having these direct meetings or even phone calls with the fbi director. it is supposed to go through the attorney general and deputy attorney general. speaking of the deputy attorney general smooth segue. i m back. i got my mojo back. comey s friend talked about comey s skepticism of rosenstein. listen to this. he had concerns about rod. and what he specifically said is rod is a survivor. meaning he s lived through democratic and republican administrations. yeah. and you don t get to survive that long without making some compromises. and, so he said i have concerns. what do you make of that? by the way, isn t comey a survivor, too in a sense. battle lines have been drawn and now they re being well defined and people are trying to
knowing the loyalties of rosenstein and whether he would appoint an independent special counsel? so my own view is we re at a stage where would it be appropriate for a special counsel. deputy attorney general rosenstein is not obligated to do so. and everything that i ve heard, i don t know him, i have not interviewed him, but everything that i ve heard about him, everything that i ve read about him, we have a piece by someone who knows him tomorrow in the outlook section of the washington post, someone extolling his credibility and his honesty and integrity, everything about him says that he s a stand up upright guy with high degree of in-telling xwritsity and professionalism. that being said, in my view, fred, he got rolled by president trump. he was asked to produce that memo and it seems to me that if you look back on everything that has happened in the last two years, what could he have thought? not applying the legal standard, using a common sense standard, what could he have
under the direct of the deputy attorney general. that s rosenstein. is he well-respected because he has been under both republican and democrat administrations. he was just approved by the senate 94-6. he said that comey, being head hurts the confidence of the public and the fbi. and he should be replaced. now, the president wouldn t have to take the advice of rosenstein, but obviously a president ought to have a good reason for not taking it when the guy that sprcheses the fbi felt that he was, mr. comey was bad for the morale and the confidence that the public ought to have and the fbi and they need to rebuild that confidence. ainsley: so if rosenstein recommended this and approved 94-6. most democrats in the senate approved him. what do you make then of democrats now being against this? is it just political? is it anything donald trump does they hate?
doing a bad job on the recommendation of rosenstein, but you see it as obstruction, then you can say it s obstruction. reporter: while mueller has remained silent on his strategy, his team has brought charges against 22 people and companies and secured five guilty pleas. and while many of those are tied to interference in the u.s. election, so far none have included potential obstruction between trump associates and russia. meanwhile, a u.s. delegation has arrived in north korea, the administration preparing for a potential summit after president trump abruptly called it off last week. a lot of people are working on it. it s moving along very nicely. so we re looking at june 12th in singapore. that hasn t changed. and it s moving along pretty well. so we ll see what happens. reporter: and president trump spoke by phone this morning with japanese prime minister abe about the expected north korea summit. the white house says the two leaders will be meeting again before the summit h
or for the companies after that. we should note, kushner remains part owner of the company that got the loan from apollo after he met with the head of apollo in his official white house capacity and jared kushner owns a stake in the entity that got the loan from citigroup after which he met with the ceo of citigroup in his capacity as a white house official. this report is the latest calling into question his ability to function in his position as senior adviser, but sources say he plans to stay and white house reaffirmed that, the president wants him to. now we go to pamela brown. we have seen many weeks at this white house. is there any sense among allies of president trump that this time all the tulmult, that it s different in any way? reporter: one thing after the