michael, give us a sense of the tick-tock when trump fired and did he effectively by his lights fire mueller? it s june a month after mueller s an pointed a month after comey was fired. that had blown up in their faces. he goes to mcgahn and says look, i think that mueller has these conflict of interest issues including the fact he was a member at one of my golf clubs and had a membership dispute. this was very concerning to mcgahn who obviously was willing to put his job on the line to try and stop it. those of us who obviously read about richard nixon read ms times where he would make orders like go blow up the brookings institution or break in and make it look like a democrat job. is this one of those cases where the president twaeshl gave an order, wanted it carried out, wanted mueller gone and in the
are a lot easier than they are. we re just sitting therein at phone rings and they give it to us. you re the bird feeder. it s much more difficult than that. that doesn t square with your reporting. > my theory is it s a trial balloon to see what if at this point trump does fire muler. who obviously put up the balloon. the republicans had not had the outrage to the report that i would have liked. who obviously do you think who is trying this balloon? trump or some of his people who obviously want want do see. i m i think straight reporting and oh kim s razor. i think trump tried to fire mueller. that s what i think. my only other suggestion is mcgahn wants to say i m innocent. i didn t obstruct justice. just a little comic relief, let s go to fox news. i don t like media criticism. here we go. last night when the news broke, your paper held it to about 9:30 to get the facts straight. trump s most loyal defendant
tweets. that s exactly why they brought in ty cobb. they needed a lawyer within the white house who obviously could handle this specifically. a look at the president s twitter feed last june whether he did order the firing makes it clear the russian probe was on his mind at the time he attempted to fire mueller. among his tweets, he said they made up a phony collusion with the russian story, found zero proof so now they go for obstruction of justice on phony story. nice. i love the way he talks. he talks like he thinks. the irony is like you know, you have a contemporaneous view in his brain. it s like when they bring him in for questioning, he goes no, i wasn t thinking about this. actually, yes, you tweeted about it. is he going to talk like that
investigation. i was fired in some way to change or the endeavor was to change the way the russia investigation was being conducted. the first indication that president trump might attempt to fire mueller came four days later when the president s friend and ceo of the conservative media site news max said this on pbs. is president trump prepared to let the special counsel pursue his investigation? well, i think he s considering perhaps terminating the special counsel. i think he s weighing that option. well, that was clinical. he s weighing the option of interpreting the special counsel. then came a major turning point in the probe on june 14th. washington post revealed the special counsel was in fact investigating the president for possible obstruction of justice. the president himself even acknowledged that development tweeting the next day that i am being investigated for firing the fbi director. witch hunt. it was around this time according to the new york times the pre
julia ansley investigative reporter for nbc news and jonathan swan, national political reporter with axios. put the context together so we try to all recall last june the developments. they moved quickly, firing of comey, going after mueller, ordering the firing of mueller. it all seems as i ve been arguing throughout the show so far, it is logical. you re looking at a guy making steps, uses hig office to protect himself from prosecution. he thought and still kind of thinks there is an insurgency against him coming from the justice department and from the fbi. and as that pressure was heating last june, he wanted to see what he could do about it and wanted to fire mueller. i think that s important is to flash forward one month from there where he wanted to fire jeff sessions because he realized he couldn t do this. he wanted to fire the man who obviously recused himself. these are punches like a dictatorship, stalin or somebody, i don t want to say he s stalin is pushlging and kill