we're an independent group. we are proud of what we accomplished during the campaign and post campaign. >> you are chaired by newt gingrich and rudy giuliani. thank you very much for explaining the rational behind this ad. all right. we're following a lot of news. let's get to it. >> did you at any time urge former fbi james comey to close the investigation into michael flynn? >> no. next question. >> comey is saying the president of the united states is a liar and the president of the united states obstructed justice. >> that is almost a watergate level effort to interfere with an ongoing investigation. >> as president trump committed an obstruction of justice, absolutely not. >> what it describes is a president who knows no limits. >> there is a lot of unclarity from director comey's comments. we're only hearing one side of this conversation. >> that's a contest that the

president is going to lose. >> this is "new day" with chris cuomo and alisyn camerota. >> we welcome our viewers in the united states and around the world. it is thursday, june 8th, 8:00 in new york and all eyes are on this beautiful monument to american democracy. how will it be served just two hours from now when it hosts one of the most anticipated congressional hearings in decades. james comey testifying before the senate intel committee. but it is going to be a gauntlet of left and right and in the cross hairs will be comey and the president of the united states. in his opening statement that he released a day early heightening the drama, comey says president trump demanded his loyalty, pressed him to end the michael flynn investigation and asked what could be done to lift the

crowd of russia bogging down the administration. >> president trump says the president feels totally indicated by the comey testimony, but the hearing is sure to raise questions. who will the american people believe today? president trump or mr. comey. let's begin with jessica snyder live on capitol hill. things are getting really exciting there. >> reporter: they are. just two hours until james comey begins his testimony, his testimony we all got a preview of when they released the prepared opening statement one day only that was at james comey's request, something really unprecedented. we know that james comey will be recounting nooif out of his nine one-on-one meetings with the president, something he felt the need to document and something he never did with president obama. concerning, awkward, inappropriate, these are the words james comey uses to describe his interactions with president trump in this riveting

seven-page opening statement, ma tick you lousilylousily. he told advisors he wanted to speak to me alone before turning the conversation to flynn, who he had fired the previous day, stressing that flynn did nothing wrong in his contacts with russia. he is a good guy and he has seen a lot. i hope you can see your way to letting this go, letting flynn go. >> did you at any time urge former fbi director james comey in any way, shape or form to close or back down the investigation into michael flynn? >> no, no. next question. >> comey does not say whether he believes this is an attempt to obstruct justice, but he does say it concerns him.

after that meeting comey writes he asked attorney general ral sessions to prevent any future direct communication between the president and me, although he did not tell his boss that the president broached the investigation of general flynn. two weeks earlier, the president summoned comey to a private dinner asking him if he wanted to stay on as fbi director despite the ten-year term. the president said i need loyal tichlt comey was uneasy writing i didn't move, speak or change my facial expression. we simply looked at each other in silence. you will always get honestly from me comey replied, to which the president responded, that's what i want, honest loyalty. >> we had a nice dinner and at that time he told me you are not under investigation, which i knew anyway. >> comey assured him three times he was not under frngs bi

investigation, describing three separate instances. the first during a meeting at trump tower when he briefed trump one-on-one about a dos in which comey said trump la meatr. he said he had not been involved with russia. he asked what we could do to lift the cloud. during that call and another on april 11th, comey said trump pressured him to say he was not personally under investigation. he repeatedly told me we need to get that fact out and in that final conversation, the president again emphasizing loyalty, because i have been very loyal to you, very loyal. we had that thing, you know. >> and comey saying we didn't

know what the meant with that cryptic comment, we had that thing, you know. as for the white house, they are responding via outside counsel. putting out this statement last night saying the president is pleased that mr. comey has finally publically confirmed his private reports that the president was not under investigation on any russian probe. the president feels completely and totally vindicated. he is eager to move forward with his agenda. >> thank you very much for setting that all upp perfectly for us. we have jeffrey tubin, julie pace. jeffrey, let me start with you. let's just start with what the white house says, which is that the president has been vindicated because in these prepared statements james comey said he did assure the president three times that he was not the target of an investigation. that's what president trump had

