wants to get rid of comey. that's the letter that is sent, but trump is irritated with rosenstein for not mentioning russia in the letter. trump ultimately when he sends his letter to comey, says, you know, dear mr. comey, thank you so much for telling me three times i was not under investigation in the russia inquiry, and what happens is the fbi finds out about that in the following days and they're perplexed as to why is it that trump wanted to mention russia in the letter. what was it that was really driving that? the second thing, as you were pointing out earlier, were his comments to lester holt where he appears to say russia was on his mind when he fired comey. >> you have in here, it is extraordinary, what we have been talking about in the obstruction of justice inquiry has generally up to now really been about the firing of comey, as a way to obstruct the fbi's investigation more broadly, but what you're reporting here is that the fbi came to see the potential obstruction as in and of itself a national

trump tied the comey dismissal to the russia investigation. helped prompt the counter intelligence as speblpect of th inquiry. one of these instances was a letter written by trump with the help of steven miller in the days before he fired comey outlining his reasons for doing so. the existence of that letter was previously reported by "the times" which noted then white house counsel don mcgahn intervened and stopped it from being sent. the second instance was this interview that the president did with lester holt two days after he fired comey in which he d discussed his reasoning for doing so. >> there is no good time to do it, by the way. >> because in your letter, you said i accepted their recommendation, so you had already made the decision. >> i was going to fire regardless of recommendation. he made a recommendation, he's highly respected, very good guy, very smart guy. the republicans like him, the democrats like him. regardless of recommendation, i was going to fire comey knowing there was no good time to do it and in fact, when i decid

he also calls comey a nut job. when this comes out it further unnerves the fbi agents who are saying, well, why is it that he had these foreign adversaries into the oval office? why would he be so willing to do this and also willing to them them by firing comey he alleviated pressure on himself? >> extraordinary reporting. "new york times" reporter michael schmitt, one of three reporters who broke this really blockbuster story tonight. congratulations, michael. really appreciate your time tonight. >> thanks for having me. >>> responses are pouring in to this breaking news, including from the white house. we just got this moments ago from white house press secretary sarah sanders. this is absurd, she says, james comey was fired because he's a disgraced partisan hack and his deputy andrew mccabe who was in charge at the time is a known liar, fired from the fbi unlike president obama who let russia and other foreign adversaries push america around, president trump has actually been tough on russia. that's the if first

nine months into it, comey is fired.learn from peter strzok, larger himself and comey that they had nothing at that point. >> why would they submit a room president conspired with putin to fire comey. >> sean, let's think about it a different way. we have these supposed rickenbacker hawks sitting over at the counterintelligence division at the fbi and doj. where were they in 2012 when barack obama got caught on a hot mike telling the russian leader at the time he needed to more time to rate until after the election? it looks like that was trying to work with russians. where were they investigating when the ukrainians were begging the united states for weapons in the congress was trying to give weapons to the ukrainians after the russians had invaded and annexed crimea, nobody went to investigate the obama white house or president obama. so, you have no evidence in this case. you have no records, no phone calls, absolutely nothing of any sort and, yet, you supposedly reportedly are investigation the president? and further

comey for telling him three times that he was not under investigation.ctually, kimberly, i want to turn to you, how suspicious do you think that is? >> well, it is. that was one of the most remarkable aspects of the story when james comey was fired, the fact that a lot of it had to do with this insistence by the president that he go forward and message publicly that the president wasn't under investigation by the fbi. it seemed like a classic case of thou does protest too much. the president was clearly worried about a potential fbi investigation in to him and his own activities. was really remarkable about this is i think both jay and natasha are very right that on the one hand it wasn't really surprising at all but on the one hand its extraordinary that the president is not only -- that an fbi investigation was opened into the president but it was based on so many activities he was doing in plain sight, an interview with nbc, his messaging to the fbi agent that he fired, meeting with russian officials in the oval office talking about, among other thing

