there is word that the attorney general put pressure on chris wray to get rid of andy mccabe, and chris wray was so staunch in support of mccabe, i will quit if you make me do that, or i'm going to do that beyond me i quit. do you know that to be true or false? >> look, the president has got, as i just said a great deal of confidence in director wray. he put him there for a reason. he wants him to lead the fbi, clean up some of the problems of the past leader of the fbi, director comey, and i think, we have full confidence in his ability to do that and we're going to leave some of those big decisions to him. brian: do you have confidence in mccabe? >> look, i haven't had that conversation and my understanding he is up for retirement anyway but the president has put director wray in charge to look at those things and make those decisions and we have full confidence that he is going to do exactly that. this is a man of great integrity, that had a great deal of support from across the aisle, bipartisan support and the president is glad that he is there leading his top law enforcement agenc

at some point when donald trump tires of chris wray, chris wray is gone, too. >> the backdrop to all of this is the russia investigation. we want you to hear what former new jersey governor and federal prosecutor chris christie had to say about this. >> i don't think there's been any credible allegations against the president of the united states. unless there are credible allegations, which i don't believe there are, i don't think he should be sitting across from special counsel. the presidency different. i don't think they should do that. >> wouldn't that be a telltale sign if trump says thanks, but no thanks, special prosecutor, that he has something to hide? >> there are political implications. that happens president trump will have to testify or plead the fifth. in that instance, sure, it looks like he has something to hide. this is a class act in terms of prosecutorial looking for the facts, identifying if there's any crime and moving on. that was the same thing that happened in the star investigation. people tried to politicize it. these are career people just doing their job.

general jeff sessions at the public urging of president donald trump has been pressuring fbi director chris wray to fire fbi deputy director andrew mccabe. but wray threatened to resign if mccabe was removed. that's according to three sources with direct knowledge. according to the new reporting tonight, attorney general jeff sessions told the white house counsel don mcgahn how upset the fbi director was about the pressure on him to fire his deputy, andrew mccabe. mcgann told sessions this issue was not worth losing the fbi director over. that's according to a source familiar with the situation. we do not know when this occurred. the fbi director threatening to resign in the face of pressure on him to remove the deputy director of the bureau. of course, the president nominated chris wray to be fbi director just this past summer, after he fired the previous fbi director, james comey. james comey testified to congress he was fired after he refused to let go of the fbi investigation into the president's national security advisor mike flynn. but this reporting tonight about the pressure being applie

. >> before the house intel vote, chris wray an wwas allowed to rw the memo. the president is inclined to release the memorandum which could pit him against his own justice department. >> the president erupted when he learned of efforts to stop the memo release. officials warned it would be extraordinarily reckless to public this. for more, return to manu raju on capitol hill. >> reporter: good morning, christine and dave. a sharply divided committee voting along party lines to move forward with the republican staff memo that details allegations of fbi and justice department abuse over russia investigation suggesting that warrants were obtained during the campaign season over carter page given information to the fisa judge to approve the warrants. the judge not given the full picture why the justice department was seeking the warrants. the memo drafted by staff from the house intelligence committee devin nunes said whoever viewed this document and now the committee voted along party lines, the president has to decide to reject or approve its release. we have b

chris wray doesn't want to do it.e goes to the white house counsel, don mcgahn, and says, please don't make me do it. and now suddenly he's gone. >> i got to jump in. >> we were getting warmed up. >> i know. >> i need to respond to one of them. >> very quickly. >> let me say, the chief of staff was the first one to say mccabe had a conflict of interest. if you think you can read those peter strzok/lisa page -- >> i want to thank everybody on the panel. chris cuomo is going to pick up the coverage with "cuomo prime time" right after a quick break. >>> breaking news, the republicans seem to have found their counter to the russia investigation, and it puts the fbi and the democrats in the crosshairs. the memo they plan to release is just the setup for what they hope will be a mass conspiracy of wrongdoing at the highest levels of law enforcement. all an alleged plot by the enemies of president trump. that's what they're selling. tonight i go one-on-one with minority leader nancy pelosi, who has seen this memo.

