tamp this down -- >> right. >> strategically, the incorrect move. >> right. >> adrian, hillary, congressman kingst kingston, thanks. logon to cnn.com for all of the latest breaking news. thank you so much for watching. good evening from washington. there's breaking news here in the russian investigation on top of everything else. when we left you last night, we were struggling to make sense of what had just happened. all of us asking the same key questions. could the firing of fbi director james comey been anything other than the president getting rid of the official investigating him and his campaign? would it be about anything but russia? today from the president on down, the white house tried to explain the president's action. as the surrogates and the spokespeople spoke, the words running smack dab into one undisputable thing, the president's own words that run counter what the white house is now saying. one piece of new reporting after another.

one point on the timeline after another, one tweet, one letter, one prior statement after another, all of it casting doubt on the official line. in fact, we learned that director comey's firing came as he was seeking more resources for the russia probe. we saw reports citing people close to the president, including one by "the new york times" in which russia figured highly in mr. trump's decision. and again, we don't have to guess here. we know the president's thoughts about the investigation because as we know, the president likes to tweet, again and again including just two days ago. quote, the russia/trump collusion story is a total hoax. when will this taxpayer funded charade end? if he means the half does investigation going on in white house, the answer likely will not please him. pamela brown joins us with that breaking news. i understand you have new information about the congressional russian investigation about the comey firing. >> that's right. in what is the first formal call by a republican, anderson,

republican jason chaffetz on capitol hill, has now asked the department of justice inspector general to expand his probe looking at the fbi's handling of the hillary clinton probe among other issues to look into the firing of james comey. jason chaffetz sending out this letter saying he wants the inspector general to get down to the bottom of what really happened, given all of the inconsistencies of what happened and the timeline. this is coming as we're learning that the senate intelligence committee has issued subpoenas to michael flynn to hand over documents related to its russia probe. this is really an elevation for the senate intelligence committee especially for senator burr who has been more reluctant to do this. but michael flynn had not handed over documents in response to a letter that was sent in late april from the committee, so now they're escalating things sending a subpoena for him to turn over documents and we learn

that subpoenas have been sent from the eastern district of virginia as part of the fbi's investigation. even though james comey has been fired from the fbi, it's clear that the fbi investigation still moving forward as well as the investigations on capitol hill. >> the senate intelligence committee has a hearing tomorrow. what do we expect to see? >> sort of some confusion about, okay, who is going to testify now? the acting director of the fbi is expected to testify tomorrow before the senate intelligence committee. what's interesting here is that there was a bipartisan invitation from the senate intelligence committee to james comey to come testify next week, so even though he won't be arriving there tomorrow, this invitation has been extended to him for next week. it's unclear what he's going to do. he stayed mum since the firing, and we're told that if this hearing does happen with him testifying next week, that it will be in a classified session, anderson. >> where does the fbi go from here? what are you learning about how

people are reacting inside the bureau? >> we can tell that you andy mccabe, acting director, held a call with senior fbi officials today reassuring them amidst this turmoil that everything will move forward, that the bureau will not miss a beat. everyone should stay focused on their work. i can tell you i've spoken to several current and former fbi agents including a senior fbi agent who was overseeing the national security branch who left recently, and they dispute the white house claim that there was bad morale in the fbi under james comey. he said specifically that that is inaccurate. he says that he was widely respected among the rank and file, and that he was a man of integrity. there, of course, were different viewpoints and opinions about how james comey handled the hillary clinton probe and the trump campaign russia probe and some people who felt uncomfortable with how the fbi was thrust into the spotlight, but agents i've spoken with have said that is not true that morale was low.

one agent called me last night really in tears saying that morale was good when james comey was at the helm and if anything morale has plummeted since his firing. anderson? >> pam brown, appreciate those details. more on how today unfolded at the white house and who was there as they did. you're learning more about comey's russian investigation and what he was asking for. >> we have learned from sources just days before fbi director james comey was fired, he actually went to the deputy attorney general and he asked for additional resources to pour into this russia investigation. now, we know this because comey met with the heads of the senate intelligence committee on monday and during that meeting, sources tell us they expressed their frustration, the senators, that the russian investigation wasn't moving more quickly and comey sympathized with that saying i agree. needs to move more quickly. i went to the new deputy attorney general who had been confirmed, and i asked for more resources to devote to that. now we know how that ended.