claimed. people were skeptical that actually happened. in fact it did happen. >> it is like a lawyer saying, you know, the prosecutor admits that my client didn't steal any cars. but the fact is he's charged with robbing a bank. i mean, yes, it is true that trump was vindicated in a way about this statement of comey that he was not under investigation. but what about everything else in this statement? what about the obstruction of justice possibly regarding the investigation of michael flynn? it's picking one corner of flynn's -- of comey's statement as a vindication, but there is a heck of a lot more that comey talked about. >> right. but also remember what it is is a window into what matters to the president. obviously what's been driving his moves here for better or

worse is this fascination this is all bad for him. counselor, how do you see the stakes today in terms of laying out a case that the president did something wrong? >> well, there are essentially one big thing or two parallel things. one is and the 800-pound gorilla is the flynn matter because it is very hard and the clips you showed has the president saying i did not intervene. comey saying absolutely you did intervene. that's the biggest thing that's been joined. and who are they going to believe. the american people and the senators will determine how this outcome is reviewed. the other thing is this whole cycle of loyalty. the january 6th starts the relationship with loyalty and essentially because he felt that comey failure to get these things out was a disloyal act,

he gets fired. you have got the loyalty loop, the flynn thing going on the other hand. in some respects they merge. how people view those things will be dispositive of the outcome here. not necessarily in legal terms, but in terms of the public opinions. >> julie, you are the whit house corresponde correspondent. how is the white house preparing for this block buster event? have his aids hidden president trump's twitter machine? >> no, they haven't. and i don't think they could even if they gave it a good shot. they have tried to put a lot on his schedule today. he's got some events later in the day. but his public schedule is pretty clear during this prime window. the comey hearing starts at 10:00. there is nothing on the president's schedule until a little after 12:00. so i think it is an open question as to what president trump is going to be doing in terms of his public reaction. but i think there is no doubt that he like so many people across the country are going to

be watching this in realtime. >> and david gregory, this could be about a lot of things today, right? it could be very direct in the purview of what the senate intel committee is supposed to be looking at. but it keeps being billed as the super bowl for left and right on this issue. what do you think we're going to see today? >> i do think you are going to see political agendas. you will see this fight between the left and the right. this is a political matter. special counsel is pursuing the legal matter. this is the intelligence committee. i think credibility is at stake here for jim comey as well as the president, and i think the underlying offense, the fact that russia was meddling in our election, what we know about it, whether there's been efforts to prevent it from happening again is all important. i will be looking for one sign

of the apocalypse. if that happens, i will definitely fall off my chair, but i won't be totally surprised. >> that's an oxymoron, but okay. >> i guess so. >> no surprises. >> but i do -- i'm still struck by something here that you started with jeffrey. you know, we've always said that he could -- the president may not be being investigated, but that could always change and i thought comey made that point according to what he's going to say in his testimony. but it is so revealing about what the president thinks about this. are you investigating me? okay, i'm done with it. doesn't matter this undermines trust in my administration. doesn't matter that you have an attack on america that i, as the president, should get to the bottom of. >> jeffrey you have said what

you have seen in these comey prepared statements does rise to the level or could of obstruction of justice. i mean, correct me if i'm wrong. >> absolutely. >> but that's not what the senate intel committee is tasked with. >> no. but i think if the president perhaps committed a criminal offense, i think it is interesting and something worst discussing. but the intelligence committee obviously is concerned with, you know, the broader issue of russia and, you know, their interference in our election. but let's be honest. what a lot of people are interested in, including the politicians in that room, is whether the president of the united states behaved appropriately and whether if he didn't what degree of inappropriateness leading all the way up to criminality he did display. so i mean i think the focus on trump's behavior and the merits of it is really going to be what

most of us are looking at regardless of what committee it happens to be on. >> counselor, don't you think every time trump defenders hear the word inappropriate today, they are going to be like, phew. because that is what you say when your kid uses bathroom words at school. it is the kind of word a politician uses when they want to say something is wrong, but they don't want to do anything about it. if that's the level of scrutiny, that's a pretty good position to have the president in if you were on his side, right? >> sure, if you have on his side. and the worst that coming out of it is that the president was inexperienced, inappropriate, perhaps naive, unaware of the established protocols in the department of justice and in the white house through regulation about behavior. they chalk it up to he's an outsider and that's just the way it is and maybe he's learned a lesson now. i'm not sure it will turn out

