he said particularly, he was struck that they were not confident that his decisions were not made on the basis of political bias. they say there were reports filled with statements of bias. the inspector general was saying that, he can t say conclusively that whatever bias they found influence the outcome of these actions. so that s a difficult thing. so the people involved said i wasn t influenced by political considerations and so the inspector general said there was some problematic troubling cases of bias but i did not find evidence that they were outcome determinative. martha: and what do you think of that? he is the inspector general for the agency, and they figure out whether there was any political bias involved. it s a very difficult thing to
justice made that decision and that their original statement that president trump had no involvement still stands. and so now rudy giuliani is speaking to dana bash this morning, has fully walked back his original statement. he said to dana he told me directly he didn t interfere. he said he has now spoken to president trump about this situation and, despite what he said to the huffington post last night, that in an effort to make the point that the president wasn t influenced by his personal lawyers lobbying on behalf of at&t, giuliani now says the president did not interfere in that merger. it s unclear why he decided to go out there and say that but clearly he is walking it back now. the white house wants to clean this up as quickly as possible, victor and christi. abby phillip there at the white house, thank you. author of rudy giuliani: emperor of the city and brian
special interests they claim. because cohen, a friend and personal lawyer for the president, was being paid by at&t while the president s administration has gone against opposing the at&t merger with time warner. that s the thing the president was tweeting about. we have reported on that. and the white house says that shows he wasn t influenced by cohen. alex? okay. kelly o donnell, we ll see you again. joining me now, pamela levy, reporter for mother jones and a political reporter for the washington post. what we know so far is it conventional wisdom that michael cohen went rogue with his dealings with these companies? or is it something else? is this how lobbying influence works? well we don t really know at this point. and you raise a couple of good points. we see things that are similar to this happen all the time in washington. you see lawmakers who step down from congress a few years later become lobbyists for companies.
for him of my own free will. i made my decision long before any thoughts of russia or comey or e-mails or wikileaks. my decision was already set. and so, they feel they fight back on that because they think, you know, i wasn t influenced. i voted on my own, and so there wasn t an influence there. such a distinction it s difficult for them to separate. that s interesting that they feel that way, and it makes perfect sense, as you describe it. the we know a lot of those same people do use social media, and now we ve learned so much about russian trolls and infiltration of social media and putting out propaganda and fake news stories. beyond that like we heard in poppy s piece, they want proof. they are asking for proof about the russia influence, and i just wonder, are they even going to believe it if they got it
president s tweets at a forum on capitol hill, half of it somewhat ingest, take a listen. as we speak, i am sure there are members of the press comparing the tweet to what i actually said yesterday in my testimony which is public. and i will leave that to journalists, the larger question that we need to address is now that we know what happened last year, what are we going to do about it in the future? and to that end there, jeh johnson stressed even as he sat giving that talk today, jake, the u.s. remains exposed to russian cyber attacks. that s the main concern. sarah murray reported earlier, jessica, president trump made no recordings of his conversation with james comey, now that he s confirmed what many suspected, what might that mean for congressional investigations into russian meddling and the election? i think it s fair to say it has no practical suggestion. they are barrelling full steam