james comey was fired on tuesday. just adds another layer to this question of whether the white house is truly being forthcoming. they said that the reason that they fired comey was because of the way he handled hillary clinton's e-mails but as you follow this, things continue to lead back to russia. anderson? >> we should point out the department of justice denies that comey asked for more resources. correct? >> that's right. they said that was 100% false. that comey went to rod rosenstein and asked for more resources or more money. >> you indicated the white house seems to keep moving the goal post as to why they chose to fire director comey yesterday. >> this was evident today. in the white house briefing with sarah huckabee sanders. initially they said the reason the president decided to fire comey was because of this full throated letter saying the way that james comey handled hillary clinton's e-mail scandal was not acceptable and no longer fit to lead the department.

listen to how sarah huckabee-sanders described it today. >> having a letter like the one that he received and having that conversation that outlined the basic atrocities in circumventing the chain of command and department of justice. when he saw that, he had to speak up on that action. and i think that was the final catalyst. >> here's something sarah huckabee also said today. the president considered firing james comey since she was elected. this led the white house to go through another cleanup effort putting out another time line saying the president had been losing confidence for months when he saw comey testifying the president had even more concerns and then after meeting with his attorney general and deputy attorney general and sort of reading their letters, that is when the president decided ultimately to fire comey, but you can see obviously once again the white house not really prepared with how they're crafting their narrative around this. >> i don't want to nitpick on word choice but atrocities.

he committed an atrocity? syria, there are atrocities going on. these atrocities were the atrocities that candidate trump was praising during the campaign. if they are atrocities, the candidate was praising atrocities, right? >> that's right. during the campaign we saw donald trump, then a candidate, talk about how hillary clinton's e-mail scandal was the biggest thing in the world. he would praise james comey when it worked to his political benefit. now a very different sort of tactic that we see from the white house using the word atrocities and one that doesn't necessarily match about what we've seen from a number of republicans. we've seen a number of republicans come out and sort of praise comey for being a public servant for his devotion to the united states of america, to the government and saying even if i don't necessarily agree with all of the decisions he made, he still deserves our respect. obviously the white house does not share that view. >> what has to be the worst timed meeting, i don't know if

in history but in the history of this white house thus far, the president today met with the russian ambassador and the russian foreign minister, which given everything that's gone on was quite a sight. how is the white house describing the meeting? >> what the president did yesterday was fired the guy who was overseeing this probe into whether his presidential campaign colluded with the russians so optics of this are not ideal. they seem to be suggesting that it was already previously scheduled. it's worth noting, anderson, that just last night sean spicer, the white house press secretary, was out here in the bushes under sort of the dark of night talking to reporters saying nothing had been set yet. so it seems like the kind of meeting the white house could have postponed, could have canceled had they wanted to and not wanted these optics out there today but they obviously made this decision to welcome

these russian officials into the oval office today. >> the story how sean spicer ended up in the bushes out of the white house is one we'll get to over the next two hours. thank you very much. let's bring in the panel. i wrote it down. you said a short time ago trump wins these investigation will -- >> you know what everyone says? six of one, half dozen of the other. >> you said trump wins, these investigations will fade away. do you believe that? if they pick somebody from the fbi who has a long record, how can you say these investigations will fade away? >> because mitch mcconnell is starving the senate investigation. there are a handful of investigators. if you really want to investigate this given the amount of classified information, you need at least

as many people as they used to investigate benghazi and they have a fraction of that many people. house investigation is even in worse shape because they had a change in leadership. and at the fbi, you know, people can pretend that leadership doesn't matter, but whoever comes in is going to be chosen by jeff sessions and rod rosenstein who just fired jim comey. what message are you going to get if you are the person who is succeeding the fired jim comey? these are hard investigations. there may be nothing there. there may be nothing at the end. but you have to throw resources at it, and the lesson of the past 24 hours is there will be fewer resources rather than more. >> this reporting by cnn and others that just days before he was fired comey asked for more resources from the department of justice, which the department of justice, as i said, flatly denies. if that's, in fact, the case, that seems damning. >> absolutely. no question.