chris wray didn't like that. he went to the white house counsel, reportedly, don mcgahn and complained. he was not in good standing over at the white house. wray, for whatever reason, wray had been defending mccabe, correct? for the most part. there was something that happened over the weekend that made him scratch his head and think, you know what? i'm going to stop doing that. >> it could have been the inspector general report or the devin nunes memo which wray was allowed to review over the weekend, a four-page memo outlining alleged fbi abuse. >> we don't know. >> on the nunez thing, i was talking to people on the fbi side, they don't believe it's related to nunez. wray did see it, but those, whatever is contained in that memo doesn't appear to have any kind of direct effect or factor into the decision that the fbi director made today with mccabe about him leaving. >> we are told, also, the president was upset, furious, some are suggesting when he was flying back from davos, switzerland and saw that the depart

the head of the fbi, chris wray were over at the white house.they met with the president's chief of staff. let's bring in our specialists. back in july, why didn't the attorney general sessions replace mccabe. the $700,000 for his wife's political run from hillary clinton. the president minced no words. he wanted mccabe out. >> that's right. it was in december that it was reported that mccabe would leave eventually when he was eligible for full retirement benefits. which is still apparently when he is officially off the pay roll, the end of march. the question now is, we've all been looking into all day. why now? why was it announced right now? there are a lot of things in and around this announcement that he was, that he stopped working in his job. first of all, the memo we've all been talking about, that it may be released tonight. the republicans wrote it. mccabe is no doubt in that and described in that. also the inspector general has been doing a lengthy view of what went on with regard to the investigation and clinton e-mails. how it came

chris wray goes way back with comey and mueller. during the bush administration when there was a controversy over surveillance, comey and mueller were threatening to resign and wray said he wanted to jump with them. so it's -- >> can i just hit pause there? because i was on the white house staff. let's remind people what this was because this white house is like a baby vampire. they don't know what they don't know about law enforcement. but let's just relive that. there was a question, there was a dramatic bedside scene, it was about reauthorizing one of the very controversial counterterrorism programs under the bush/cheney presidency and it was mueller, comey, wray, a host of other highly respected law enforcement figures who threatened to resign as a bloc. >> right. >> and i just -- i wonder if you can speak to just debasing is the only word that keeps coming to me but i feel like it gets overused but the debasement of career professionals by these sort of twitter taunts to the deputy director of the fbi by saying, oh, yeah, just t

chris wray put out that red flag saying no, i don't think you can do it. i think rosenstein made the same case and both of them now i believe, are in the president's sights. and the question i have, particularly with chris wray right now, if the president countermans his request, grave concerns about material admissions of fact, if the president then knowing what he knows from chris wray releases a memo that his fbi director believes gives the wrong impression, omits important facts. >> shares our intelligence. talking to former fbi folks, sharing intelligence to our -- >> right. >> to the good guys and bad guys around the world. >> endangers sources and methods, et cetera, et cetera. what does chris wray do? does he have to quit? i don't know the answer to these questions. this is a showdown that we're headed to. and i don't know where it leads. >> it's not just a question of the memo releasing certain information ray is saying there are owe missions from this memo that change the mean iing. he's not just saying x, y and z is released too much. he's sayin

if chris wray is who trump thinks he is, and i believe he is, i've known chris wray's reputation, impeccable. let him do his job, run the fbi as he sees fit, don't interfere. it not just hurts your own credibility, the white house's credibility, but the acts doing the day-to-day job of enforcing the law in courts across this country, if the public doesn't respect the fbi because of what the president is saying, it really makes it difficult for them to do their job. >> i appreciate it. when we come back, a washington watchdog group claims the six-figure payment to a porn star alleged to have had an affair with donald trump broke the law and is now asking a handful of federal agencies to investigate. their lawyer will join me next to explain. new year, new phones for the family. join t-mobile, and when you buy one of the latest samsung phones get a samsung galaxy s8 free. plus, unlimited family plans come with netflix included. so, you can watch all your netflix favorites on your new samsung phones. join the un-carrier and get a samsung galaxy s8 free. all on america's best unlimited network.

remember, whether you agree with jim comey or don't agree with him, chris wray has the right to have n team in place at the fbi, put the fbi in the direction he thinks it needs to. one thing i know about director wray, he will make those decisions himself. >> and yet, on bloomberg, they reported on monday that kelly held separate meetings or phone calls with senior justice department officials last monday, tuesday and wednesday to convey trump's displeasure and lecture them on the white house expectations with the disclaimer that the white house isn't expecting white house officials to do anything illegal or unethical. >> these phone calls from kelly came as a direct result, we're told, by president trump exploding on his flight to da s davos, arguing that his own department said it would be destructive to release the memos. despite this is separate from the russia investigation, they're intent on proving and showing that what was brought forward on the fisa was material that came from this controversial christopher steele document that apparently had not been made included or made pu