that way because it is impossible to get beyond the flynn meeting with just inappropriate if comey is believed. >> impossible. >> if comey is believed that the president said to him, you need to close down this investigation, that's not naive, and that's not inexperienced. that's almost criminal and then it is a very different day for the president. >> julie, is the feeling in the white house that this is the tip of the iceberg and james comey comes armed with more ammunition or that this is the sum total of what happened and what he memorialized and what he wants to get out? >> i think the white house is nervous about what's to come in the testimony. we have the opening statement, but there are a lot of questions that remain unanswered. one that really stood out to me is comey suggests that he and others in the fbi knew about two weeks before or believed about two weeks before that jeff sessions was going to have to recuse himself from this matter.

i think that's a huge question. i also think comey, though, will face questions from lawmakers about why he didn't raise alarms at the justice department and elsewhere about his interactions with the president, why he maybe didn't resign. the white house is hoping to focus on that. they hope that's where the rest of this hearing goes, as opposed to digging into more detail. not only about the president but about this investigation and perhaps flynn and sessions and kushner and their interactions with the russians as well. >> i do think jeffrey is right. look at how much attention there was yesterday on the president's behavior with regard to rogers and coats, et al, about whether the president tried to shut the investigation down through them. so this question of the scale of inappropriateness approaching criminality is no doubt a question for the commission, which dove tails to, are we getting to the bottom of the meddling to begin with?

because that's what this inappropriate behavior was about. >> panel, thank you very much for previewing it all with us. >> now, all of these questions being asked or not asked comes down to the senators. what are they going to be looking for when they grill james comey. we have angus king joining us. we expect he won't be easy. why? here's a taste. >> why are you not answering the question. what you feel is not relevant, admiral. what you feel is not the answer. why are you not answering the questions? is it an invocation of executive privilege? k for you. the ultrasound that can see inside patients, can also detect early signs of corrosion at our refineries. high-tech military cameras that see through walls, can inspect our pipelines to prevent leaks. remote-controlled aircraft, can help us identify potential problems and stop them in their tracks. at bp, safety is never being satisfied.

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time. joining us now is one of the main players in that room, one of the senators tasked with asking questions of the fired fbi director, angus king, independent senator from maine. thank you for joining us on this important morning. where is your head? where is your heart? >> well, i have read director comey's prefiled testimony a couple of times. i have a number of questions. i think part of what we're going to try to get at today is not just the cold facts but what his impressions were, what the conversations with the president were, what was the tone. i mean, there has been a lot of discussion in the last 24 hours about did the president direct me to do something, and the question is if you are in the oval office and the president suggests something, the president of the united states, is that a direction and we're going to be talking about those kinds of questions. i think some of the drama has been taken away from this testimony because of the fact that we got a copy of director

comey's testimony yesterday. but i'm sure there will be some twists and turns to the discussion today. >> what did you make of the decision for him to release it and for you guys to put it up on the website? >> i thought it was a little unusual. i had never heard of that. although, in many cases witnesses file their testimony in advance. in this kind of situation, as i say, it was somewhat unusual. but once it was out there and once it was public, then i think the committee felt it ought to be made broadly available so everybody can read what he said, which is it's quite a document. it reads like the first few pages of a novel. it is detailed. we'll see where the details go when we discuss those things with them today. >> how intent are you about getting answers out of comey? what if he doesn't want to opine as to whether or not he thinks things are illegal or not or he

doesn't want to get too deep into how he construed different communications. >> well, i do think that is going to be a constraint. he's not going to get into the ongoing investigation. i think a lot of the questions today will relate to his firing, what the circumstances were. but he had nine direct one-on-one contacts with president trump in the short period of three or four months. he had two with president obama and that was one of the things that came through in his testimony, was how uncomfortable he was with these one-on-one interactions. at one point he was in a large meeting with the attorney general and four or five other people. the president told everybody to leave the room. everybody. the attorney general ral lingers and he said, no, i want you out, too. closed the door and that's when he started talking about the michael flynn investigation. that's highly unusual and the kind of thing we will be exploring today. >> i'm sure you are hoping today

is different from yesterday in terms hof how it went. i felt that the way you examined the intel chiefs and the way they responded was so indicative of the dynamic. we want to review a little bit of what happened yesterday. here it is. >> i think you testified that you did discuss today's testimony with someone in the white house. >> i said i asked, did the white house intend to invoke executive privileges. >> and what was the answer to that question? >> to be honest, i didn't get a definitive answer and both myself and the dni are talking. >> so why are you not answering these questions? is there an invocation of the president of the united states of executive privilege? is there or not? >> not that i'm aware of. i feel it is inappropriate. >> what you feel isn't the answer. >> i stand accountable.

