is going to rollover on the president. there's a lot of evidence, erin, i'll tell you that. >> all right. thank you very much. i appreciate your time tonight. >> thank you. thank you for joining us and don't forget you can watch out front any time, anywhere, you have to go to cnn go. we'll see you tomorrow night. anderson starts now. >> good evening, thanks for joining us. the president said often and as recent as yesterday that he wants the mueller investigation to end. there's a smear campaign against mueller being carried out by the president's supporters that reached pretty bizarre levels but tonight there's also news about another man that seems to think he can be the one to help bring the investigation to a close. rudy giuliani is joining the legal team saying the probe needs a little push. we're joined now with the latest. is it clear what giuliani's role is going to be? >> according to our sources he's going to be the guy that goes in there and says to mueller what's the lay of the land? i was told he wants to cut

through the b.s. i don't know if there's been any. wants to cut through the b.s., get the answers to the questions about how long this is going to go on and this is what was most interesting to me. one of my sources says to me, he's going to find out if we have to fight and where this leads. they seem to think that rudy giuliani will be the one to be able to do that where nobody else was able to do that before. >> in some interviews today he talked about his prior relationship with robert mueller. it's not clear to me how a prior relationship with mueller would impact an on going investigation. >> and he told that in his interview that they do have a prior relationship. i think i should remind people that john dab the lawyer that quit also had a prior relationship with mueller. giuliani did work with mueller after 9/11 of course.

but i think that whole we have a relationship and we get along can be overdone because a lot of people worked with mueller over the years. >> he also said i think when she pushed him on a time frame he said a couple of weeks. does it seem to you that giuliani is going to be on the legal team for long-term? >> no it doesn't. there's some sense that giuliani is going to go in there and say okay put all your cards on the table here. let us know what's going on. let us know what we have to do and that the mueller team is going to answer all of his questions. >> do we know how this came out? who approached him? because obviously rudy giuliani is a friend of theth. spoke out when few people after the "access hollywood" would speak out rudy giuliani went out on all the programs that day. >> we know they're good friends.

he recently visited for example. we don't know if it was discussed then. we do know at one point he was being discussed as attorney general, if you'll recall, secretary of state and i'm wondering if he joins this legal team whether he could ever become the attorney general because he might be conflicted because he represented the president. but they're friends obviously and what we do know is that the president is reaching back to people he feels comfortable with at this point. >> right. thank you very much. turning now to the other looming investigation involving another of the president's lawyers that have been recording that the president is fixated on the criminal investigation of michael cohen. theth said he is not a target in that investigation. so what more do we know about what rosenstein said to the president? >> well, we know that this is the result of to some extent the

president's anger about that michael cohen raid that occurred early part of last week. that set the president off. came over to the white house and the deputy attorney general and basically told the president in this meeting that was attended by other officials closer to the president that listen, he's not a target of the michael cohen portion of this investigation. now i'm told by a source familiar with this conversation that this was not any kind of assurance about the overall mueller investigation and that is because the president received that kind of assurance in the past, but of course ander so anderson, any legal expert will tell you those kind of assurances only go so far. they only work for what has been uncovered at that stage of the investigation. but my understanding as we're talking to the source earlier today is that the deputy attorney general did tell the president just recently and we believe this meeting happened late last week that he is not a target of that michael cohen investigation. >> do we have any information about how the president reacted

to that or has subsequently reacted? >> well, we know he continues to be unnerved by the michael cohen probe. obviously michael cohen is a long friend of the president. has been his attorney for a long time. has been described piano others as a fixer for the president. and my colleague was reporting earlier today that the president has been consumed by this and i am also hearing that from other sources that this is something that he fixates on almost every day but anderson i will tell you i did talk to a source familiar with this, these conversations that go on inside the white house about this and this source said earlier today that the legal team with the president at this point is not concerned that michael cohen is going to turn against the president and start singing like a canary. one of the phrases we have been hearing this week. at this point they expect michael cohen to do what he has to do in this investigation but he's not going to be a cooperating witness against the

president. of course that's how they view things right now. they can't see into the future and know what is the unknown but they're trying to convey that they don't think that should be a concern at this point but the president from what we're told is still very, very upset and furious that that probe has been washed and that those took place. the question is at this point what happens in the future to michael cohen? what kind of information is uncovered? what kind of case could be brought against him and could that case, perhaps, convince michael cohen to become a cooperating witness against the president. people are not concerned that's not going to happen at this point. >> thank you. first of all, this notion of rudy giuliani being able to come in in the short-term and fix this, essentially get this to come to a conclusion in a couple