the "washington post" reporting that earlier this month, fbi director chris wray, deputy attorney general rod rosenstein trekked to capitol hill in a last-ditch effort to avoid giving republican lawmakers access to intelligence they considered so sensitive that it could not leave their control. house intel committee chairman devin nunes has been agitating for information, which included investigative documents, interviews with top fbi officials, and texts between fbi employees. the "post" reporting ryan, however, was unmoved. nu in nunes' committee, he argued, deals with sensitive, raw intelligence and this case was no different. it's worth reminding our viewers nunes stepped aside from his committee's work last april while house investigators looked into ethics charges against him. the "washington post" writing last april that nunes has come under fire in recent weeks for speaking publicly about classified foreign surveillance reports he viewed on white house grounds. but that gave speaker paul ryan no pause. the "washington post" reports that wray was also rebuffed by the committee when

the president appointed chris wray because he is a man of true character and integrity and the right choice to clean up the misconduct at the highest levels of the fbi and give the rank and

. >> you have this third layer of the story, which we heard the president denying it, that chris wray, now fbi director, and as the story goes, it was sessions, originally from the president, who wanted wray to terminate his deputy, mccabe, set to retire in two months time. why would they want him gone so badly? >> who knows. it raises a question again. here you have the fbi director push him to clean house and the fbi director standing up in effect, saying i don't see a reason to do this. it is in that same vain of undue influence in ongoing investigations the president himself has not been subtle about this, right? he tweets frequently and aggressively very harsh criticism of the fbi, saying they're in tatters in a tweet in december. even this morning he was questioning the fbi about the release of text messages between two former -- two current fbi employees, going back a number of months and raising questions about what the fbi was hiding. so the president has been very public about that criticism. does it look like he was doing the president's bidding? possibly but wray saying i'

, it will make news if it doesn't and chris wray saying please don't. >> this is extraordinary.this is a trump appointee, his own fbi director, his own justice department going against him. i looked at the director's statement t says very clearly they've followed all the procedures in fisa. i've gotten fisa warrants. they involve extensive people, court review and there is a clear paper trail. you can go back and look to see the steps it took to get to its final destination. if it goes through a review i think it will end up validating the director's statement then you have a situation where you have an independent review also contradicting the president. it will be interesting to see if he hangs his hat on a chair that the chairman nunes didn't even look at the information on which this memo is based. >> i think jeff zeleny put it correctly, it will be news if the white house doesn't release this thing. thank you for your voice and experience with the fbi. the other breaking story this wednesday afternoon out of rural virginia. this train, carrying members of congress on to the

chris wray has not been shy about speaking his mind. and not going against the president but defending the fbi. why do you think we would see this departure a month ahead of time. when they don't need more negative optics. >> look, the biggest issue is simply the president is attacking -- the president and his loyalists are attacking the special investigation and the fbi. anyone who's attempting to hold the president accountable who has responsibility for that, the president is attacking them. look, this is what happens in other countries. when you have -- in foreign countries. when you have a deeply corrupt leader who has decided that they're going to be deeply corrupt or they've made decisions that have put them in that place. invarably, they end up in conflict with law enforcement. and often they purge law enforcement leaders in order to protect themselves. we see this around the world. donald trump fits that mold. and he's taking the same actions. >> but why does mccabe need to step down? if president wants to dump on him, he's dump

and of course now we have chris wray reportedly threatening to resign as well. that's an entire spate of incredibly powerful people with extraordinary amounts of responsibility either being forced out of their jobs or threatening to leave their jobs because of one reason, and the one reason is president donald trump. it's having a dramatic behind-the-scenes effect on the way the department of justice as an institution works. but that said, what makes this whole situation even more unusual is that it points to a slight ham-handedness in trump's firing of james comey. anyone who is familiar with the way that leadership of the fbi works could have told you comey and mccabe were close. firing comey and replacing him with mccabe would be like firing comey and replacing him with comey. on top of that, chris wray is very much part of this same cohort of experienced federal law enforcement officials that almost came of age in the wake of 9/11. chris wray was in the justice department while bob mueller was heading the fbi as that institution turned into primarily a count