i mean -- >> it's hard to see it in any other way. >> it is impossible to see it in any other way. what they argue at the white house is not only is that not true, they say even though our sources differ is that the president saw it as a bigger picture issue, and they tell a story -- a source i just talked to -- of him watching james comey in his hearing last week getting more and more angry. what was he angry about? i couldn't get whether or not it was specifically not about the fact that he said many, many times that he was investigating potential collusion. the source insisted that it was anger about the fact that he was not telling the truth, you know. there are also some things that we all know covering donald trump for two years now, probably sent him up a tree, which is that he felt nauseous about the notion that effectively he made donald trump

president. there are a lot of things in that testimony that probably made donald trump very upset, but that was one of, if not the key point. whether or not the resource issue was the straw that broke the camel's back, possibly, probably. >> it's hard to understand now that donald trump clearly seemed to have been stewing about james comey about a while or thinking about getting rid of james comey for a while to then believe that it was this letter that just happened to show up from the deputy attorney general outlining his atrocities against hillary clinton, that is what motivated the president. it's a little bit like them saying, well, it was devin nunez discovering this stuff elsewhere in the white house and bringing it to the president's attention. they like someone from outside bringing them information. >> i think that's true. i also have very similar reporting including the nauseated line. that did upset the president according to two sources that we have.

among other things. i also think in general watching the hearing the topic of russia and they saw the fact that comey had this miscue involving e-mails which had to be cleaned up and did cause frustration at the bureau as an opening but this goes against the idea that it was just handed to the president by the ag and deputy ag concerned about quote/unquote atrocities. there are separate questions. one is whether the president had the authority to do this, which i know jeffrey and i talked about last night. he did have the authority. the question is whether it is prudent to do when there's an ongoing investigation that related to his campaign. that's one issue. i do believe that he has been stewing about this for a long time. you know, then there's the other question of the fact that this white house has a tendency to make what is a not great situation vastly worse. almost every time. so this actually reminds me of

what happened with -- these are not the same in terms of magnitude but the lack of a plan. even his supporters i understand were doing this and i don't understand timing and not having successor lined up and not explaining to people why they did this, doing this ahead of time and talking to congressional leaders. paul ryan was in hiding today in ohio not answering questions about this. >> a lot of people hiding in bushes. >> that was a whole other thing. this is like what happened with the travel ban that first week where they did this clearly bombshell thing by any measure was going to create a massive stir and they seemed surprised that that's what happened and then had to keep sort of reversing course and explaining and there were conflicting things and that hurts them too. the basic issue though of firing somebody who is overseeing an investigation into you, that's not going to go away any time soon.

>> does it make sense to you that the director is asking for more resources if, in fact, that's true because department of justice says it's not and numerous sources say it is. how do you explain that in any way that doesn't reflect poorly on the white house? >> i can't figure this one out. look, you've got a deputy attorney general with two weeks in. that's the individual you're relying on for judgment as your supervisor. he's fbi director supervisor and for judgment about morale in an organization that's nationwide. 56 field offices. 35,000 people. two weeks in he has authority to determine the capability of the fbi director and morale of the organization? and then you have the discourtesy as a former federal official to say in the midst of comey asking for more resources and midst of comey's 25, 30, 35 years of service you can't even pick up the phone or call him and shake his hand. president obama called in stan mcchrystal, a general, who embarrassed him in "rolling stone" magazine and had the courtesy in person to say you're

fired. the president has the authority to fire the fbi director. in all this swirl, he should have called him in personally and said you're done. that's inexcusable. >> he found out watching television of the reporting. >> we got to take a quick break as you've been seeing on the screen, we got james comey's farewell letter to the fbi. we're going through it right now. we'll tell you what it says after a quick break, and we'll talk to the rest of our panelists. new reporting on what key republicans are now saying and what are president's staunchest supporters saying about this? that and more when we continue. what makes this simple salad the best simple salad ever? heart healthy california walnuts. the best simple veggie dish ever? heart healthy california walnuts. the best simple dinner ever?

