trump junior and tomorrow he vanivank trump. it is the family members speaking on behalf of their father, the president right now. we re not seeing trump aides out. there but we are seeing family members. very quickly, we may not have the clip ready to fire. but what you heard from trump junior yesterday is a contradiction of what his father said on friday in the rose garden when he said he didn t say he hoped that flynn investigation would go away. yesterday donald trump p jr. made it sound like it was comey s interp
i talked about this on my program earlier today. that president trump has a lot of secrets right now wlchlt it s about big things like whether he believes in climate change, whether he has tapes, whether it is small things like whether he went golfing this weekend. he s keeping a lot to himself. the same is true for jeff sessions. if sessions wants to look open and available and free and without secrets, then he ll speak openly in public on tuesday to the extent that he can legally. it will be interesting to see how television event this could be. almost 20 million people tuned in for the comey hearings and live on all the major networks. i don t know if we ll see that same tonch on tuesday. certainly cnn and the other cablers will have it live. but sessions will be trying to, i suspect, withhold information. we ve already heard ddianne fei saying she wants him if front of the judiciary committee as well. a lot of senators all want their turns asking the questions and to josh s point,