and it's really inconsistent with president trump saying he appointed chris wray because he has a great reputation and rebuild the fbi. and doesn't trust him to do his job. he wants to interfere and tell wray who he ought to have as deputy dregt director. who he should hire and fire. i have known chris wrays reputation. impeccable reputation. let him do his job. let him run the fbi as he sees fit. don't interfere. it hurts your credibility but the agents who are doing the day-to-day job of enforcing the law in court across the country. if the public doesn't respect the fbi because of what the president is saying, it really makes a difficult for them to do their job. >> thank you. i appreciate it. when we come back the washington watchdog group claims the six figure payment to a porn star alleged to have an affair with president trump broke the law. and is asking agencies to investigate. the lawyer will join me next to explain. it in under an hour, and you can too. build a better website - in under an hour. with gocentral from godaddy. i knew at that exact moment ... i'm beating this. my

he said chris wray has every right to surround himself with his own people. but as you point out, the optics of being pounded by donald trump near daily on twitter and in two press avails last week certainly don't make it look like this was just chris wray putting his stamp on it. can you tie together the departures of andy mccabe and the two other individuals who were close to jim comey, neither of them household names, but one was a well respected general counsel who served under the mueller regime, under the comey regime, mr. baker, and another close aide to comey? because it looks like -- to the president's critics like a purge of people who can corroborate comey's account of his firing. >> exactly. and so, look, a new fbi director comes in and he has every right to surround himself with who he wants. so, when wray came in, anybody who pays attention to the fbi, who is as dorky as i am, sorry, he's probably going to get a new fbi deputy. a new deputy director. jim baker who is counsel to comey, was very close to comey, all right. the new fbi director is p

>> so i say that tonight, even though i don't know chris wray personally, he's earned my respect. why? he's preserving the independence of the fbi, but if this reporting is accurate, he's also sending a message to the rank and file of the fbi. he's saying, i have your back. do your job, do your very tough job, and i'll have your back. and that's something all americans should respect tonight. >> and kaitlyn, how can you speak? what can you say to the communications between jeff sessions, the attorney general, the nation's top law enforcement officer and don mcghan who is white house counsel. >> so axios reported that sessions made wray aware of how reluctant he was to fire mccabe, like we said, that he threatened to resign instead of do that. the message seems to be well received. the issue has been left as it is for now, but yeah, it seems that message was very clearly communicated. and i think it goes back to just the idea that wray is standing up against what would have been at the bare minimum a media field day over the second major firing and then a resignation within the fbi

today with this letter from chris wray and the fbi to the public, it's burst into the open into public view. so we now have a real clear intragovernment conflict going on. the fbi has made clear to both the white house now and to the house intelligence committee that the memo is inaccurate and they are obviously very opposed to its release. >> shepard: really is extraordinary that the man heading up this unusual warning is the man this president put into his position and it is he who is saying, mr. president, don't do this. last night it was the president that said i'm 100% going to do this. we shall see. the president is speaking or the tape play back is just beginning. stay with us. we'll talk more. listen. >> i want to start by saying i spoke with speaker ryan just a few moments ago. they're doing pretty good. the train accident was a tough one. a tremendous jolt. they're proceeding to their conference. we don't have a full understanding yet as to what happened, but it was a train hitting a truck going at a pretty good speed. we'll have a full report as to what. it looks like the dr

chris wray as fbi director has an obligation to protect national security information.t is part of the duty that he has in his role. so, it really is quite astounding, this early into his tenure that he had to take this step, break from the justice department perhaps, break from the white house and go public in terms of saying how damaging this could be. >> two issues here. the fbi statement goes right to the accuracy, saying that this is fundamentally inaccurate. but you also raise an issue, and i've heard the same from current and former intelligence officials, by exposing this process of how the fbi and the u.s. intelligence community picks targets to be is your va you are exposing a process. >> classified document, we don't know whether it's secret or top secret, meaning it's disclosure publicly without proper review could cause grave or serious damage to u.s. national security. that's the standard. and so that's part of the standard. and so he has a responsibility to do this and fbi would be concerned about a misrepresentation, particularly about their appearance b

government, and that there aren't that many people who can weather the slings and arrows of that job and chris wray is learning right now just how true his own words are. >> chris, one of the next stops for sessions could be the hill. so many facets to these investigations. you think about all of these administration officials, and sort of how they reserve the president's right to invoke executive privilege, garrett was referring to this -- how they're basically saying executive privilege had they may or may not have grounds for it. what do you think will happen with sessions? >> jackie mentioned this, he's not -- you would think going back to the hill would be somewhat friendly territory for him in that he served in the senate from 1996 until 2017. but he is both struggled and run into very tough questioning. a lot of it came from someone who is not there anymore, al franken. but on his role in the russia investigation and he has struggled, you know, i would think he has been more -- a little bit more open than some of the other people who have come up there, but he has also done this thing that y