>> why are you not answering the questioning? is it an invocation of executive privilege. if there is, then let's know about it. if there isn't answer the questions. >> i standby the comments i made. i am not interested in repeating myself, sir. i don't mean that in a contentious way. >> i do mean it in a contentious way. i don't understand why you are not answering our questions. you can't -- when you were confirmed, before the armed services committee, you took an oath. do you swear to give the truth so help you got. you answered question. >> and i answered those conversations are classified and is not appropriate in an open forum to discuss those classified forums. >> what is classified about a conversation about whether or not you should involve yourself in the fbi investigation. >> mr. coats, what is your basis for your refusal to answer these questions today? >> the basis is that what i have previously explained. i do not believe it is

appropriate for me to -- >> what is the basis -- i'm not satisfied with i don't believe it is appropriate or i don't feel i should answer. i want to understand the legal basis. you swore that oath, to tell us the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. today you are refusing to do so. what is the legal basis for your refusal to testify to this committee? >> i'm not sure i have a legal basis. >> i was ready for you to hold them in contempt, senator. what did you make of their refusal to answer questions that did not go to classified conversations? >> well, it was just ridiculous. i mean, you don't get -- there wasn't a qualification on that oath. it didn't say i'll tell the truth unless i feel uncomfortable about it. when i came in late one night, my dad said where have you been. i didn't say i don't think that's an appropriate question. they should answer the questions. the thing that really bothered me, they opened the door.

they said something like we weren't directed to intervene in the flynn matter. well that word "directed" cries out to be followed up. was it suggested? was it asked? was it hinted? and, so, you can't open the door in lawyer terms that would be they have waived the privilege by opening the door to that kind of discussion. and then they shut the door again by saying, well, we are not going to answer any more questions. it was totally inappropriate in my view. director coats said we'll talk about it in closed session. okay. we are going to have that closed session. but even so, i don't know why it needs to be a closed session. we weren't talking about anything classified and they both side executive privilege hasn't been invoked. there was no reason not to answer those questions. >> today, how big the stakes in your mind? do you believe there may be

something out of that's rev la toir? >> i think there will be something, but i think we're putting too much weight on this one witness and this one bit of testimony. this is a wide-rapging revelation involving many witnesses. it is already involved thousands of pages of classified documents. so there is a lot of information. so today is important. but the world isn't going to hinge on what happens today. and i think people need to realize that. this is one piece of a wide ranging investigation that goes back more than a year and it is clearly important, but it is not the whole deal. >> do you feel that comey is going to have his feet held to the fire today to justify how he felt things were important enough to justify a memo? >> well, and he talked about that. he had some real dilemmas here

and he did share his beliefs and his feelings and the facts of these conversations with the senior leadership of the fbu and in another part of that questions i was frustrated with the acting director of the fbi who wouldn't say whether or not comey shared it with him. and he pled the mueller defense. he said i can't talk about this because it will be part of mr. mueller's investigation. that really wasn't very satisfactory either. but, sure, we are going to probe that information. but we are also going to be looking for corroboration one way or the other. but the fact -- one of the interesting things is jim comey said in his prepared testimony that he immediately, after his first meeting with president trump started what amounted to a diary contemporaneous memos. he said he wrote them in the laptop in the car because he felt so uncomfortable about these interactions.

he met with president trump nine times in a couple of months. twice with president obama. never had any recording of his conversation with president obama because he didn't feel it was necessary. i think that's an interesting aspect of this. why did you feel so uncomfortable about this? you could say he should have shared it. but jeff sessions at that time was the attorney general who auz w was about to recuse himself. >> do you think you'll get the memos? >> i do. i don't know how anybody is going to argue that they are not fair game for our inquiry. >> senator king, always a pleasure. we look forward to your questioning today and discussing what your reactions to it are as soon as you can do it. >> yes, sir. thank you, chris. >> be well. so jim comey's testimony is going to be must-see tv no matter what you political filter is. our special coverage with the

big guns, anderson cooper, wolf blitzer begins at 9:00. fired director of the fbi breaks his silence at 10:00 a.m. eastern. >> how unusual is everything we've seen from james comey and what is to come today? richard clark here to give us his bottom line next. you don't let anything

