that is another factor that you would look at in terms of trying to influence you an investigation which is what the definition of obstruction is. although ultimately the decision about whether anything should be done about it is a political one, not a legal one, for the reasons that jim comey steketch out today. he s not going to be charged with a crime glp and you often don t hear someone say in effect, yeah, i liked it through a. frid of mine, i wanted the papers to get it. very candid. and james comey is a lot of things. naive about his public image is not one of them. and so that is i think why he did that and i think that is why he wanted the statement out yesterday so that the hearing could it was an attempt i think, certainly legitimate one, to kind of shape how the hearing would go by getting the sort of details out yesterday, and then the hearing can go into the forward looking issues about what do we do about it.
nap is the point , that is the point wanted to make. you re right, they celebrated that, but that was naive on their part to think that removing mr. comey was going to stop the investigation, that was naive on the president s part if he thought that and most certainly that was naive on the part of the russians if they thought that. because we are bigger than one man. we have a rule of law. we have a system of government. and that is a secondary lesson. the bigger lesson of course is that we are focused on ourselves, divided among ourselves, and that also was on display today. either way one of the lasting quotes of this day fromhe former fbi director, they are coming after america. that s what comey said about the russians. mike, thank you very much for being with us. katy tur has been tracking something we brought up earlier and didn t have the ability to bring to you.
what we saw today is that the president commanded loyalty, he wanted the case against his friend mike be and he will flch and he obsessively hounded the fbi director about lifting the cloud. what we want is an honest investigation that did make progress where the president no longer is interfering in it. he clearly was interfering with the fbi director s investigation. we ve seen him interfere with the house investigation. and so we just wasnt to tell th american people what happened, whether any u.s. persons were spor responsible and make reforms. only way to do that is if the president stops tweeting, does the work he needs to do for the american about people and let us report back. you guys at the same time have issues on your committee. and can you assure the american people that your committee will fly right and your committee will play it down the middle and was this a model for your behavior? yes, brian. and the issues that you re
chaos that the president has created is it is affecting not just or ability to conduct the investigation, but all the other work that we re supposed to be doing so people can put food on their table, a roof over their head or provide opportunities for their kids. so we just want to get back to work here. this is nicolle wallace. have you asked mike flynn to come testify before your committee as well as attorney general sessions? we have asked mike flynn. as to other witnesses, i won t comment on that. but it is naub we sepublic that subpoena to michael flynn to testify. and would you consider adding attorney general sessions to the list after hearing former director comey s testimony that he specifically asked never to be left alone with donald trump because he was uncomfortable or because the way that those meetings have been going made him uncomfortable? did sessions become more important to your committee s work today? well, our invitation list is a list of relevant witnesse
other friends inside and outside of the white house who said you may have an exposure here now that comey is talking. george w. bush had private counsel because it is the white house counsel s job to defend the white house as an institution. so the fact that we re hearing from kasowitz in response to comey is a bit of a mismatch because it suggests that they worried about the president s personal legal equities. and i think a more appropriate response might be a white house spons response response or doj response. jim comey talked about how it was the entire american government, not democrats or republican, not trump or clinton, but that the country came under attack by russia. and the fact that they are not prepared in any sort of elevated manner to respond to that or to say, hey, we are as interested as jim comey was in getting to the bottom of russia s role in