of weeks. what do you make of that idea? >> pretty arrogant to believe he would be in a position to do so. even if he has a personal relationship with mueller this is business and come pait's key. the president of the united states has not had competent council that can expedite it. it's slow because it has to be thorough and although most people are used to the idea of having immediate gratification in the news and perhaps a television program and law and order and an hour and have it wrapped up but when it comes to federal prosecution of this magnitude and investigation of this magnitude it will take tile to flush out all the details. so come in and say let me expedite this process that i can feel like i'm not a target is an odd thing to think. >> david, certainly understanding why the president's team would want to do that. would you think giuliani is the person that can do that? >> sure. he's not only a close friend and

confidant of the president but an incredibly capable individual in his own right. former prosecutor and mayor and he has a force of personality. a personal relationship with director mueller and i think he's going to try to nudge this along to a certain extent. >> but is an investigation like this something that can be negotiated away? >> i don't know if it's negotiated away. you can try to cut through the weeds here a little bit. whether the president is going to answer written interrogatories, whether he's going to testify, what that's going to look like, that can be expedited by having somebody with a force of personality like mayor giuliani on the team. >> they have been discussing this for months and they were already, the legal team, that morning of the raid on cohen's office was all ready to make a proposal to mueller about the president testifying and then there was the raid of his office and home et cetera and they pulled back. they had a meeting and they pulled back so they're already at a point now where things were moving along.

>> and that point -- that may have changed dramatically, right? that morning things may have changed and mayor giuliani may have been brought in to piece it together again. >> there's whether or not the president will testify willingly and by the way it's not up to him ultimately. they could always subpoena him. >> which he could fight. >> he could fight. he could plead the fifth. they could try to get him to compel him. no president has ever been attempted to be compelled or held in contempt for that reason. he has that option but the idea of expediting the overall investigation to a conclusion is a very separate issue. one is about details. >> there's a political backdrop to this. there's upcoming elections this fall that are very important and director mueller is very sensitive to that. just like this afternoon we heard director comey, he's not political but he's political and director mueller doesn't want

this hanging over as a cloud over the elections so that there's a reason that anybody can blame what happens in the fall on him. >> a lot of people looking into the mueller investigation, if robert mueller is trying to figure out intent. if they're looking at obstruction of justice, intent is critical in a lot of the president's actions and for that you would think they would have to actually interview the president. >> that's their point i think. they would like to interview him. the point from the white house is we have given you over a million documents from everybody that's talked to the president and that the president of course keeps no notes and does no e-mails. so you have all of this information. the lawyers, i don't think, muell mueller's team, i don't think they're going to buy that but they do understand there's different rules for a president than there are for you and me. >> does it make sense that rosenstein would say to the president, we think at the end of last week, that he is not t you know, the subject of a

criminal investigation in terms of the cohen raid. >> it's possible. it's possible and the reason i say that is because it hasn't actually changed the ultimate objective. he could become a target at any time. all it takes is a piece of evidence to do so. i'm not saying that's going to be the case here but they have been investigating michael cohen specifically for a number of months. >> so it's good news for the president. >> it's good news for the president. >> if that is an accurate report then it tells you that at this point in the investigation after months of reading his e-mails and stuff -- >> it's a great sign for the president of the united states. there's still so much unknown about why they're after him. what they're investigating. >> back to anderson's point about the obstruction charge. you're talking about the president's man here if that's what they're hanging their hat on i think they should move on.