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with 9 grams of protein and 26 vitamins and minerals. for the strength and energy to get back to doing... ...what you love. ensure. always be you. >> in just about 90 minutes fbi director james comey will testify in a room you are about to see live or not in front of the senate intel committee. there it is. people have been lining up for hours waiting to get inside. you can see from the media already taking their places along with others. joining us now is richard clark. he is the former national coordinator for security. he is also the author of a new book. mr. clark, great to see you. so you are no stranger to captivating capitol hill

hearings. whats your take on what's going to happen today? >> we know what he's going to say. i think it will be interesting what the questions are and does he say more as a result of the questions. but what strikes me is donald trump has apparently come close to the law or broke the law on obstruction of justice and he must have done that. he spent a lot of time in new york in and around crime figures. he know what is obstruction of justice is. the question in my mind is did he think he could get away with this? and the answer i think is probably yes. he did this, not just with the fbi director, but apparently with the national intelligence director as well if you read between the lines yesterday asking them to do things which he shouldn't have asked them to do. he must have known he was breaking or approaching the law. >> richard, i'm slow to tangle with your mind.

i've leaned on your intelligence too many times for answers. but if you are looking at it from trump's perspective on a legal case, okay, not political appropriateness, not whether or not it was presidential. but you have nobody saying that they felt pressured by the guy to this point. >> right. >> anybody who was relevantly involved. all of his actions seem to be within the purview of his power as president. you know, he can talk about it if he wants to. whether he should or not is a separate consideration. if you can't prove that he was trying to end this probe by his actions and his words in a specific way, won't this just be written off as political misconduct? >> i think it will be because no one is going to do anything about it. i don't think the house of representatives is even thinking about an impeachment at this point and i doubt very much on the basis of this information that bob mueller would even think about an indictment.

so he is going to get away with it, at least he's going to get away with this part of it. >> but when you say that you believe that it rises to the level of obstruction of justice, you mean the part where the president purportedly says to james comey i sure wish that you could find a way to get the michael flynn investigation go. he is a good guy. >> well, it was clear to me what the intent was. i'm not a lawyer, but the president has himself said on television what his intent was. he wanted to shut down the russia investigation. that's why he fired comey. that's the obstruction part there and then there is this issue. i had the same thing happen. i had president bush lean on me and say, can't you prove that iraq did 9/11? now, was that an order? that a suggestion? when the president looks you in the eye and says something like that, you know what he wants you to do. >> right. but we also know what richard clark did and shouldn't part of this scrutiny be on jim comey,

that if it was so bad what he was being asked to do, do you think he did enough in response? >> he said he talked to his colleagues at the fbi and they decided there was no point in telling the attorney general because he was going to recuse himself. they instead would hold this information about this event to use it later on in their investigation. that's a very, very interesting line because it suggests that he thought there would be more charges against the president later on. >> why tell the president on several occasions, which was not a comey-esque type of behavior that he was not part of the investigation. >> i think that's right. i think he's not a target of the investigation or subject of the investigation. his campaign is. that's a subtle distinction. >> comey did go to the acting deputy attorney general and did disclose this. and he also told the attorney general i don't want to be alone

in a room anywhere where president trump because he's asking inappropriate things of me. so did that, in your mind, go far enough? >> no, i don't think it did. but what did go far enough was making the record, talking to his colleagues, contemporaneous records, contemporaneous discussions and deciding this should be entered into the file of the investigation, of the larger investigation for use later in the investigation. that's the line that really struck me. >> so let's squeeze your intellect on what you are hoping is asked today. what are you thinking? >> well, i think we need to hear from him, was this a suggestion? was its an order? when you said the president wasn't the subject of an investigation, why did you say that when his campaign was. why did you say that you couldn't say that publically

because facts might change and then you have to publically tell everyone that the facts had changed? what suggested to you that the facts might change and later on you might be investigating him? >> wasn't he just being cautious. we all know facts might change. all we have is the snapshot of today and isn't okay to tell someone they are not the target of an investigation if they're worried about it? >> they should. but he wanted him to prove a negative. he wanted him to say i investigated all the things in the british dossier and none of them are true and comey said i can't do that. >> all right. richard clark, always a pleasure to benefit from your understanding of this type of situation. thanks for being on the show. >> thank you. >> all right. we are just minutes away from james comey telling his side of the story. that's important to remember. but there is going to be, and there already has been a lot of

