yet donald trump wanted it out there that he wasn t being investigated. and the irony is that because he did all that, this story has exploded and become exactly what he was trying to avoid, about him. it is about him because of having these completely inappropriate, potentially illegal conversations with the fbi director. i think one of the themes of this meeting is exonerate me. say this. say that. and if that s all it was, it would be wildly inappropriate if the conversations were, why don t you announce that i m not under investigation and you could sort of understand why trump felt like comey had said that a couple of times, which i think is comey didn t completely vindicate him but he did say things that if you wanted to hear that you are not
the dossier referenced in this phone call? what do you have? this is from one of the january meetings. we know early in january that the director personally briefed the president that trump at the time was not president yet but he started briefing him on some of the content of the dossier. and it seems like in reading this stuff for the testimony tomorrow, trump was obsessed over some of the contents. he called them salacious and even at one point even asked comey if he would investigate the claims in the dossier and comey in looking out for trump said to him, you know, this may not be a good idea because then i would essentially be investigating you and people could infer that and comey said you re not under investigation and it s something that i think comey was very cognizant about. he did brief members of congress that trump was not under investigation and it was
and for him to say i understood this to be essentially a direction to stop the investigation, i think, is a pretty striking comment. but i think this demonstrates the obstruction statute is very simple. what s not included in there is it doesn t care if there was russian collusion in the background. it s a separate independent felony. there s no feelings clause that tries to get into how it made you feel, which is part of the circus for this morning where the witnesses were talking about how it made you feel versus what the president actually said. and the other thing that s so interesting about this disclosure is it really blows up any theory from this morning that the witnesses were anything other than completely unprepared. this demonstrates there was no executive privilege. there was no criminal investigator privilege. there was no problem vis-a-vis mr. mueller and his reactions. this is all of those are completely blown away and it further demonstrates how the witnesses this
on. it totally ignore what is jeffrey is saying, which is that the most serious thing here is about flynn and that stuff about whether or not trump is under investigation, misses the most serious point about why jim comey is testifying. go ahead. i want to make a second point. and there s a larger political point. the context in which jim comey is going to go and say these words tomorrow is we have new poll numbers for the american people and where they are on this. 56%. that s a sizeable majority, believe that the president interfered with the investigation. that is where a majority of the american people are as jim comey goes to say this. 34% in this new poll. that s the context at which it s not as if donald trump has some reservoir of support in terms of the majority of the country to push back against what jim comey is saying.
say, this cloud over my head is your problem to solve for me. because you know this president it s a misunderstanding. because you work for me. that s how he sees it. it gives full insight into how he thinks. it is clearly a wrong way to think. but it s the way he has succeeded. he became donald trump by getting people around him to just figure it out and totally. because it s okay, maybe not within the investigation, certainly not when you re the president but it s more okay when you re a real estate guy. but they don t have separation of powers. i think dana is exactly right about the thought process that i m not defending it. i m trying to explain it. but this is his problem. the law. that old thing. you can t do things because you feel like it and you can t tell the fbi director to drop an investigation because you don t like the fact that he s doing