>> on the cohen thing, what i don't understand, i'm not a lawyer, is why would rosenstein volunteer that to the president. he was not asked? is it to save his job? that's a possibility? >> a requirement. >> or is it something that he would do because he knew that the president was concerned about it and he shouldn't be. >> i'm not going to say he's a guy that's going to get rolled here. he's a person who is a great character, high integrity. >> so why would you do it? >> i don't know. i think politics seeps into every phase of our government now. the three separate branches are becoming, you know, the judiciary used to be kind of independent. we hope it remains that way but the executive branch and investigative functions now seem to be points higher lliticized. >> they said they're not going to follow along with the president's immigration pledge. that's number one but number two

there may be a nonclinical reason here and it may be that because there was a department of justice rule and discussion about guidelines about searching an attorney's office, maybe he was trying to explain to him that he was not after him as a target because he is the client of this person, which would have raised questions about the attorney-client privilege being at issue here. perhaps he is simply telling him this does not implicate or make your attorney client privilege any less because we're not after him about what concerns you. that may be a nonpolitical way to try to say this is not an issue for you. >> and separate from the mueller investigation. >> separate. >> if he sign aued off on the r. >> and perhaps he felt the need to explain that to a president that's very upset about it. >> as you said good news for theth, it's still, if i was the president i would still be concerned if my attorney that allegedly only had three clients, one of those clients saying i was never a client.

the other one seemed to have a short-term need for a hush agreement, the president is his longest term client. you know, if i had that relationship with a friend or attorney who was under investigation i would still be nervous. >> and the key here is what you said, friend or attorney. because what he was to donald trump is going to be key in what's going to make him nervous. is michael cohen somebody that works for him and is an attorney or somebody that happens to have a law degree. that does not attach the attorney-client privilege. if most of their interactions were about business or not confidential or somebody else in the room or things that did not attach to privilege then you're asking the same question that president trump is probably asking, were you acting as my friend or my lawyer. if it was my friend i have a lot of information now that could be disclosed and making me or people a member of the trump organization very vulnerable. >> i didn't mean to interrupt you but i'm sure that most of those conversations probably weaved in and out of privilege and nonprivilege.

recorded conversations with other people, with third parties, who knows what is in those conversations. reasons for the president to be concerned. >> the president came out on air force one and said michael cohen is my attorney. talk to my attorney. so that's sort of pretty cut and dry. >> thank you very much. up next, breaking news on the new pecking order in the west wing of the white house. two new senior staffers getting the green light to bypass chief of staff john kelly and the justice department gives congress memos written by fired fbi director james comey about his most controversial conversations with president trump. and that more. the full interview coming up in this hour. ♪ ♪

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>> changes that could signal that chief of staff john kelly is losing some clout. what have you learned about the president's top aids here? >> well, anderson. dramatic new changes to that pecking order in the west wing of course with the addition of the new national security adviser and the new director of the national economic council. he's been praising them including his trip here and

though the president hasn't told them that they're reporting directly to him, that is certainly the sense of functionality in the west wing that they are reporting to the president and not the chief of staff john kelly which makes that interesting now they have been on the rise for the last few days. we saw that obviously there with his scuffle with the united nations ambassador nick kkki ha. some saw that as a sign of his a asendance. she does outrank him being a cabinet member and then he is asserting his authority by hiring and firing and clearinghouse with the national security in particular one aid in particular that homeless security adviser that recently left the white house and i'm told by sources that when he told him he was dismissing him, he was stunned and said he wanted to speak to the chief of staff john kelly but bolton made

clear this is his decision to make and not john kelly's. >> what does this mean for kelly's future or lack there of in the west wing? >> well, that's the question. what does it do to his standing in the west wing? because whenever he became chief of staff everyone was reporting directly to him including ivanka trump and jared kushner and now we're seeing the change and they're reporting that john kelly is what aids see as a downward slide in the west wing because he used to hold staff meetings three times a week. now he only does them once a week. he used to travel with the president on every trip and now he does not do that and he used to have a toe in every decision but we're seeing people be able to overrule john kelly by getting rid of staffers like the deputy national security adviser who john kelly wanted to keep in the administration but bolton has dismissed him. it does raise a lot of questions about how much longer john kelly

will be in this administration. >> fascinating. another development tonight the justice department has handed over to congress the james comey memos. they detail conversations in the months before he was fired. our justice reporter joins us now with more. now that they have been sent to capitol hill, we're waiting to see if members of congress released them can you explain why they're demanding these documents? >> sure. the memos provide an incredible glimpse into james comey's mind set leading up to his firing back last year and many of these issues are in dispute. for instance the loyalty pledge and allegation that president trump asked him to essentially let go of the investigation into former national security adviser michael flynn. now members of congress had seen some of the memos in redacted form but recently demanded they be unclassified and unredacted