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it's being called the most anticipate congressional hearing in decades and judging by the lines and the mood around this hearing, members of the public can't wait to hear what fired fbi director james comey has to say. we have ryan nobles live just outside the hearing room. set the stage for us, my friend. >> reporter: anticipation, chris. we're going to show you an example of that right now. take a look at this line. we're in the dirkson office building right next door to the hart office building and take a look at this line of folks waiting to get in, opening to get a seat at this hearing here today. it stretches across both of these office buildings. for these people at the end of the line, it may be tough for them to get in. there are only 90 seats available inside the hearing room itself. there is another overflow room which seats about 100 people.

we are at the tail end of the line here so it may be difficult for a lot of these folks to get in the hearing room. keep in mind, we are an hour and 15 minutes away from the start of this hearing and people have been lined up since early this morning. there is a lot of interest in what will happen here today. i'm not sure how many folks will get to see what's happening inside this hearing room. but regardless everyone in d.c. waiting to see what he has to say. >> yes, ryan in d.c. and beyond. thank you for showing us all of the building anticipation there. so james comey's memos are drawing comparisons to watergate as is all of this. let's discuss the big day. we have former nixon white house counsel and cnn contributor and legendary journalist karl burn

steen. it is a pleasure to speak to all of you here this morning and to have all of your vast experience. john dean, do you think this holds up in terms of a parallel to watergate? >> it's not quite a parallel yet. if you recall, watergate for some 928 days. this is very early. but it is compressed and moving faster and there are some definite echoes of watergate. comey is one of our first public witnesses. we were about this season 45 years ago into the watergate hearing. so a summer hearing is also a parallel. >> karl, what is your take from those who say, well, it is not watergate. there was an underlying crime there. this is just about politics. what is your guidance? >> i don't think that's the important question in comparison or differences. i think what we're seeing is

that comey has produced what looks on its face to be a devastating portrait of what occurred, some suggestions ofdy bus of authority. he hasn't been before a committee yet where he could be questioned and the evidence is subject to impeachment of him veracity, et cetera, et cetera. but more than that, we are very early in the process. nowhere near where we were in waterafter john dean testified, for example, and the other great difference here, aside from the fact we need to know how this relates to the russia investigation. the president is entitled to get before both mueller's investigation and before the congress. his version of events. we need to do that in fairness and not jump to a lot of conclusions yet. but more important are the

republicans. the difference so far between watergate and what we're seeing here is that the republicans and congress have not shown they are interested in getting to the bottom of what happened with the russians and aour elections. they have been more interested in supporting the president instead of trying to get to the truth. there is a huge difference. in watergate the republicans joined in a consensus of we need to get to the bottom of this. >> what do you see in the differences and the parallels? >> i see some significant parallels. in watergate it was striking that president nixon had surrounded himself with aids who catered to his dark side. there was no one to say no to. and with president trump, i fear he doesn't have the kind of people who have the standing to say no to him. and in the firing of mr. comey,

it has brought down a series of events that result in having bob mueller appointed as special counsel. we need to be thinking about whether in some impetuous moment the president decides to fire bob mueller, fire rosenstein, who is going to take the action to prevent him from doing that and what is the position of the republican members of congress were that to happen, i think we need to be thinking ahead as we contemplate the circumstances of firing comey. the second thing that i see as a parallel is the saturday night masker was an extraordinary event in the history of watergate. suddenly the public woke up to the fact that something very

important had happened and why was the president risking firing the person who was doing the investigation and the attorney general who resigned and the deputy attorney general who resigned rather than firie inin. >> what do you think the expose yufr is for the president on today's testimony? >> i think it is considerable. i think there is -- first of all, mr. comey is going to put a few of the pieces together and while he can testify to a number of his personal dealings with trump and trump's effort to deal with the investigation, comey has got to look at it from the fact that in the end he was fired and that the president made it very clear he was being removed because of the russian investigation. so that puts the president at direct jeopardy. this investigation is about more

