thank you for joining us and shawn turner, we appreciate the conversation. >> thanks. >>> well, meantime we are watching riyadh, waiting for a meeting between the top u.s. diplomat and the saudi crown prince mohammed bin salman. secretary of state mike pompeo is in the region looking to shore up support for u.s. policies. now, he will likely focus on iran and syria, but he's being dodged by questions about the murder of journalist jamal khashoggi. >> and on that issue he's vowed to raise the issue with the saudi officials is says u.s. policy has been consistent, that is despite the white house questioning intelligence reports saying the crown prince was behind the killing. secretary pompeo's tour through the region has been to reassure allies that the u.s. withdraw from syria will be orderly and not premature. equipment is being rotated out of the country, but the 2,000 u.s. military personnel there will remain. >> meanwhile, president trump tweeted a message to turkey, don't attack the kurds. mr. trump says the u.s. will devastate turkey economically if it doesn't comply. >> turkey cons

security analyst shawn turner, who is a former director of communication for u.s.ational intelligence. thanks to both of you for joining us. >> thanks for having us. >> bob, i do want to start with you. first, of course, the "new york times" reported that the fbi was so concerned about the u.s. president's behavior that it began investigating whether he was secretly working on russia's behalf. then the "washington post" writes that mr. trump allegedly went to extraordinary lengths to conceal details of his five face to face meetings with russia's president vladimir putin. what is your response to these two incredible reports? >> you're right. they are explosive. you have to look at trump's history with the russians, which goes back to 1986, connections with the kgb, money going into trump properties, russian money and on and on and on. we know the whole story, but the fact the fbi opened an investigation is extraordinary. >> shawn turner, why would there be no details from any of the five meetings, face to face meetings between the u.s. and russian presidents? how

joining me now, shawn turner, former director for national intelligence and former adviser phil mudd.ood to see both of you. shawn, you first. what could be a reasonable explanation for the president's approach here? why wouldn't he want documentation or witnesses as protection at the very least? >> fred, to be candid, i don't think there is a good reason for not wanting some sort of documentation for what happened in these meetings. to be clear, every president has the right to meet one on one with world leaders. previous presidents have done it, and while i think for president trump it's ill-advised considering everything that's going on with the russia investigation, it's his right to do that. but what the president has to be concerned about here and what everyone has to be concerned about is there is an optic here that there are secrets between the president of the united states and vladimir putin. the president's top advisers, his dni, and certainly not the american people are privy to those secrets. so the question we have to ask here is are we okay with secrets between these tw

and former intelligence and cnn national intelligence analyst shawn turner. how concerning should it be that there is a counterintelligence investigation of this caliber against the president? >> this is a big deal. when we think about what it involved, this is a question of whether or not the president of the united states was either willingly or wittingly or unwittingly coopted by russia. when we think about this investigation, there are three scenarios here. either, you know, there's this idea that russian interference in the election was something that national security officials should be concerned about. or this idea they interfered in the election and u.s. persons helped them and then this idea they interfered in the election and it wasn't just persons associated with the election but it was the president who helped russia. either scenario is one in which there are significant national security concerns and they justify the fbi opening up this kind of investigation. >> and then, jack, you know, we've heard from the president who is -- and the white hou

joining us now we have former director shawn turner and samantha zbran vin gerrette. >> why all of this strange behavior, right, that had gotten their attention, was this a pattern and something they needed to investigate in and they concluded that it was. i mean that -- i think it bears repeating what shimon just reported. they were having to consider whether the president of the united states had become a stooge for russia, okay. and as the legal counsel for the fbi said that one was extreme, they were looking at the worst case scenario that one was extreme, the other is that the president is completely innocent and we discussed that too. there's a range of things, we need to investigate, because we don't know whether the worst seis scenario is possibly true or if the president is totally innocent. your thoughts. >> my thoughts are that's what an investigation is, to figure out whether someone is guilty of a crime and in this case whether the president was knowingly or unknowingly a russian asset. the key question coming out of these transcripts is for me what the fbi thinks the presi