in full. the justice department official, steven boyd in charge of legislative affairs explains it this way. in light of the unusual events occurring since the previous limited disclosure the department has consulted the relevant parties and concluded that the release of the memorandum to congress at this time would not adversely impact any on going investigation or other confidentiality interests of the executive branch but he goes on to explain, anderson, this is an unusual move. >> did the special council's office object at all to the doj releasing it? >> no, in fact, i'm told according to a source familiar that the justice department in fact consulted with the special council's office and mueller did not have any objection which is is interesting considering earlier this year cnn and other news outlets tried to sue in court to get access to the comey memos and a federal judge

blocked it saying they were part of the on going investigation at mueller's request. >> thank you very much. jake tapper asked comey what he thought about congress seeing his memos. you'll hear what he said coming up later this hour. next the attempt by the president's supporters to smear mueller and james comey reaches an absurd place. we're keeping him honest, ahead. surpri-- hold up. hold up. we got a laggy video call here. you need verizon, the best network for streaming. trade ya. okay, people, that's a reset. let's take it back from "surpri--" (avo) get $300 off the samsung galaxy s9+.

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a coordinated smear campaign is underway against robert mueller and james comey. it includes a number of claims that are just plain false. it's weird. stay with me here. two of the oddest are in boston and involve everything from the city's most notorious crime boss and the bombing years ago. there's no evidence for either of the claims. we'll start with the boston marathon bombing. the president's former campaign manager said on fox that fired fbi director james comey was somehow to blame. >> this is the same jim comey that was in charge of the boston

bombing at the time we had a terrorist attack in boston. this was a man that failed time and time and time again to protect american citizens. >> james comey was not the head of the fbi at the time of the boston marathon bombing. the bombing was in april. he didn't become fbi director until september. comey wasn't even in the fbi at the time. he was a private citizen. andrea mitchell the next day. >> i want to ask you about something you said on fox yesterday. you said jim comey failed to protect americans during the boston marathon since he was fbi director. the fact is he was not fbi director for another five months. >> as you know, jim comey served as the head of the boston office of the fbi at a period of time that i think mr. mueller served as the u. s. attorney in the state of massachusetts. >> but not during the boston marathon. >> not during the boston marathon but jim comey was responsible, i belief and we can go back and check for the

whitey bulger disaster. he was the head of fbi -- >> whitey bulger had nothing to do with the boston bombing. there was no admission that he said something untrue. no apology. just moving along and decided to bring in the boston crime boss whitey bulger that had nothing to do with the boston bombing. he is attempting to grab at another straw saying comey was the head of the boston office at the time of the case. he was never the head of the boston fbi office. there's no record of him working in that office at all. now you might wonder where did whitey bulger come into all of this? why are we even talking about him? seems as though this may have started with this on a radio show earlier this month. not about comey but about special council robert mueller. >> i don't think he cares

whether he hurts democrats or republicans but he's partisan. east a zealot. he kept people in prison for many years in order to protect the cover on whitey bulger as an fbi informer. >> two of them died in prison. two others along with the families of the dead men sued the government for $100 million. the now retired federal judge that presided over the case writes in the new york times i can say that mr. mueller who worked in the united states attorney's office in boston from 1982 to 1988 including a brief stint as the acting head of the office had no involvement in that case. he was never even mentioned. as the judge goes on to point out a former mayor of springfield massachusetts that served on the massachusetts parole board in the 1980s saw a letter from mueller opposing the release of one of the prisoners but no such letter has ever been found something the boston globe reveals and afterwards he never

repeated the allegation but further investigation seems warranted. by then the genie was out of the bottle and the president's supporters took it and ran with it. you know what that means, enter sean hannity. >> robert mueller was the u.s. attorney in charge while these men were rotting in prison. while certain agents in the fbi under mueller covered up the truth. four men went to jail. he was -- mueller was involved in the case. >> we're going to go to crime families. let's look at the mueller crime family during mueller's time as a federal prosecutor in boston, four men wrongfully imprisoned for decades, framed by an fbi informant and notorious ganger whitey bulger while he looked the other way. >> when you're not interested in facts you can blame folks for anything. but they might do a better job of checking their dates and getting their story straight. joining me is shelly murphy.

