moment.it fbi opened inquiry into whether trump was secretly working on behalf of russia.s the story is the work of three journalists, one of whom michael schmidt will join us here in just a moment. he and his colleagues say in the day after president trump fired james b. comey as fbi director, law enforcement officials became so concerned they began investigating whether he d be working on behalf of russia against american interests, according to former law enforcement officials and others familiar with the investigation.rs the inquiry carried explosive implications. counterintelligence investigations had to consider whether the president s own io actions constituted a possible threat to national security. agents also sought to determine whether mr. trump was knowingly working for russia or had unwittingly fallen under moscow s influence. it goes on to describe the agent s thinking at this time and we quote, agents and senior
who care deeply about the rule of law. remember too that the fbi and its work is overseen by the congress by the inspector general at the department of justice, by the executive branch through, you know, the foreign intelligence advisory board and the privacy and civil liberties oversight board. there is lots and lots and lots of people, oh, and by the way, federal judges too, will oversee the work of the fbi. so it s a deeply and profoundly troubling statement. it completely misapprehends what the fbi is and who the men and women are who work there. it is really, really a bad thing to feed to the american public. it begins to erode the trust that we need to have in our institutions, to our federal government, including at the fbi, including at times like this. to our guests, most of our
your former colleagues. a lot of the folks you are still in touch with at the fbi. give us a reality check on morale and how you think they will fare. well, my first response when i saw this reporting was that i just wish it hadn t happened. you know, to be honest with you and i m a huge champion of freedom of the press and this needs to get out and public service, but i also know that we have a president that is mercurial at best and i m concerned he s going to react in a way to this, we have already seen some communication from the white house tonight that causes him to act out against special counsel mueller and/or rod rosenstein before it s time, before they have done their job. that s troubling to me. the other thing we ll keep hearing is the notion of deep state. this notion there s a conspiracy somehow, that there s a rogue fbi or was a rogue fbi.
fbi officials had grown suspicious of mr. trump s ties to russia during the 2016 campaign but held off on opening investigation into him, the people said. in part because they were uncertain how to proceed with an inquiry of such sensitivity and magnitude. the president s activities before and after mr. comey s firing, may 2017, particularly two instances in which mr. trump tied the comey dismissal to the russia investigation helped prompt the counterintelligence aspect of the inquiry, the people said. and according to the times, one of the instances was a letter that trump wrote with the help of senior aide, steven miller, before he fired comey laying out the underpinning reasons for doing so. times reported on that letter back in 2017 and notes that then white house counsel don mcgahn
mean we will see it in court, like a criminal case, which we re all used to.mi this other part of the fbi doesr its work, mostly in secret. as frank well knows and we could use the fruits of that investigation for a whole bunch of things that the public will i never see. it may inform our diplomacy. it may inform our counter measures. it may inform the judgment of senior national security leaders about the capabilities of a hostile foreign power, so b whatever mr. giuliani may be talking about, and it is not at all clear from what you just read, he is not talking about counterintelligence investigations at the fbi that i know of and it s a ridiculous statement. hey, barb, as a veteran ba former fed, what sticks out to you most?ed well, as frank has said, truly extraordinary that the chief executive of our nation, the commander in chief of our armed forces, was someone who was considered the target of a counterintelligence id investigation.nt that fact alone is