charge of this russia investigation. those people don t have a chance to weigh? it s interesting that ivanka trump and jared kushner has been out of the picture since this unfolded. going back to where e wither ooh the and the upcoming search for the new fbi director, what s the latest? reporter: the latest from the president, he said this on air force one, he predicted this is something they could make a move on quickly. maybe even before he leaves on friday for this first foreign trip. but another white house official says it would be a challenge to get this done before friday. it doesn t mean it s impossible. one more thing we do know is that the president is planning to interview just the leading candidates, just the finalists in this selection process. now that could be one person or two people or three people. we don t know about that. but we do know from an additionofficial that he s going to be reviewing and reading the report and the
this case which will result in either the clearing of the administration completely or further revelations which aren t pleasant. how important is the fbi director specifically to an investigation? the fbi director doesn t make the day-to-day investigative decisions. and in 99% of the cases, he s not even aware of what s going on out in the field. he s not going to get involved in a bank robbery or even a fraud case. but if it gets political, the fbi director is there to stand up for the agency, to get things pushed through. i mean i can remember years ago my dad was an agent. there was abscam going on. the fbi was investigating congressmen and the fbi director had to stand up and take a beating in front of congressional committees. had their budgets cut.
i do know that it came as a great shock to it was very disturbing to fbi employees. i spoke to one last night at a dinner that was quite upset about it. and i think that reflects feeling, wide spread feeling in the fbi. people had issues, i m sure, with director comey, some of his decisions. that s fine. people took issues with decisions i made. that s part of the deal. but i think as far as his stature as a leader and his integrity, people are very upset about the way he was treated. as we continue to learn new details about what led up to the decision to fire james comey, the white house is trying to get ets story straight. cnn s tom foreman reminds us how this whole saga got started. tom. anna, if you look at the
first the context of our intelligence community assessment on russian interference with the election. we did not there was no reporting in that intelligence committee assessment about political collusion. we did not i did not have any evidence. did not know about the investigation. you didn t know that the fbi was conducting an ninvestigatio? i did not. and more importantly i did not know the content of the status of that investigation. and there s all kinds of reasons why that s so. but these are sensitive. we try to keep them as compartment as possible and importantly these involve u.s. persons. and so try to be very differential to that. this week with the president firing the fbi director while this investigation is going on and then saying that he was thinking about the russia probe when he was making the decision, have we crossed a line here? well i will just say that
did cause some consternation in the bowureau. and again, the only consternation there was in the bower roe, according to my friends at the time, is they felt that comey was not being listened to. he wasn t able to persuade the administration at that point. to persuade them to do what? to either prosecute or get a grand jury going on the hillary clinton matter. the fbi agents i think, by and large, believe that that was something that that they could do, that they should do. but since the election there hasn t been so much turmoil. okay. so here s what deputy white house press secretary sanders said she heard from fbi employees about james comey s firing you said today and i think you said again yesterday that you personally have talked to