chances are good that there may be more coming up because of what he did with james comey that same thing he s trying to do again. and people have told him, people close to him have told him the comey decision was a mistake. yeah. does he learn that lesson? i don t know. richard, i want to ask you about the james clapper before we continue. the james clapper interview about donald trump being an asset that vladimir putin is managing. james clapper was not the first person to make that suggestion. every once in a while we have to stop and things take your breath away. the idea that the former director of national intelligence would say the president is the asset of a former kgb guy is a stunning moment. only if we re so super numb do we not say holy cow. we re living in a moment that something like that by a responsible person could be said
conversations? so just as mysterious as is why did the fbi interrogate him is why didn t he tell the truth. steve: what about this guy, though, peter strzok, who changed in comey s narrative about hillary clinton, changed it from grossly negligent to extremely careless? because grossly negligent is criminal extremely careless sounds a little softer. but if you ask a first-year law student what is the definition of gross negligence, the answer is extreme carelessness. there really, in the law, it s no different there. so if he changed this, jim comey still has to bear responsibility for it because he uttered the statement. it wasn t a written statement the, it was a spoken statement. and he s responsible for what he says even if somebody else drafted it for him. but i have been arguing for 11 months now that the comey decision was wrong on the facts, wrong on the law and not his to make. why doesn t jeff sessions see it
there s no good time to do it by the way. because in your letter you said i accepted their recommendation. well you had already made the decision. i was going to fire regardless of recommendation. all right. this is what the deputy attorney general said in remarks to the house and the senate and i m quoting him now, rod rosenstein, on may 8th i learned that president trump intended to remove director comey and sought my advice and input. notwithstanding my personal affection for director comey, i thought it was appropriate to seek a new leader. i wrote a brief memorandum to the attorney general summarizing my longstanding concerns about director comey s public statements concerning the secretary clinton e-mail investigation. my memorandum is not a statement of reasons to justify a for cause termination. sara, help us sort out these behind the scenes developments in leading up to the comey decision. well, look, wolf, i think it was pretty clear the president had already de
that an internal person doesn t. he or she makes the decision. day-to-day, on who to subpoena. who to examine, what questions to asked. who outside interference. second, can only be fired for cause. third, has the ability, if there s interference, someone s trying to thwart the investigation from up above, they can make sure that doesn t happen. and investigate that and, fourth, they have to report to congress. there s a lot of advantages over a special prosecutor. and if you look at the department of justice guidelines, there s never a more important time, a more appropriate time for a special prosecutor than in this situation. senator warner, who is the vice chair of the intel committee, conducting the investigation. he said, unless the deputy attorney general rosenstein appoints a special prosecutor, he thinks it will very difficult to get support for an fbi director. do you plan on linking those two issues? not trying to tell the democratic senators, withhold support until there
that sluhrunk around the president. i think you saw that with the comey decision, steve bannon was not in the loop with this. there s pushback with his allies. the point is this circle is shrinking. the president is frustrated. when he gets frustrated he vents and spitballs, how real is it as a question? since sean spicer s first press briefing i get a text every 10 days that says spicer is gone. this feels different and even those in spicer s corner say this is a different situation. i would not understate talking about timing the importance of this foreign trip. the president has an extraordinarily busy week, four leaders this week and then heads to the west coast. is this trumpy, my god, everybody is focused on comey. let me do a white house shake-up and maybe everybody with focus there, act two. figuring out timing with president trump is impossible. look at the comey firing, right?