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[fbi agent] you're a brave man, your testimony will save lives. mr. stevens? this is your new name. this is your new house. and a perfectly inconspicuous suv. you must become invisible. [hero] i'll take my chances. two pieces of breaking news. james comey's farewell letter which we'll bring you momentarily. and also the senate intelligence community demanding michael flynn turn over documents

regarding his interactions with russian officials. the subpoena comes after flinn's lawyer refused to provide them voluntarily. it is one of six committees looking into the matter. the fbi, pentagon inspector general, senate select committee on intelligence, house permanent select committee on intelligence, senate judiciary committee and house oversight and government reform committee and government reform committee and sarah sanders said there's no evidence of collusion. keeping them honest, that's not precisely true. jim sciutto has more on that and the comey letter. he joins us now. what does the letter say, jim? >> let's begin -- i'll read most of the letter now this to fbi staff and friends. i long believed that a president can fire an fbi director for any reason or for no reason at all. i'm not going to spend time on the decision or the way it was executed. i hope you won't either. it is done, and i will be fine, although i will miss you and the mission deeply. he goes on, i've said to you

before that in times of turbulence the american people should see the fbi as a rock of competence, honesty and independence. what makes leaving fbi is the nature and quality of people, who together make it that rock for america. a final line, working with you has been one of the great joys of my life. thank you for that gift. anderson, obviously a heartfelt note for someone who was for many years inside the fbi and took his work very seriously, but some meaning there, you might say, within the lines. he says that the president can make this decision. i'm not going spend time on the decision or the way it was executed though of course in those lines raising both the decision and the way it was executed, and in addition, that message about the fbi being about a rock of competence and independence. interesting to make that note here in light of the fact that the president has fired him as he was leading this investigation that potentially involved the president. we know at a minimum the president's advisers and

associates. >> let's talk about claims out of the white house. despite repeated claims by the president and surrogates, there's an active investigation over collusion between candidate trump and the russians. >> absolutely. let's get into details. i spoke do to both the republican chairman of the senate intelligence committee and democratic ranking member and i asked them this question directly. is collusion still a subject of your investigation? they said without equivocation yes, indeed, it is. i heard the same thing about both house and senate members of those intelligence committees and from both democrats and republicans. no question there. we know that the fbi is investigating this line because comey himself before he was fired in march told the house intelligence committee as much. we know that the pentagon's inspector general is zeroing in

on flynn's communications with russia. so it is untrue. it is factually incorrect to say that there is no -- that this investigation is dead, that there's no evidence, that there's no there-there. just don't ask us. ask republicans and democrats on those relevant committees. they give the opposite answer. >> in the letter that he sent to comey that comey didn't get because he wasn't there, he was in los angeles watching his firing on television. he said he appreciates comey telling him he wasn't under investigation on three separate occasions. this is not going to go away any time soon. >> it's not. we know it's not because you have multiple bodies continuing their investigations there and as you say, accelerating. you have one committee pursuing financial records of potential trump business ties to russia. you have another committee, which is now subpoenaed michael flynn to come onboard and invited director comey, former director comey, to testify next week.

you have grand jury subpoenas issued as cnn was first to report yesterday. these are -- we also know as well that director comey was asking for more resources. more people and money to continue this investigation. so, in fact, not dying, not withering on the vine by any means but growing each of these investigations and that's something to answer your question, this is not going away any time soon. >> back now with the panel. the panel got supervised with the real jeffrey lord. not the fake one over here and paul as well. why do you think it took the white house so long to get the story straight on how and why director comey was fired? >> clear they didn't have a plan. they didn't know early enough what would happen and couldn't develop a plan to get out the news. and then after a couple hours of really, really bad press, immediately sent out several senior officials to start to correct the record to the president's liking. but also, you know, part of the

problem is that there's a disconnect here between what donald trump says is the reason that comey was fired and what he's strongly implied both in his letter to comey and also in his conversations with friends and associates. that disconnect is hard to square for the white house. that's part of the reason why in reality it's hard to make this whole thing work. when trump says i fired comey because he wasn't doing a good job or because of the clinton investigation and then on the other hand says, well, by the way, he cleared me of the russia investigation and by the way, in a tweet last week he said, you know, james comey was the best thing that happened to hillary clinton. this whole russian thing is a hoax. those two things are hard to reconcile. >> can i offer an alternative possibility? maybe the reason why they're having trouble with the public story is that the public story is a lie. it's just not true. none of this is true.

