told yesterday, as it pertains to donald trump making the recommendation himself, the more extraordinary part of this interview, i believe, is the part you played, that donald trump admitted that he was checking on the status of an investigation against himself for the fbi director. it s just it s mind boggling. it s mind boggling and even if it s not illegal, because we talked to matt miller and others about that before, the impropriety is a different question as you point out and it was in the context according to the president, of jim comey asking for his job. so by the way the conflict of interest is right. it was not illegal for loretta lynch to talk to bill clinton. right. but it was improper. and she did the right thing after meeting with president clinton and pulled herself from the investigation.
trump campaign. that s right. it s an investigation we know is expanding and there are grand jury subpoenas that went out in the last ten days involving his former national security adviser nike pl mike flynn, paul manafort continues to be under cruteny by the fbi, we know that jim comey and one of his apparent last acts went to the deputy attorney general and asked for more prosecutorial resources, asking for prosecutors we assume to expand the investigation into new areas or maybe to authorize new subpoenas or new surveillance warrants. it s an investigation that s expanding. for the president to say that he is not under investigation he may not be directly but it doesn t mean much. but i think we have to go back to the fact that the white house has continued to say things about this investigation that just aren t true. you had sarah huckabee sanders yesterday saying that it was a very small small piece of what the fbi is doing, wasn t an important investigation, the acting directo
recommendation, and also the fact that in three conversations, he says two on the phone, one over dinner, jim comey told him that he was not part of this investigation. andrea, the vice president repeatedly stressed that this was at the direction of the acting attorney general and he repeatedly stressed it was a decision that was made at the right time. he kept saying the right decision at the right time. and lester s exchange with president trump is going to raise more questions about the timing of this and about the fact that president trump now saying he had already made up his mind. put together, andrea, what we re getting is conflicting stories out of the white house now from the president himself, prior to this interview, i asked a number of senators about these differing stories what did they make of the narrative coming out of the white house, did it add to their concern. and skepticism about the reasons that propelled him to fire james comey and i have to tell you,
we know, he fired him because jim comey wouldn t tell a lie. he wouldn t say that the trump campaign s claims about surveillance about the obama administration were true. and that s why he fired him. it had nothing to do with showboating. we know the real answer to that. peter alexander, you re in the briefing room. we re expecting the briefing. is it going to be sarah sanders and some big questions about the headline coming out of lester holt s interview. i think that s right. this will be the first opportunity to push back on the white house for what we just heard from the president. we were polling some of the recent things we have heard from this administration just this week the sean spicer in a statement basically said we asked him i think it was just tuesday, excuse me, asked specifically wednesday excuse me specifically asked what changed between the president through his press secretary saying he had full confidence and the fbi director. he said the recommendation that cam
so perhaps it s not illegal that the president of the united states is checking on the status of an investigation against him with the fbi director, but it is extraordinarily improper and it s and they actually talked about the investigation unlike loretta lynch, and bill clinton. so, i await the same republicans and the same conservatives and the same editorial boards who rightly cup demds the lynch/clinton meeting to condemn donald trump for claiming that he checked on the status of his inquiry with the fbi director three times. and joe, we want to remind everyone of what jim comey did say on march 30th about confirming or march 20th excuse me confirming that there is an investigation into russia and possible collusion. let s just watch that quickly. i have been authorized by the department of justice to confirm