this letter says just the opposite. now, what s interesting about it, rudy giuliani, the president s attorney over the weekend said, by the way, the fact that you have these shifting explanations underscores one of their hesitations about the president sitting for an ierview with special counsel robert mueller, trying to make the case he can t necessarily be expected to remember every single detail going back a year or so. so it s a striking argument from the president s attorney. and one other point, andrea, it seems thathe president and giuliani are very coordinated in the statements that they re making. you pointed to the fact, and you were disg the fact that giuliani was saying that the president does have the power probably to pardon himself, but has no intention of doing so. that essentially echoed exactly what we heard in the president s tweet earlier today, that yes, he thinks he has the power to pardon himself. but why would he need to do it? because he hasn t done anything wr
it s also going to go down just factually as the thing that prompted the hiring of the special counsel and potentially can lead to obstruction charges. this is true. it s a pivotal event. no question about that when trump now says that it s a popular thing. everybody wanted him to do it or lots of people wanted him were saying. let s go back to may 9th when the firing happened. let s go back to the very next day when he s meeting in the oval office excluding american press as he meets with the russian ambassador, the third day when he s talking to lester holt and saying this russia thing is all madeup and that s why i fired him. shifting explanations. a call for clarity which in turn let to the appointment of the special counsel and that s really going to be, i think, the pivotal history moment for us. this is where we began to look in to things that had only be resumedered until that point. you saw the shift in strategy with that long interview that
talking about for days and days is even going to happen, john and poppy. not if rudy giuliani gets it it s not going to happen. thank you. let s bring back in our panel. susan, do you legally, it s pretty clear here that this goes to the central issue of obstruction which we know is one of the core things that mueller s team is looking at, potential obstruction of justice. what does what the president s lawyer, rudy giuliani said about why the president fired james comey do to mueller s case on obstruction? we ve seen these shifting explanations. comey was fired because rosenstein said so, then because comey was unfair to hillary clinton, apparently comey lost the confidence of the fbi, so they ve had all these different explanations that they ve put up as the evidence has contradicted that, they ve shifted to the next explanation. we heard the president himself it was related to the russia investigation and now it s because he was he would not
that they only base aware of what happened last week. the white house offered a new explanation saying that the fbi background check went into the white house office of personnel security. asked about the shifting explanations, press secretary sarah sanders set that she s doing said that she s doing the best she can. obviously the press team s not going to be as read-in as some other elements at a given moment on a variety of topics. we relay the best and most accurate information that we have and get those from those individuals. reporter: aides to the president are becoming frustrated with the information they re receiving from top officials ned the west wing. officials inside the west wing. one white house official complained attorney don mcghan received information last summer and did not share enough of it with top staffers. jim acosta there at the white house. president trump s longtime personal lawyer, michael cohn, says he paid $130,000 out of his own pocket to porn
background last july, contradicting what white house officials have said for days, that they only became aware of what happened last week. the white house offered a new explanation saying that the fbi background check went to the white house office of personnel security. asked about the shifting explanations, press secretary sarah sanders said that she s doing the best she can. obviously the press team s not going to be as read-in as some other elements at a given moment on a variety of topics. we relay the best and most accurate information that we have, and we get those from those individuals. reporter: aides to the president are becoming frustrated with information they re receiving from top officials inside the west wing. one white house official complained white house counsel don mcghan received much of the information last summer and did not share enough with top staffers. okay. jim accost athank you very mu mumuch acosta, thank you very much. longtime liar michael cohn