welcome back. my panel with me to break down everything from fired fbi director james comey. first let s just do a whip around. jackie start with you. what struck you the most of what he had to say? i think one of the biggest things, seemed to walk back the idea that the president possibly colluded with russia. that in an of itself you kept on pressing him and pressing him and finally he kind of took a step back and said think? james comey on the james comey rehab t his own image and came out so strongly and looked so partisan in the book and really put the 35,000 men and women of the fbi in a bad spot and criticized by retired leadership of the fbi an trying the polish his own image at this point. change the book title to it s possible. i haven t done the word search yet but how many questions of yours specific and i won t suck up terrible interview terrific.
asked myself the same question. i tried the model a certain way of acting but i asked myself should i have given them all a speech? but these are grown-ups senior people in the counter intelligence division. i don be too tough on myself. i m responsible. i m responsible for their actions and their poor judgment. speaking of leadership you say you got a phone call from then department of homeland security secretary john kelly now the chief of staff at the white house. in which he referred to the president as dishonorable and was talking about quitting. you told him not to quit. were you surprised when he took a snob job as the white house chief of staff and have you been surprised so he aim as one of president trump s strongest defenders? i don t remember john calling the president dishonorable. he was talking about people and i don t like you being treated this way and i won t stay and work with people that would treat you in a dishonorable way. who else would he be talking about
you said you found no evidence she had lied. you found no evidence that she had that e-mail server knowing that it was improper. but you re not using the same construct of there is evidence or there isn t evidence. you re saying it s possible that leaves the impression for people that there might be stuff out there that there might be evidence that president trump is under the thumb of kremlin. yeah but i see that jake asking me two different things. i won t talk about the investigation of possible cooperation between americans and russian effort to what you asked me about now, why did i say what i said whether i thought it was possible that the russians had derogatory information on president trump. i think it s unlikely but possible. isn t that construct unfair to president trump in a way because the question was, if president trump was compromised by the russians. you say it s possible. not likely but it s possible. there s possible there s life on other planets. for you, somebo
e change push. brook? love how you said it welcome to the 21st century. that does it for me. we ll season it to jake tapper a special edition of the lead starts right now. welcome to the special edition of the lead. i m jake tapper. you have no doubt heard james comey detailing his rise and his time as the nation s top law enforcement official and sounding the alarm about the future of america under president trump. this week he s been particularly candid of the criticism of president trump. and the president has fired back but in a crucial moment in the war of words about very important issues there is a lot of breaking news with the source telling cnn that later today the department of justice is expected to allow congress to see comey s memos of interactions with president trump and another source saying that the justice department is looking at possible criminal charges against comey s former
throughout. here s why an honest answer has to be it s possible. now, i m not saying it s likely. it s unlikely in my view but it s possible. let s talk about the investigation. january 2017 when you met with president trump and you did that oral presentation of what s in that two-page memo, summarizing the steele dossier, we know from the book you talked about the unverified allegations of him and prostitutes. did you brief him about any of the other things in the steele dossier, claims that associates michael cohen or paul manafort was allegedly working with the russians? only the salacious part of it. why? why only that? that s the part of the leaders of the intelligence community agreed he needed to be told about because we knew it and thought it would be public and if it was true we didn t know whether it was true it would be important to let him know this as part of a defensive