co-author of whitey bulger, america's most wanted gangster and the manhunt that brought him to justice. does it make sense to you that he is spreading this idea that jim comey was head of the fbi at the time of the boston bombing? >> yeah, i mean, it's just sirly not true. the boston marathon bombings happened before comey became director of the fbi. so to try to connect comey to the marathon bombings is just simply not true. >> and the mueller part of this, i mean, the whitey bulger saga is complicated. can you explain to people about it why this allegation is just without merit? >> well, you know whitey bulger was one of the most notorious organized crime figures from this area. he was able to get away with murders for years because he was an fbi informant but from 1975 to 1990.

he fled boston just before '95, before his indictment. he was on the run for more than 16 years and there's just nothing in this long saga that connects mueller to white whitey bulger. mueller was in the u.s. attorney's office in boston from 1982 to 1988 but he did not prosecute organized crime cases. he was an informant for the fbi and there were cases that the fbi was building against the new england mafia at the time but they were under a different prosecutorial unit and i also might add that the whitey bulger story is a never ending saga in boston. congressional hearings, wrongful death suits, criminal trials, numerous hearings dating all the way back to the late 90s. i've covered all of them and not once has mueller's name surfaced in connection with those. >> and the four people that were

in prison for all of that time, two of them who died there, were able to finally sue and get money back once they were out. but mueller had, as far as you know, as far as your reporting is and the judge in the case said this as well, mueller had nothing to do with that either? >> no, and that's a case that i covered also. i went back and looked through all the old files and that was a terrible case. you had four men, wrongfully convicted in this 1965 slaying. two of them died in prison. the other two spent more than 30 years in prison and it was when the whitey bulger saga erupted. when it was revealed that he had a corrupt relationship with the fbi that there were these -- there was an investigation launched and it was a justice department task force in 2000 that found these old documents, hidden documents in the fbi files that indicated that these guys had been framed for a murder that they didn't commit.

and that is how this case sort of erupted. so back in the 80s when mueller was in the u.s. attorney's office in boston and there were people that were writing letters, prosecutors, fbi agents, urging the state parole board not to commute the sentences of these guys but we were unable to find any letters that mueller wrote. you know, asking that they be released but i think also you need to understand that at that point in time, some of the prosecutors that were writing letters there's no evidence that they knew that these men were innocent. so, you know, that really, you know, the story sort of evolved years later. >> the idea that comey had any involvement with the boston fbi office and with whitey bulger again is just not true. >> well that is just -- i can't imagine where that came from. it sort of seems to have been pulled out of thin air because comey never worked in the fbi's boston office and i can't understand why somebody would --

where this could even have come from. it's nonsense frankly. >> i appreciate your time and your reporting. thank you for being with us. >> thank you, bye. >> up next an inspector general sends it's report to federal prosecutors for potential criminal charges. what his legal team is saying about that when we continue. and the safey for "most parallel parallel parking job" goes to... [ drum roll ] ...emily lapier from ames, iowa. this is emily's third nomination and first win. um...so, just...wow! um, first of all, to my fellow nominees, it is an honor sharing the road with you. and of course, to the progressive snapshot app for giving good drivers the discounts --

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welcome back the department of justice watchdogs has made a referral. last week the inspector general found that mccabe lacked candor on four occasions with investigators. explain what this is all about. >> well, we learned that the justice department inspector general which is the independent watchdog sent this criminal referral to the top prosecutor in the d.c. u.s. attorney's office asking them to consider whether there should be criminal charges, whether they should pursue criminal charges against mccabe, the fired deputy fbi director. so presumably what they're going

to look at is decide whether they should further investigate andy mccabe potentially lying to investigators as you know in the report the scathing report that came out last week it said that andy mccabe had mislead and had lied to investigators and his former boss james comey on four different occasions including three times under oath. this is something that andy mccabe has denied. he never mislead investigators. they never mislead james comey but so basically now this is in the hands of the d.c. u.s. attorney's office to determine whether it should pursue criminal charges. >> what's mccabe saying in response? >> so his attorney came out with a statement to this saying although we believe the referral is unjustified the standard for a referral is very low. we already met with staff members from the u.s. attorney's office. we're confident that unless there's inappropriate pressure from high levels of the

administration the u.s. attorney's office will conclude that it should decline to prosecute. as you know, anderson, mccabe and his team said all along that they feel like mccabe has been unfairly targeted because he's the key witness in the comey obstruction of justice probe and they believe as mccabe himself said that he didn't do anything wrong and again just to reiterate just because there's a criminal referral that doesn't mean that there will be criminal charges at the end of this. >> comey weighed in on this referral in that interview with jake tapper. what did he say? >> he did. it's interesting because james comey was the one that brought andy mccabe on board as his deputy director. they had a close working relationship and now months later after this there's this i.g. report saying his deputy mislead investigators. here's what he told jake about that. >> how do you feel about your former deputy, according to the inspector general lying? lying to you.