the reason that he's being fired has something to do with hillary clinton's investigation. i mean, that to me is a bigger problem than sort of a communications strategy and who was hiding in the bushes. >> to your point, if he's getting progressively more annoyed yelling at the television watching stuff, watching comey testified annoyed that he said nauseous, it seems odd it was only this letter from the guy who got the job two weeks ago when there is an internal investigation from the ig at the department of justice into comey's handling of the e-mail stuff but this new employee there two weeks writes this letter and all in the same day it happens. it's hard to believe the sequence of events. >> factually not plausible if you look at the timeframe at this stage. what you're now seeing is them trying to scramble disaster management. you can't have good talking points unless you have a good response. you can't talk your way out of

hurricane katrina, right? that's what you're seeing them do right now. i have to say not only do they think we're buying it. it's just worth noting that we are the united states of america. and the rest of the world is watching. donald trump's meetings today are viewed by nato. shocking if not jaw dropping. you can't even pick up the phone to congratulate the new president of france but has time to meet with the ambassador from russia. i should say even an ambassador tweeted out today -- a u.s. ambassador says increasingly difficult to wake up overseas to news from home knowing i'll spend the day explaining our democracy and institutions. when you actually think about how we are portrayed. we've been loved and we've been hated. we rarely have been ridiculed and even less often trolled. that's what's happening now. >> does any of this make sense to you? you worked in the white house. >> no. full disclosure, i was not for donald trump.

>> is that so? >> i knew he would be crooked. i didn't know he would be stupid. i thought he was a smart guy. this is not only corrupt, it's stupid. and you cannot convince anyone that the reason that the president fired the fbi director is that he was too mean to hillary. that's what they want us to believe. it's preposterous. it's stupid. and the problem with this is if, in fact, the motive was to interrupt the investigation of allegations that trump's campaign colluded with the russians, that was one of the articles of impeachment against nixon. he subverted the fbi investigation. that's really, really serious stuff. we know he didn't do it because he was upset that comey was mean to hillary. if in fact the motive was to disrupt this investigation, that's catastrophic. >> you say catastrophic but something like that requires republicans to start to believe that. >> it does.

it does. i do think back to watergate where the senate republican leader at the time, the house republican leader, barry goldwater himself told his colleagues on august 6th, just before he went to the white house to tell nixon to resign, there are only so many lies you can take and now there's one too many. nixon should get his rear end out of the white house today. the republicans today are no barry goldwater. they all put their integrity in a blind trust. and jumped on the trump train. >> you don't think they're there yet? >> that was six years in. this is 100 days in. >> democrats have no political power right now. they need it to force the hand of republicans in congress for any kind of special investigation. i think that republicans have to go further down this road before they start jumping ship. >> i want to hear from jeff lord. >> as you gather, i may dissent here. i listen to this and honestly, i love you all. i think you're in a bubble.

let me just hold up -- this is from slate. we all know that democrats all wanted jim comey out of that job. here's the headline. harry reid, fbi chief comey covered up, covered up, russian hacking. he should resign. in other words, democrats were making the case that comey should be fired because he was covering up for the russians. and now they're saying suddenly -- >> what about that? is this just hypocrisy by the democrats? >> what senator reid was saying is that comey was very vocal about the investigation of hillary which cleared her and ended and he attacked her and said nothing about the investigation of trump. i can defend being quiet about the investigation of trump. i can't defend talking about one politician's investigation and not the other. let me penetrate your bubble. the quinnipiac poll today came out today. it's really troubling for the republicans. i looked at the cross tabs just for noncollege whites. the heart of the trump base. the percentage of noncollege

whites who think trump is honest has dropped 12 points in the last 5 months. below 50 on honesty. favorable with noncollege whites is down to 47. this is core of trump's base. that's the real trump voter. >> hold on a second here. >> can we be precise on language. it doesn't say fire. it says resign. >> they wanted him out. >> if the fbi director resigned yesterday, people like me would have said this is a sad day. last nine months were difficult. my friends would say this investigation was conducted improperly. for the subject of the investigation or one of them, the man who managed the campaign where subjects of the investigation were involved to fire him is substantially different from a resignation. let's not use the two words as if they're not different. >> he's gone. he's gone. that's what they wanted. >> this is what congressional democrats will say. i spoke to many of them today. yes.

