threats. there was a thinly-veiled threat against comey that there better not be any tapes. he continues to be the architect of his own destructive narrative. but staying on what i just read, jeffrey toobin i m sorry. can you ask someone else? are you distracted? gloria borger. you just failed. get out. what you clearly have is a president who is talking about the cloud that s interfering with his ability to get stuff done for the country but really what he s talking about is a cloud over his personal effect. not over his agenda or ability to get anything done although i m sure he felt it impacted him but his interests were self-interests in every single question. you once told me i wasn t under investigation and comey clarifies that in his notes why he did or didn t do it but the president keeps calling him back about this cloud.
so it s sort of in the middle. it s more than just a mere recitation of his meetings with the president, but it doesn t go beyond to give any commentary about them. and the second thing i think we have to note is that it confirms some things that we had heard earlier about some of these meetings as they were descrid by friends of mr. comey, had heard about them at the time. and it also confirms a claim the president made. remember when the president fired mr. comey, he said in the letter, i want to thank you for three times telling me i wasn t under investigation, and that turns out to be true. three times mr. comey says he told the president he wasn t under investigation, and that has prompted a statement from the president s outside private lawyer who says president trump is pleased that comey publicly confirmed that the president was not under investigation, and he adds, the president feels completely and totally
three times you told me i wasn t under investigation. that shows you when the president s concern is. he is deepily, deeply insecure and worried about the investigation into collusion with russia. five days ago you said this about director comey. take a listen. director comey testified this week, and he made it very plain that he broke the fbi rules with respect to the clinton campaign and chose not to break the rules with respect to the trump campaign. i think it will go down as probably the lowest moment in the history of the fbi. removing trump and the russia investigation from this for a second, from what you said there, it sounds like you would applaud his firing theoretically. no, jake, you get the fbi pursuant to law a ten year term for a reason. and that s to immunize them from criticism. i ought to be able to criticize an fbi correct director, and i do think director comey made
dozen reasons why he wanted to get rid of comey. our reporting yesterday q a bun bunch. chris, i just want to ask you, have you ever heard of a president publicly discussing in this very informal way, asking an fbi director whether or not he was personally under investigation? why did he keep pursuing that question? i think that is a fundamental predicate that we need to establish. why was president trump obsessed with this notion of the fbi investigating him? why was it doesn t take a genius to figure out the motives. one would be to intimidate him to not doing that. i don t think he s capable even as president. number two is to establish a public record of a conversation where he can say, he told me i wasn t under investigation. that s a common event in public life to get a documented moment, then you can say this is in watergate and everything i ve tried to read history of.
handful of most important people in the government. he gets fired. he s under criminal investigation and the president brings in the fbi director and says, please stop your investigation. right. if that isn t obstruction of justice, i don t know what is. what s striking to me about this is it s stig. i m still sitting on that. you know, from an fbi agent s perspective, we record these kind of conversations all the time. they re very dry. there s not editorializing. what s striking to me and i ll be interested to know whether this is also reflected in the memos is him also giving his interpretation of the meaning of what the president was saying, which on its face could be excused away. but as jeff will probably attest to, obstruction of justice is a very complicated crime because proving the intent is the key.