lying to investigators. for a leak that the inspector general said was only motivated to preserve his own reputation having nothing to do with the fbi and the public's right to know. >> conflicted. i like hm as a person. even good people do things they shouldn't do. i read the report. i'm not the decision maker in the case. it's accountability mechanisms working and they should work because it's not acceptable in the fbi or the justice department for people to lack candor. it's something that we take really seriously. >> one of the exampled in the report is that mccabe claimed that he told james comey, his boss that he was going to authorize a disclosure, that he had authorized a disclosure of information to a wall street journal reporter about the clinton foundation. comey claimed that wasn't the case. mccabe never told him that. so that was one of the four examples there. president trump no surprised here weighed in on all of this tweeting today anderson, james comey just threw andrew mccabe

under the bus. it's a disaster for both of them. getting a little, lot of their own medicine. so you can interpret that tweet how you want. >> thank you very much. more breaking news tonight, the president will not be attending the funeral of former first lady barbara bush. first lady melania trump will attend the memorial service on behalf of the first family to avoid disruptions of added security and out of respect for the bush family and those attending the service president trump will not attend. we asked what out of respect to the family. we know four former presidents would be there. the white house did not give a clarification. up next you'll see the full interview with jim comey. here's some of what he had to say about andrew mccabe. >> given that the i.g.'s report has interactions it had with me and other senior executives i

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today former fbi director james comey sat down for an extended interview with jake tapper. there's a lot of news breaking today and we heard his take on all of it from andrew mccabe to his own memorial service ros be from congress. we'll play you the entire interview which began with the news of the day. >> let's talk about this breaking news. sending a criminal referral to the u.s. attorney in d.c. regarding andrew mccabe. he repeatedly lied to investigators and to you about a leak to the wall street journal in which he confirmed or he had people leak to the wall street journal confirming the existence of an investigation into the

clinton foundation. if they ultimately bring a case against andrew mccabe would you be a witness for the prosecution? >> potentially. i could well be a witness. >> you express a lot of horror in the book when public officials and even celebrities lie to investigators whether martha stewart. >> yeah. >> so i would assume that you would be upset at andrew mccabe. i haven't heard you criticize him the same way you criticize others. so far it's the accountability of the mechanisms working because it's a department committed to the truth. so it's working. i don't know whether there's a

criminal referral or what will happen but that's part of accountability and examination of what the consequences will be. for a leak that the inspector general said was only motivated to preserve his own reputation having nothing to do with the fbi or the public's right to know. >> conflicted. i like him very much as a person but sometimes even good people do things they shouldn't do. have read the report. i'm not the judge in the case. i'm not the discipline -- decision maker in the case. it is accountability mechanisms working and they should work because it's not acceptable in the fbi or the justice department for people to lack candor. it's something that we take really seriously. >> the justice department is also expected today to begin the process of letting congress see your memos detailing your interactions with president trump. is that the right decision to let congress see them. >> i don't know. i don't know what considerations the department has taken into

account. it's fine by me. >> you don't care? >> i don't care. i don't have any views on it. i'll totally fine with transparency. i have tried to be transparent throughout this and i think what folks will see if they get to see the memos is i have been consistent since the very beginning right after my encounters with president trump and i'm consistent but i don't know how many of that group. >> one of them is of the classified one obviously from when you told president trump in trump tower about what was in that two-page annex of the steele dossier. what were the other classified ones be about? >> well, i can't answer that if they're classified.