we did not like how comey handled the clinton e-mail issue. we did not like how president obama handled that issue and dealt with the fbi. that does not mean that we think he should leave in the middle of an active investigation. and it's important to remember, i understand that the white house believed they were going to tie democrats in knots. democrats -- i had several people say that to me because of that criticism. democrats have come to see the comey/fbi piece as only investigation they can count on because they're worried about the congressional ones. >> we have more breaking news. new reporting on the depth of the president's anger this weekend in the run-up to the comey firing and did that actually have an impact on why he was fired? we'll bring that to you next. president lashes out on twitter at a senator who is among those calling for a special prosecutor. i'll get reaction from that senator next. [customer] i can access the atm with just my phone? [team member] yep. now in the wells fargo mobile app you can request a one-time access code to use the atm. [customer] that's much better! you know, that would come in handy when i'm out for a run. [team member] or, a bike ride. [customer] or, when you left your card in your yesterday pants. [team member] or walking the dog. [customer] or walking your dog. i have a dog.

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the shlike a bald penguin. how do i look? [ laughing ] show me the billboard music awards. show me top artist. show me the top hot 100 artist. they give awards for being hot and 100 years old? we'll take 2! [ laughing ] xfinity x1 gives you exclusive access to the best of the billboard music awards just by using your voice. the billboard music awards. sunday, may 21st eight seven central only on abc. dana bash alluded to to this early. the president's thinking in the d days before he fired james comey. cnn john king got new reporting that speaks to the question. john, what have you learned? >> just reaching out to friends and associates of the president sometimes from the white house and very often when he goes away from the weekend, he reaches out

to old friends, campaign associates and the like. friends call it venting. some to sound them out. am i doing the right thing? wrong thing? what do you think of my team. i spoke to a friend who talked to the president over the weekend and described him as white hot. they thought he would be in good spirits because of the health care bill last week. he thought after what the friend called a couple days of more positive coverage that the president would be in a better mood, but he said he wouldn't hear it. meaning that the president should be more encouraged. he said the president just kept complaining it was trump and russia. he said the president used expletives in describing comey's testimony to congress last week. and feeling naushious that the exposure of hillary clinton was negative in any way. the friend said it was clear that the president was frustrated that he felt from james comey's testimony that

comey didn't take the leak seriously enough. he was much more interested in investigating possible collusion and investigating russia meddling and not spending enough time investigating the leaks. and the friend said this had been festering for the a long time. he was struck by the president's anger thinking after the house health care vote the president would be in a better mood, but he was not. >> that raises questions which have already been raised about how much this really was about this letter from the deputy attorney general about hillary clinton's e-mails and director comey's actions toward hillary clinton during the election and how much it was about the president's own feelings about director comey and his anger over the russian investigation. >> it was clear from this conversation and other conversations i had from people who discussed this with the president had seen the president's anger about this. i know other reporting from dana and others. as a friend put it, it's been festering for a long time. he said, you know, the president was blaming comey and he said a

lot was conflated. the friend said the president over the past couple months expressed frustration as the friend put it they can't all just make this go away. i asked who do you mean by they? the friend said this is a messy one. he's mad at sessions, attorney general back when he recused. mad at his lawyer. mad at the staff. mad at you guys on tv. mad at the committees. mad at comey. there's no doubt this has been festering in the president for a long time that this russian cloud is over the administration. again, the friend said he thought he would have a positive conversation with the president this weekend. in his words the president was white hot. mad at the media coverage. mad at comey and friend didn't get it. he kept telling the president, i watched sunday shows and they were reasonably favorable but the president wouldn't hear it. >> fascinating details. thank you for that reporting.

more reaction to the president's decision, senator richard blumenthal is calling for an independent investigator. senator, you were on cnn this morning calling the president's firing a looming constitutional crisis. the president was watching because he had some things to say on his twitter machine as senator blumenthal was speaking. he didn't comment on the points the senator was making but took personal shots of the senator during his terms of service. senator blumenthal joins us now. do you want to respond to the president's tweets? >> just to say this issue is not about me. it is about the integrity of our justice system and this kind of

distraction won't silence me and my call for a special independent prosecutor. >> do you believe -- you talked about this as a looming constitutional crisis. you stand by that. you think it's that serious? >> it's a looming constitutional crisis because it involves a potential confrontation as did watergate between the president and other branches of government. it may well produce another united states versus nixon on a subpoena that went to the united states supreme court. it may well produce impeachment proceedings although we're very far from that possibility and right now the president has not been charged, and there is an investigation under way which should be given the kind of integrity and independence that it deserves. >> does the administration time line, their explanation of comey's firing, make sense? on the one hand white house says the president has been mulling this over for months hearing from john king and others he was white hot and been this way, angered at comey's testimony.