than simply obstruction of justi justice, that this is something that has spun out early. i think it's the bigger picture that the president is going to have to address at some point. why is he so concerned about what michael flynn might do or not do that he would indeed tell comey to back off on his investigation. so the pieces are just falling together sort of from the middle out at this point as we put this puzzle together and there is just no question trump has jeopardy or he wouldn't be reacting the way he is. >> karl, just to remind our younger viewers of the watergate area, it was 1972 break-in, the genesis of what happened. and that seems more tangible to people than what is happening now, which is more nebulous of trying to connect dots. as someone who did connect the dots back then, where do you

think today leads? >> i think what we need to do as reporters, particularly, is to find the evidence, to keep searching for the best obtainable version of the truth. and what we saw yesterday in the resistance of two people in the intelligence community trying to stiff the congress and the united states was just the opposite of that. and i think it was a sign and that again republicans and democrats on that committee were finally seeing. we have been waiting for years to see the congress of the united states function in a bipartisan way and try to act responsibly and here we have a senate committee that seems to be trying to do it and two of the highest intelligence officers in the country, mr. coats and admiral rogers tried to stiff it yesterday. but more important, you ask about the history of all of this. what was watergait really about?

establishing that no one in this country, including the president of the united states is above the law. and what we're seeing now is a test of that. we don't know yet definitively that the president has broken the law, that he has conspired, colluded or anything else. but we have great suggests here in what we know so far of a kind of prima fascia case of obstruction of justice perhaps, abuse of authority. but what we now need to know is what is the president going to say in his own defense and where are these facts going to lead in terms of the overall sprawling investigation that the special counsel is doing about russia, russian hacking and possible collusion? >> we're hearing from jim acosta the president will be monitoring the situation today. he will be with his lawyer. so we'll see if he decides to respond in real-time.

>> i mean not just in real-time. we need to hear in a definitive way, methodical way from the president of the united states what occurred here, what were his interactions with the russians, if they were. we need to hear from him sooner rather than later. >> but he has said he had no dealings. he said it a lot of times. what happens here is that very often it becomes what line of inquiry do you want to follow. there is a very good likelihood when jim comey gets up there, some republican is either going to want to talk about a meeting with clinton or start going after comey about how his memo wound up in the no"the new york" and that could take you down a different road there. >> there is no limit on what the members of the committee can ask about. but i think this hearing will set a tone of what the president

thinks about the restraints on the presidency and whether there are any in his mind. the whole discussion of whether the request for a pledge of loyalty personally to the president was a quid pro quo for comey keeping his job is illuminated by the fact that he's eventually fired. so the whole question of whether the president gets how the government works or whether he tries to impose how a private company might work with its employees, that's a big difference. and this is an investigation that will go on for some time. bob mueller is a superb joyce to lead that investigation and it will go into a variety of different areas, but this will set a tone in my view of the

view of how the president is acting as president. >> karl, can you finish your thought in ten seconds? >> yes. this investigation is closing in on the president of the united states and by this investigation, i mean bob muellers as well, the special counsel. and we are still in a much earlier phase than we were in watergate at this time. and we need to know a lot more. in fairness to the president, we need to know a lot more. but today we're going to get another indication from comey of what it is the president was trying to keep from happening. he keeps trying to impede, obstruct, undermine the investigation. maybe comey will have some answers about what he thinks and why the president was doing this. >> yep. >> all right, gentlemen, appreciate it. your perspective needed now more

than ever. thank you. we are just minutes away from the big event. former director of the fbi james comey will testify at 10:00 a.m. our special coverage with anderson cooper and wolf blitzer is going to pick up right after the break. stay with cnn.

bp developed new, industry-leading software to monitor drilling operations in real-time, so our engineers can solve problems with the most precise data at their fingertips. because safety is never being satisfied. and always working to be better. this is cnn breaking news. >> and good morning. one hour from now the most anticipated congressional hearing in decades will begin to unfold. fired fbi director james comey goes public with his private interactions with president trump. want to welcome viewers around the world to our special live coverage. i'm anderson cooper. >> and i'm wolf blitzer. the advanced copy of comey's testimony rocking washington and the questions they are mounting