and perhaps, and this is just speculation, that it came to a certain point where maybe chris wray threw up his hands or chris wray and mccabe threw up their hands and said, all right, this is going to happen. what we don't know is if there was an order for him to leave, where it came from. >> and rachel, it's probably a month or so earlier than we anticipated, but he was under enormous pressure to get out of there. >> yeah, and you just have to look at what happened over the past couple of days. republicans on the hill have sort of been hitting, you know, tv channels talking about these new texts that came to light from two top fbi officials basically suggesting that maybe they weren't going to go hard on then-candidate hillary clinton and the hillary clinton e-mail investigation, because they were worried she was potentially going to be the boss. republicans have been trying to make this case that the fbi have had this anti-trump bend. it's not obviously illegal or against the law at all for fbi officials to have public opinions. but it only causes a problem if they act on those in a b

>> chris wray is a professional. he's got great respect in the legal community and at the fbi now. mccabe is very popular, very well respected among the rank and file at the fbi. and wray is simply not going to take direction about his own personnel decisions with respect to his deputy. so this appears to be sessions trying to curry favor with the president. he's been out of favor for such a long time and here this might seem to be an easy way to do it, but he's run into the resistance properly of the fbi director in saying, hands off, my deputy. >> how extraordinary is it that the special counsel robert mueller, a self-performer 12-year fbi director, has actually called the attorney general of the united states, jeff sessions, to come and answer questions before his russia investigation? >> it's not at all unusual. it's respected. in fact, that's the reason why it was imperative that sessions recuse himself from the investigation because of his knowledge as a witness, first with respect to the russians, his interaction with the russian ambassador, and secondly, his knowledge about

. >> chris wray was allowed to review the memo and raise concerns. one source says the president erupted last week when he learned of the justice department efforts to stop the release. publishing it would be extraordinary reckless. for more we turn to manu raju on capitol hill. >> reporter: good morning, christine and dave. a house intelligence kmcommitte voting along party lineses to release the memo of fbi and justice department abuse. suggesting that warrants obtained during the campaign season over the adviser carter page were improperly obtained and information given to the fisa judge to approve the warrants. the judge not given the full picture of why the justice department was seeking the information. this is according to the allegations in the memo drafted by the staff from the house intelligence committee devin nunes. whoever viewed this document. the president will have to decide whether or not to objectobjec object or approve its release. we expect the president to approve its release. something that democrats yesterday were saying could

chris wray has been building his own tame. this -- team. this is something fbi directors generally do. he's bringing in his own staff, general counsel. these are two steps that new incoming fbi directors routinely take. other thing here is i think this is not the first time that a deputy director of the fbi or somebody in a senior position, one of the senior assistant, executive directors have decided to do this, which is to basically go into terminal leave, take their acquired leave, and basically ride it out until the day of their retirement. this gives them time to look for another position in the government. he'd be required to step down at some point anyway under the law. so he knows it's coming, and he said for years that he was going to do this. so the only thing is this moves up by a month or so his plan to do this. he's not the first one to do it, but it's notable for all the reasons your guests have been saying, because he's not just your average deputy director. >> and in fact, frank, what was reported last week is when he was br

james comey, sally yates, jeff sessions, chris wray and now andrew mccabe.o trump wants their loyalty. he's trying to rig the system, that's investigating collusion and corruption, obstruction of justice. when you try to derail an investigation so that it's not objective, there's a name for that, it's called obstruction of justice. >> on that point, in the "washington post," all the"," s did almost precisely what comey did to him, hit him with the idea that the fbi director should be loyal to the president. if this was not one, quote, unquote mistake questioning by the fbi, but an ongoing pattern in targeting mccabe, budoes tha make things worse for trump? >> when you look at one day, trump fires the fbi director, and shortly thereafter, he reaches out to the new fbi direct to director to talk about politics to find out if he is on trump's side. when that new director doesn't give him the answer he wants, he doesn't fire him directly like he did comey, but he goes on a twitter war to try and get mccabe out and he succeeded. >> and he tells the new fbi direct