>> you can't say the subject of them? terrorism. >> a number of conversations i had related to our investigative responsibilities and that i considered classified at the time. if i go beyond that i'm breaking the seal on them. >> we are just learning that bloomberg news is reporting that rod rosenstein said he is not a target of the russia probe. that the point in the investigation what might that mean telling the president he's not a target? >> i don't know what it means. it's a fairly standard part of any investigation. trying to decide whether a person you're encountering is a witness, subject or target. target is someone on whom the investigation, grand jury has evidence sufficient to charge. witness is nothing to do with the exposure and i don't know the context of the deputy attorney general did that but that's the general framework. >> the president obviously had a lot of words in response to you.

he called you a liar and a leaker. our reporting say that is a republican sneaking with the president says that the feels he weathered your book tour. has he come out unscathed? >> i have no idea. it's not about the president. i hope to be part of a conversation. president trump figures in that part of the stories i'm trying to tell to illustrate ethical leadership. it is not about him. i haven't thought about it in terms of whether he is weathering it or not weathering it. >> i read the book. it is about your time as a u.s. attorney, your childhood and a lot in there about president trump, especially in terms of leadership and examples of how not to be a leader and an example of someone that's a bully and you talk throughout the book about how you hate

bullies. >> i couldn't write about ethical leadership without the it is an important part of the book and not a book about donald trump and i hope very much it's useful long into the future beyond trump presidency. you call him morally unfit and the presidency a forest fire. do you think the nation would be better off if hillary clinton had won? >> i can't answer that. that's something that hypothetical is too hard to try to go back in time and -- >> it's hard to imagine how you don't think the nation is better off if hillary clinton had won. >> i don't think about it in about it in those terms, jake. the question is adhering to our values? i think the first thing to do is not get numb to it.

calling for the jailing of private citizens, don't shrug. that is not okay or normal. >> the -- it's interesting that you won't go as far as to say that hillary clinton would be -- the nation would be better off if hillary were president because you have called for the nation to respond to the challenge of trump in your view by voting. presumably by voting against what he represents. is that not a fair interpretation? >> i actually think of as -- maybe it's the same thing but i think of it in terms of voting for something else which is the core values of this country which are more important than any policy dispute. i don't care whether people find in it a republican or democrat or neither. it is important that the leaders reflect the values because that's all we are. >> so you have spent decades building a reputation for being evidence based, for being nonpartisan. the fbi is an organization that is supposed to be evidence based and nonpartisan. do you worry that by painting this stark portrait of president trump and suggesting that the american people should vote for

something other than the lack of values that he represents in your construct that you are sullying both the brand of comey and the brand of the fbi? >> yeah, i don't think so. i certainly hope not. because i'm not criticizing president trump because he's a republican or because he has a certain view on taxes or immigration or anything else. i'm criticizing him on the grounds of values which is at the center of the fbi and something that should be the center of all of our evaluations of our leaders so i get that it's relevant to politics but i see it as something actually more important than partisan politics >> something you said to me in one of the interviews stood out. quote, if you've been investigating something for a year and you don't have a general intelligence of where it will end up you should be fired. you wrote something similar in the book. exonerating hillary clinton of criminal behavior. before you had even interviewed her. let's apply that same standard to the mueller investigation. you oversaw the russia investigation for almost ten

months. did you, do you have a general sense of how that investigation is going to end up? >> in some respects i did at the time but not completely. i suspect that the team that's investigating it now has a general sense. i have no idea what that is but again it's a general feeling on the current course and speed to end up in this direction or that direction. >> where did you think it was going to end up? did you think it would end up with people around president trump being found guilty of conspireing, aiding and abetting with russians? >> i can't say. i've left it out of the book for reasons that should be obvious. i can't talk about classified information or sensitive investigative details so i'm not going to say. >> but your sense of where the investigation was headed is not classified. it is just your impression. obviously, the investigation continued since then. why won't you say? people want to know. you have left the impression that there's something there in your interviews. you have said when asked do the russians have something on president trump?

you have said it's possible. it's possible. which is not a very fbi director answer, don't you think? >> i think it's an honest and calibrated answer. i hope that's a fbi -- i'm not the fbi director but i hope that's a fbi director type answer. >> when you gave the press conference about hillary clinton in 2016 in the summer you said you didn't say she didn't lie. or you didn't say it's possible she lied. you said you found no evidence she had lied. you found no evidence that she had that e-mail server knowing that it was improper. but you're not using the same construct of there is evidence or there isn't evidence. you're saying it's possible that leaves the impression for people that there might be stuff out there that there might be evidence that president trump is under the thumb of the kremlin. >> yeah, but i see that, jake, asking me two different things. i'm not going to talk about the investigation of possible cooperation between americans and the russian effort to influence our election.