then have you comey's chief of staff, james rybicki, he has resigned and now we know comey's general comey's general counsel jim baker, now we can report under an official criminal investigation. something comey himself that he admitted to doing when heem leaked the fbi memos about president trump, remember, to his professor friend atfe columbia and then to the "new york times" for the very purpose of spurring a a special counsel investigation, which w coincidentally is being carried out by his close friend, robert mueller. how nice. so, what did all the people, they all wanted hillary clinton to win, one of them 100 million to zero. they all hated and continue to hate donald trump. they all worked together to rig our political system andd fix out outcome of the 2016 election by using their powerful top positions, not rank and file, the top positions at the fbi and the doj to help hillary clinton win, to cheat, to rig an election. and as we now know, they had an emergency policy and a media leak strategy in case clinton didn't win 100 million to zero. after james comey was fired, top

president took around comey's firing. according to "the new york times," the first action was, "a letter mr. trump wanted to send mr. comey about his firing but never did. in which he mentioned the russia investigation. in the letter, mr. trump thanked mr. comey for previously telling him he was not a subject of the fbi's russia investigation." now, the second event that troubled investigators was one we all watched. it was this interview with nbc news' lester holt, which occurred two days after james comey's firing. the president said this. >> regardless of recommendation, i was going to fire comey. knowing there was no good time to do it. and in fact, when i decided to just do it, i said to myself, i said, you know, this russia thing with trump and russia is a made up story. >> this rusher thing. now "the times" notes special counsel robert mueller took over this inquiry into president trump when he was appointed, just days after the fbi opened it and it is unclear whether mr. muller is still pursuing the counterintelli

, i was going to fire comey. knowing there was no good time to do it. and in fact, when i decided to just do it, i said to myself, i said, you know, this russia thing with trump and russia is a made-up story. it's an excuse by the democrats for having lost an election that they should have won. >> that was a tipping point for the fbi. then they started looking into connections between trump and russia, leading up to the election and after. here's part of what they found, as candidate for presidency, the fbi found those close to trump held meets in trump tower with russians closely connected to russian president vladimir putin. that was june 9th, 2016. during the campaign, trump himself, he called on russia for help. >> russia, if you're listening, i hope you're able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing. >> that was in july 2016. and then there was the steel dossier. the memo that gave a window into possible conclusion between the trump campaign and the federal government. james comey wrote about that in so

they got together after james comey was fired. they figured out what they could do to make his life miserable. it's worse than that. they tried to imbed their bias within the mueller investigation going forward. i have been in these interviews. you continue to see it. there is no collusion. to suggest that the president is a russian spy, there was plenty of spying go on, in his campaign but not by him. >> sean: this is the premise of your book. the scheme to clear hillary clinton of crimes we know she committed and frame donald trump. worse than we thought as mark penn said. >> this is an all-powerful, out of control agency. rogue agency. frankly, it's time that it be halted in its tracks and reorganized and replaced with a new organization that has legal restraints imposed upon it and accountable to somebody, when the boss of the fbi rod rosenstein is in bed with his subordinants, investigating a counter-intelligence case against the president is no probably cause or credible evidence. it's time that the fbi be halted. >> sean: t

comey's testimony 23450umarch 20, 2017? what was your opinion about mr. comey? what did you think about mr. comey's intelligence briefing on january 26, 2017 about mr. comey's appearance? i believe that's also where the president learned about the tinkle tape and whatnot. what was the purpose of your january 27, 2017 din we are comey and what was said? what did you think and do with reaction to the news that the special counsel was speaking to mr. rogers, mr. pompeo and mr. koets? and finally what did you mean when you told russian diplomats on may 10, 2017, that firing comey had taken the pressure off. could all of those questions have been inspired by this counterintelligence investigation that we didn't know about until your report friday? >> i think more to the point was that there were specific russia questions about things before trump took office that were in there. and we never sort of understood why. we thought that the president was simply looking at an obstruction criminal investigation, and we didn't know about this. but there were these other questi