last night, the fbi director, chris wray, sent a note to all bureau employees. it's only five paragraphs long, 11 sentences, and at first glance, it looks like a nonsequitur. it talks about the importance of doing things right. and chris wray says he's gotten some briefing on what the inspector general report's going to say. he will make sure he is not swayed by political pressure. wants to make sure the fbi does everything by the book. in the very next paragraph, he says after discussions with deputy director andy mccabe, he submitted his intention to retire march 18. so the fact that the director puts these two things together in this message, saying i want you all to know mccabe is leaving and i want you all to know i'm concerned about what the ig report's going to say makes it pretty clear that's a factor in mr. mccabe's decision. >> what's the timing on the ig report? any idea what we might see that? >> no, we don't know. we believe it's in its final stages. for the simple reason that the fbi director has gotten some briefing on what it's going to say. norm

the axios report says at the urging of the president sessions told the fbi director chris wray that he wanted the deputy director andrew mccabe fired and in turn, the fbi director threatened to resign over the issue. now it's important to keep in mind that mccabe can't be fired. he's a career fbi agent so wray's only option perhaps would have been to re-assign him and that's what we reported previously for months. mccabe has been telling people that he plans to retire in march completely aware of some of the political fire that he's been taking from the president and his allies over the fbi's handling of the hillary clinton e-mail investigation and his connections to the two fbi employees who has been revealed sent anti-trump messages, these text messages, they had an affair and they were sending text messages between each other and the president has publicly called if are mccabe to step down. he's repeatedly tweeted these attacks on the fbi and mccabe saying basically, when he learned that mccabe was going to retire saying the fbi director andrew mccabe is racing the clock to retire w

. >> and shimon, on monday the fbi director chris wray and rod rosenstein talked to the chief of staff at the white house, john kelly, about this nunes memo. what did they say to him? >> some of this is being reported in "the washington post." there are reporting that the people that have been briefed on this meeting raised issues, rosenstein in particular, the deputy attorney general was there with the fbi director christopher wray. they raised issues. they have real concerns with this memo. i have spoke tone people, several people at the fbi who have raised this issue. the issue here is that this memo is not going to accurately portray exactly what the fbi was doing, the department of justice in the gathering of intelligence. when fisas are brought before the fisa court, when fbi agents, when the department of justice seeks fisas, there's a whole process that takes place. it's their concern that that entire process and the intelligence that was used to build out this fisa application will not be accurately explained in this memo. >> shimon, thank you so much for that report. i want t

chris wray doesn't want to do it.o the white house counsel don mcgahn and says don't make me do it. suddenly he's gone. >> i have to jump in. >> we were getting warmed up. >> quickly. >> the chief of staff was the first to say mccabe had a conflict of interest. if you think you can read the strozk, page e-mails and say there's not a problem a prejudice there. you know there's some -- >> i want to thank everybody on the panel. chris cuomo will pick up the coverage after a quick break. p. nexium 24hr stops acid before it starts for all-day, all-night protection. can you imagine 24 hours without heartburn? >>> breaking news the republicans seem to have found the counter to the russia investigation. and it puts the fbi and the democrats in the cross hairs. the memo they plan to release is just set up for what they hope will be a mass conspiracy of wrong doing at the highest level of law enforcement. all in alleged plot by the enemies of president trump. that's what they're selling. tonight i go one on one with minority

chris wray was defending mccabe, now he's not. ron putting forward, i think, what would be the best positive, sort of non-corrupt reason for this all to happen, which is that while there was a twitter campaign, there also was privately something real and a real reason to move forward, which i think would be, to most people's view a good thing if that was the alternative explanation. john, your view? >> well, look. we have no reason to believe on the public record that anything that andrew mccabe did or his wife did, as you noted, put a thumb on the scale of this investigation. what is crystal clear is that the president is challenging all the norms that we've become accustomed to about the independence of american law enforcement, about the president not being above the law as andrew mccabe indicated in another context in that clip you just played. as neera said, he's gone after comey, gone after mueller, going after sessions and rosenstein for not protecting him from comey and mueller. and the question of this investigation is ho

choosing chris wray to lead the fbi hasn't stopped the president from being critical about the way theustice department is being run. when he has his own people in place, he still isn't pacified. >> you spent 21 years in the marine corps. when you and your friends hear these words, what's the reaction? >> you know, i think for a long time we've been wondering what is it that the russians have on this president that keeps him in check? when we see the way the president attacks the intelligence community, the way he attacks law enforcement, the way that he wants this investigation to go away, it kind of leaves us all scratching our head and wondering why the president is turning on the people who are there to help him do his job. >> everybody stick around. don't go too far away. there's more breaking news we're following. lawmakers rushing to protect the special counsel, robert mueller, after a source confirms the president tried to fire him last june. >> and a pair of north korean figure skaters, could their performance ease the political tensions with kim jong un's regime? vo: gopi has