on the other hand they say rosenstein expressed his concerns in this letter and that very day it so moved the president that is what led him to fire comey. >> the letter really is a ludicrous pretense for this action. >> you think that's cover for the action. >> the reason i say that is indeed that actions that are the subject of this complaint -- and i was critical of director comey at the time for the way he did the clinton e-mail decision not to prosecute. he made the announcement. he made statements in the press, which are a violation of normal rules that apply to prosecutors. he justified it in the hearing that he had recently by saying it was a matter of intense public interest. but still, as critical as i was, i did not consider it a reason to fire him then and ten months afterward, donald trump actually

expressed his faith in director comey. so the timing and the time line make no sense here. what makes more sense is that he saw the investigation ongoing and even expanding with a request for more resources. >> i talked about this last night with kellyanne conway. we pointed out candidate trump repeatedly praised comey for the things that now in this letter the department of justice, you know, deputy attorney general says is atrocities. does that make sense to you that as a candidate he's praising it and now that's their biggest rationale for getting rid of them? >> it is an internal contradiction that i think further belie the reason given as a pretense and the question now is very profoundly why now? why this firing? what is behind it? that's what we need to know in

the senate of the united states and that's why i've called for a special prosecutor to make sure that this investigation is above politics, no one is above the law. >> does your committee have the resources they need and people they need and the investigators they need? the personnel? there's a huge amount of information to go through. >> the simple answer is no. no congressional committee right now has ample resources to conduct this broad wide ranging investigation. and that is one of the key points here. in watergate, the crime was a two-bit break-in. the cover-up was worse than the crime. here we have a massive attack on our democratic institutions by the russians and the possibility, i don't want to overstate it, that trump associates were colluding or involved in it. and that is a crime that must be investigated.

attack and hacking into our system. that's why director comey apparently went for more resources. the resources are essential. >> i appreciate your time. thank you very much. coming up after the president fires the fbi director in a letter and includes a weird sentence about how he's not being investigated. he meets with the russian ambassador at the white house. the same russian ambassador who officials describe as a top spy and recruiter of spies. we'll talk about that and joined by carl bernstein about the comparisons between this story and watergate. we'll be right back. two become one.

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only at the home depot. it's a fast-moving night of breaking news. we got one of the two others of james comey fired for russian connections. as a matter of math, more evidence comey fired for russia investigation, some than evidence that trump was wiretapped, zero. today, at the white house, the president meets with at least one russian, we know at the center of the form, sergei kislyak. you'll remember michael flynn was fired for lying about his connects with that ambassador. the kremlin released pictures today. the russian embassy tweeted this one. reporters were not allowed in

the room. also today, the president welcomed henry kissinger to the oval office. he was secretary of state under richard nixon. another man who fired the man investigating him. two people who watched it all unfold up . he said the move is very knic nixonian move. do you agree? >> i suppose you could say that. i think we need to look at a central fact here. that is that the president of the united states, for four months since his inauguration, has done everything in his power to impede, obstruct a legitimate investigation. nixon did not try to impede a legitimate national security investigation. what you do in the process if you are the president of the united states -- i'm not saying

this means he is literally and legally obstructing justice. but he has impeded this investigation, especially through the firing of comey. and in the process, he has undermined the national security of the united states by making it harder for us to know what occurred with russia destabilizing the united states. we have never had a situation in modern times in which there has been an accusation such as this that associates of the president of the united states colluded with a hostile foreign power to undermine and destabilize our country. that doesn't mean necessarily that it happened. but the president is keeping us from knowing whether it happened or not. and this is a terrible, terrible thing to happen because he is impeding our ability to know what occurred. >> david, you served as an adviser to president nixon. a lot of people describe the saturday night massacre as a

constitutional crisis. does this mean the same threshold? is this a constitutional crisis? or looming on one? >> not yet but echos of watergate grow more powerful over the last couple of days in particular. both cases i think there's a parallel that they were challenging the integrity of the rule of law in this country. i think carl has a good point. there are differences, especially on national security. but this threatening the integrity of the rule of law is very serious. in each case in both the nixon case and the trump case, you have the president firing the man who is encharge of an investigation which comes right into the white house, into the staff and potentially the president. we don't know yet where this is going. in each case, nixon and trump, you find questions of whether the president himself is impeding the investigation.

