down those reports because the fbi deputy director andy mccabe with us the first to actually make contact about it asking he asked for a five-minute one-on-one last week with the white house chief of staff reince priebus to say that the coverage was inaccurate and they say at that point priebus asked what could be done the senior administration officials say after prebass spoke to mccabe and james comey that the fbi declined to speak publicly because quote the fbi could not get in the position of making statements over every story, but o is officials say comey gave priebus the okay to go out an say top intelligence officials told them that the new york times reporting on this was untrue. what about the fact that the white house and fbi were
ago. so far the white house has not commented to us on the record. evan perez, not a typical request. how did it start? that s right don. u.s. official says began with deputy director andrew mccabe and white house chief of staff priebus on the sidelines. mccabe told priebus that the new york times story vastly overstated what the fbi knows about the contacts but another official says mccabe didn t discuss the aspects of the case and don t know what mccabe told priebus, priebus later reached out to mccabe and fbi director james comey asking him to talk to reporters on background to dispute the stories. fbi refused. and fbi has refused to comment on this story. interesting. white house chief of staff reince priebus denied that
about the contacts. a u.s. official says mccabe didn t discuss specific aspects of the case but wouldn t say exactly what mccabe told priebus. the white house official said priebus later reached out to mccabe and to fbi director james comey along with other agencies, asking for them to at least talk to reporters on background to dispute the stories. the fbi refused, poppy. just dive a little bit more, pamela, why this is not a typical back and forth between the white house and the fbi. there are rules, there are regulations that have been longstanding to block exactly this from happening. reporter: it s written in department of justice memos, it s communication between the white house and the fbi is limited. and decade-old restrictions on such contact. specifically, as i pointed out, laid out in two department of justice memos. so if the deputy director of the fbi talked about this to the white house, he may have overstepped, since it is an
discussions between the fbi director mccabe and reince priebus occurred on the sidelines on the day after the stories was published it was not as the white house originally said in a phone call initiated by mccabe to priebus. that matches to what the u.s. officials told us. mccabe essentially disputed the new york times story in his discussion with priebus and the white house official said that priebus reached out to mccabe and the fbi director comey, asking for the fbi to at least talk to reporters on background to dispute the stories that were reported by cnn and other outlets. the white house officials said that mccabe wouldn t discuss the aspects of the case and wouldn t tell us exactly what mccabe told priebus and the white house has no comment on the story. mccabe, the deputy director of the fbi. evan perez, thank you for for the update.
president trump and convinced him to hold off on declassifying the documents, kick them, instead, over to the inspector general. laura: how does that help the president? it does not help the president. the purpose was to delay. it was rosenstein apparently who convinced trump to do it. unbeknowns the to mccabe, he had no idea. presumably, the times story was in the works for several days. the story drops a couple of hours after trump tweets that the documents are going to the i.g. you can imagine rosenstein s horror. mccabe has blown this beautiful plan i had to get us both in the clear. i think that s what happened. rosenstein s attempt to cover up the story, i was telling a joke. laura: if it is a joke, and corey, you can chime in here, he must have a really lame sense of humor. a joke isn t, hey, let s wear a