. >> is it disingenuous for republicans to be saying, well, chris wray looked at the memo and didn'ts. reporting from the washington post is chris wray and rod rosenstein were in the white house saying don't release this. that just seems like not factually correct. >> we thought when trump came in, we were concerned that he might use the fbi to weaponize or go after the opponents. >> organization was held -- >> that was mine. >> one memo can come out and suppress the democratic memo. >> the democratic memo is going to come out. give it a week for members to look at it. >> unless the republican memo doesn't come out. >> then you have the nunes memo, an inspector general support that is going to be very tough on the fbi and leaders there coming out and it will muddy -- >> that is the right way to do it. >> that is the right way to do it. but it does muddy the waterers for the white house to say look, you can't trust these people at the fbi. does that mean you can't trust bob mueller at all and his investigation at all because the white house is walking a fine line on that saying we are

the lik instead of this back and forth which has thus far not gotten him too far. >> what about chris wrayying it's something he's willing to resign over. >> it's a statement about what the fbi does stand for, former director comey, mr. wray, they're saying we take the oath of loyalty, it's to the constitution, it's to the country, and i think that if you're the head of an agency and you're asked to do something that's wrong, you have an obligation of saying i'm going to resign, because this goes over the line of what's ethical and appropriate. and the view of the executive and the president to be, i expect everybody to be part of a cu cultive personality, and we don't do that in this country, i would expect the fbi director to have that type of integrity and stand up for the rule of law. >> it is interesting hearing widespread support for what is in this account, that he did, as you say, stand up, and that's what he should do. there's so much here, i want to turn to another aspect of this story with sessions and deputy attorney general rod rosenstein who oversees mueller. when sessions re

deemed so sensitive chris wray opted to personally show it to nunes himself and apparently what nunes then proceeded to do was to take in all of those classified documents about an ongoing counterintelligence investigation and turn around and put that information into a set of talking point, a memo, laying out a supposed conspiracy inside the fbi and inside the justice department to undermine the trump campaign and the trump presidency. now, if you've been watching or listening to or reading any right-wing media over the pa week you know this is all anyone on the right has been talking or tweeting about, the secret memo that will bring down the whole russia investigation, reveal the conspiracy at the heart of justice department and blow up the deep state. republicans voted last week to make that talking points memo available to the entire house. now they're poised to vote to release it publicly. the justice department this week called that plan, quote, extraordinarily reckless and also charged that congressman nunes would be violating the terms of that deal they struck earlier this mo

the whole chris wray dust-up, someone had to say, mr.ent, you know, fbi directors are traditionally in those roles for years and so are attorneys general. >> throughout his career, president trump has at times put his employees or his associates in almost painful positions professionally, but not gone to the lengths of actually firing them. that is what has led to this situation in part with the attorney general where the attorney general, jonathan, thinks he's doing a lot of conservative things at the department of justice. yet the president keeps egging the attorney general to step down, and if he had a presidential break like we're watching with our own eyes with the attorney general, you would see a resignation. but not in this administration. instead the attorney general plows forward, tries to continue to win the president's favor because he likes the power he has as attorney general, keeps trying to work with the president and some of the president's own concerns about the fbi and personality fbi. it is an unusual situation, to sa

now, the problem here is chris wray and a new fbi director. and a new fbi director would be expected to pick his own deputy and chief of staff and his own council. but it makes it harder for him to do that when the president goes in and is seemingly calling the shots. >> yeah, this is the kind of organic natural turnover that would have happened, but now it's all cloaked in this. jennifer, we've been talking about the pressure put on mccabe. let's talk about your reporting today, the pressure writ large, being applied on the department of justice. >> right, so the president was traveling to davos when he was able to focus on the news that had just broken, about this letter from a top doj official to the house intelligence committee, urging them not to release the memo, saying it would be reckless to do so. the president's frustration boiled over. he'd had a long week of frustration with the department of justice. i've been told he has a bit of a preoccupation with the department of justice and its inner workings and has been very critical of w