you remember with president nixon, the articles of impeachment, the first article was about obstruction of justice by the president. i also think, anderson, you have finally this question of the investigation in nixon's case led to the taping system and then the effort to get the tape from nixon and that brought the constitutional crisis when he refused at first. in the trump case, i think carl would agree with this. it may well come down to eventually the investigators or the people on capitol hill calling for and subpoenaing the tax records of president trump. there's a very strong likelihood he will try to refuse turning them over given his strength of belief here. while there are differences, i do think there are growing parallels. >> carl, do you think that's what it could come down to, the tax records? >> i think much more than the tax records. yes, they could be included in

this. but already the president of the united states has resisted and kept the senate and the house investigators from getting legitimately subpoenaed papers from the congressional investigation, or requested papers. he refused to turn over the papers of his aides. we need to know what mike flynn may have told the president of the united states or the candidate for president of the united states and those around him. increasingly, it's apparent -- if you talk to people who know what was happening in investigation by the fbi, to to some extent -- i don't think we have deep knowledge of it, but we do know that fbi investigators were beginning to look at the conduct of donald trump. there's no question about that. in the sense that those around him and what they might have told him.

that was becoming part of the investigation. therefore, it makes some sense when we hear john king talk about the president's rage. the president's rage may have something to do with the fact that the investigators are moving towards the president and his obstructing their ability to find out what happened and what these other players might have said to the president of the united states when he was a candidate for president. >> david, i spoke with senator bloomenthal said this may produce impeachment proceedings. you saw this going down with nixon. do you see this happening again? >> i think it has to be emphasized, the president -- we should not say -- talk about a president who is guilty of anything. that has not been determined. he may be quite innocent. the rage may be well be -- it may well be over. my whole agenda is imperiled by this. it may well be his rage is about

why aren't they looking at the looks more carefully? we have to be careful and take it one step at a time as we go through. as carl and bob woodward did, i thought admirably. i was in the white house. i was told they are lying, they are trying to get us. they turned out to be the people doing it carefully and very patiently waiting to see where the truth led. could this grow into something that it would be a constitutional crisis? it could. we're not there yet. we're a long way from there. but we're in deep water here. this is very serious. >> carl, you pointed this out during watergate -- >> let me just say one thing. >> republicans were the heros in watergate. senator howard baker of tennessee on the senate watergate committee said what did the president know and when

did he know about it? the key votes for impeachment articles of impeachment against nixon were cast by courageous republicans on the house judiciary committee. barry goldwater, the 1964 nominee of his party for president marched to the white house after the articles of impeachment passed the committee and said to richard nixon, you must resign for the sake of the country. as david says, we're not there yet. what is so baffling and troubling about donald trump's conduct in regard to this investigation is he has it in his power to simply say, here is what occurred, here is what didn't occur, i want to open up my white house, i want to open up my campaign so that investigators can put this behind us quickly and we can move on and get on with the business of the country. he has done exactly the opposite. just as nixon did exactly the opposite and chosen to impede rather to be open, transparent, forthcoming and helpful to the investigators. >> carl, david, thank you very much.

more ahead. i will talk to jim himes about the firing of comey and what comes next for his committee. we will be right back. unlimited data on t-mobile, now that's a treat. why did verizon take so long to offer it? is it because their lte network was built six years ago? six years ago? that's like a hundred in phone years. t-mobile built newer, faster, more advanced lte to handle unlimited data. switch to t-mobile, now covering 314 million americans and growing. and right now, get 2 lines of unlimited data for a hundred bucks, all in! taxes and fees included. this i gotta try ldcats 'til we die... bendy... spendy weekenders. whatever kind of weekender you are, there's a hilton for you.

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tonight's breaking news, new reporter from john king that the president was quote, white hout this weekend before firing fbi director james comey. the senate intelligence committee issuing a subpoena to fire national security adviser michael flynn demanding he turn over documents pertaining to his contact with russian officials. flynn refused a request for them. so the committee made them a demand. this comes days after director comey told the senate judiciary committee the bureau was ramping up its own investigation. we will get reaction from jim