a letter, which he was stopped from. the fbi is not sure what is going on. they know there s a massive russia investigation here. they know there s this steele dossier with accusations about trump. and they know there s a long-standing relationship that trump has with russia. there s all these things going on, and they decide to go forward with the monumental, historic decision of opening up a counterintelligence investigation into the president. is the president tied to the adversary? and frank, thank you for joining us by telephone tonight. cut through all of the other russia coverage. the stories that may make people think this is just part of the daily norm. and remind people how important, how notable this is, as you put it on the air earlier tonight, that there was an investigation file with donald trump in the subject line. yeah, this is unprecedented, brian, and i think what s most sobering about this, knowing the
i was going to fire comey. there s no good time to do it, by the way. in your letter, you said i accepted their recommendation. i was going to fire regardless of recommendation. so, there was he made a recommendation. he s highly respected. very good guy. very smart guy. the democrats like him. the republicans like him. he made a recommendation, but regardless of recommendation, i was going to fire comey. knowing there was no good time to do it. and in fact, when i decided to just do it, i said to myself, i said, you know, this russia thing with trump and russia is a madeup story. the times tonight reports that the paper got access to testimony from the top lawyer at the fbi at the time. their general counsel, james baker, the times also had access to testimony from former fbi lawyer lisa page. tonight, the white house has responded to this brand-new report with this brand-new statement, and it goes as follows. this is absurd.
be viewed years later. i think this one, even you, could have some migration in your thinking tomorrow morning, next week, looking back at this headline in the new york times tonight. the whole story about russia or trump and russia as he himself wonderfully called it is, this slow-moving, unfolding story. the negative the worst possible scenario here is, we re like the titanic steaming through the north atlantic and we know the iceberg is there, we re not sure how big it is, and the carpathia won t answer our distress calls. that s kind of where we are. we don t know yet how we re going to view this, because we don t know how it turns out. but we have some of the best people in america trying to figure it out. and i think my understanding of the times story is that the counterintelligence investigation was essentially
opening a counterintelligence inquiry into the president? well, sort of our collective understanding or conscience about the mueller investigation, everything related to trump has been about criminal obstruction. did the president obstruct justice? and the information we have tonight shows that the investigation is much broader, at least initially it was. it was looking at the president s ties to this foreign adversary, russia. what was it? what was that relationship all about? why was the president doing the things that he was doing? that was the original focus of this. now, what this does is, it allows us to see the world the way that the fbi agents saw it right after comey was fired. they had just had the deputy attorney general provide a rationale to the president that was not the president s reason for dismissing the fbi director. the president, as you just played, comes out and says the things he said. he wanted to say things to comey about the russia investigation,
former fbi assistant director for counter-intelligence who worked for others like robert mueller in the past.ce michael i would like to begin with you. what have you learned about this extraordinary step the fbi took, opening a counterintelligence inquiry into the president?co well, sort of our collective understanding or conscience about the mueller investigation, everything related to trump, has been about criminal obstruction. did the president obstruct justice? and the information we had tonight shows that the investigation is much broader, at least initially it was. it was looking at the president s ties to this foreign adversary, russia. what was it?y, what was that relationship all about? t why was the president doing the things that he was doing?th that was the original focus of this. now, what this does is allows us to see the world the way that the fbi agents saw it right after comey was fired. they had just had the deputy