a message to employees from fbi director chris wray made it clear that the report led to mccabe beinghe doj declined to comment while mccabe did not respond. >>> still ahead, the adult film star at the center of an alleged affair with donald trump speaks out. what she's now saying about the reported terroriryst with triru. >>> and plus the possibility of frigid temperatures for the month of february. stay with us. running a business is not for the faint of heart. luckily, office depot® officemax® is here to take care of you. ♪ taking care of business with print services done right. on time. guaranteed! expert tech support. and this week all dell pcs are up to twenty five percent off! save even more when you purchase a dell monitor. and make sure you protect your investment. office depot® officemax. officedepot.com ♪ taking care of business you wof your daily routine, so why treat your mouth any differently? complete the job with listerine® help prevent plaque, early gum disease, bad breath and kill up to 99.9% of germs. listerine® bring out the bold™ and sometimes, i don't eat the way

chris wray, we've written this story also, the fbi director has been under pressure to get rid of andy mccabe and to put other people who are not connected to former director comey. we have a story today that he is bringing in a new chief for his office, a chief of staff. a new general counsel, and of course, we know that andy mccabe is leaving. you're going to be seeing a lot of new faces at the fbi and this is directly because of pressure from the justice department and from the white house. >> paul, you shook your head vigorously no when i asked about how appropriate or inappropriate how nush it is to come out and ask the fbi's second in command that question. why? >> you know, chris, i've never seen anything like this. all of today's developments are breathtaking. we have the attorney general and former director of the fbi as witnesses in a criminal investigation against the president of the united states. and we know that president trump has this pattern of making inappropriate overtures to people who are overseeing investigations of him. it's not just today, deputy director mccab

. >> chris wray has been involved in other cases in which iphones were missing. awyer during bridge gate whether they couldn't find his cell phone. finally after the. where was it? in the vault of the law firm representing him. who was his lawyer? chris wray. nobody wants to go there. if the fbi has a history and pattern of destroying inconvenient evidence, or evidence that points at it this has to be found. the american public, the president of the united states have to have confidence that the fbi is neutral politically and enforcing the laws as they have been written. not as they want them to be. ainsley: judge, it looks like democrats want to hide everything. congressman adam schiff, democrat from california on saying this on why americans shouldn't be able to seat fisa memo. listen. >> the american people, unfortunately, don't have the underlying materials. and, therefore, they can't see how distortured and misleading this document is. it's just designed to attack the fbi and bob mueller. it's a disservice to the country. steve: first off, what is this memo?

the bureau director, chris wray, made it clear in the message to all employees that mccabe's early exit was a result of information from an inspector general's report, a report that focuses on the fbi's handling of the 2016 investigation into hillary clinton's use of a private e-mail server. national security reporter from "the washington post" is my next guest. devlin, you have specifics on what the inspector general is looking for. what can you tell us? >> he's asking questions about a particular time period in october of 2016, just before the presidential election, when the fbi basically has learned that they have a laptop belonging to anthony weiner and that there are e-mails on that laptop related to the hillary clinton e-mail investigation that have been closed the previous summer. >> then walk us through the house gop memo that's alleging fbi abuses related to the author of the trump dossier, because you have new reporting on that, how rod rosenstein and chris wray are making this last ditch effort to halt the release of that memo. >> yeah, within the justice department and the f

then chris wray, the fbi director just wants to talk to the committee before they vote to release thisnformation that the doj says is extraordinarily reckless and they say no. so chris wray and rod rosenstein are like the tom cruz character in the firm" where everywhere they look they see haas till enplies from the president to the republicans in congress supposed to have their back. it's stunning like out of a thriller. >> that's a very good point. paul ryan will have a lot to answer for i think for handing over that information to nunes for essentially letting devin nunes destroy the house intelligence committee, the intelligence committees after all, are like bipartisan oasis. >> used to be. >> used to be. that's what they're supposed to be because they handle such sensitive stuff, national security stuff that we all have to agree on. therefore, there is a long tradition of including the minority in all decisions in all important decisions. they aren't partisan bodies or they weren't till now. this is on paul ryan. this is on his watch. he's the speaker of the house. >> chris? >> we

and all i can say is good for chris wray.od for him to stand up to this pressure and to go with the constitution rather than the attorney general and this president. >> we should note that mccabe did announce that he is retiring. and it was something that a lot of people hinted at, including trey gowdy and others that mccabe was going to be out. do you have concerns that whatever wray was able to do in terms of standing up for mccabe that fundamentally the pressure worked? >> well, i'm not so sure. i think mccabe probably was going to resign anyway. we don't know that. but i think the fact that he is sticking around for another couple of months and that he stood up to the president, he stood up to the attorney general, i think is very significant. and it's really the only thing that is keeping us in a democracy is that we have people like that who have the guts and the will to stand up to this president and this attorney general. >> do you think there is any relationship between this set of facts as we're learning again from