james comey would go about sticking a knife in his back to what comey did is the same thing that enterccabe did. they have both wrote these secret memos to themselves documenting these meetings they had. anybody with any experience in the corporate world knows that the self-serving memos written by you have limited value. you are probably doing your basic cya making it the version you one of the most favorable making the other person with data by the way i don't think it's any accident that comey's book is going to be published right on top of my book "killing the deep state." all the mainstream media and all the enemies from abc. "the news york times" the fodder for the book. it will be viewed as a martyred a victim newbie portrayed as having a higher honor. none of them will dare to interview me to look at killing the deep state or that's why it's pretty remarkable the book has already become number one in various categories by amazon and is one of the better selling books, maybe one of the best-selling books ever written on donald trump and his presidency. but it's going to be const

comey. we don't know that mueller is just looking at comey on obstruction. looking at other things. >> i agree with that. >> he said to intervene in something that he has a personal stake in would be an abuse of power. well, we reported not too long ago that the president has called up matthew whitaker, the acting attorney general, to raise the question about the prosecution of his former fixer and attorney michael cohen and he lambasted the fact that they've sort of gone rogue, talking about this being illegal. if i was a senator, i would question him about is that an abuse of power, to call him up and question the acting attorney general about that? >> and coming up, many senators to go, still, when they pick back up. they have just scratched the surface on who has asked questions so far, including all of the possible 2020 contenders on the democratic side that are on this committee. so you have to imagine there are some questions just like laura is talking about that's coming their way. >> what they haven't brought up, or very little of, is immigration. >

laying out why comey should be fired.econd aspect to that was -- i believe it was the next day, the lester holt interview on nbc news, he says he did it because of russia. and, you know, the fbi is watching this, and they say, well, he's telling us why he did it. he did this on behalf of russia. and, you know, within days of that they've opened up this -- you know, they've opened up this -- they've opened up this multi-tiered investigation that has a criminal aspect and a counterintelligence aspect to it. >> and then when the president had the oval office meeting with the russian ambassador, i believe it was, where he bragged about firing james comey and called him a nut job, that was in their minds a vindication for the investigation. >> caller: yeah, a vindication, bolstered their reasons. you know, the fbi, they opened this investigation, needed to articulate the reasons, the information for doing it. and, you know, and then this comes out about that meeting where he's calling comey a nut job, this took great pressure

authority to terminate comey. now president trump's former attorney john dowd has called the fii's anti-trump operations a political coup.ou watch this. >> little did i know that it appears that they were all in ir together. rosenstein called me, the whole crowd. and they were out to get this president no matter what. i don't think they sincerely believed anything about russia. this is our worst mom nightmare, that someone with that kind of power would then decide to go after the president. i mean, it's a coup. it's an attempted coup by calling this crowd. and that the evidence is all there. i take "the new york times" article as an admission of their bad behavior. >> sean: admission of corruption and abuse of power by people that are unchecked, a bureaucracy unto itself, unlimited powers, no a accountability. as any of this good for america? did these deep state officials that we have been uncovering, did they do anything other, they stop officials, and hate the president? these are the same bureaucrat state open

, and he told the russians that sacking comey relieved great pressure on him. he was also at this meeting in which the president said he was said to have given the russians classified information, that was provided to him by israel. >> that's right, ana, that meeting with sergei kisliek and lavarov as well raised quite a few eyebrow, the president offering references to american intelligence assets and suggesting that pressure would be relieved by firing comey also is very questionable. it leads to a pattern of behavior on behalf of president trump that would directly draw into question his claim that he has been tough on russia. let's not forget that press conference that he held with vladimir putin in helsinki failing to confront the russian leader over election meddling. and one of the men in the meeting, there are many questions about his contacts with former nsa director michael flynn during the transition period, and even during the 2016 republican convention. his conversations with jeff sessions, the former attorney general, were scrutinized by congress.

to comey and because the president told my colleague, lester holt, that he fired comey in part because of the russia investigation. now, it's important to note that "the times" says no evidence has emerged publicly that mr. trump was in fact working for the russians when he fired mr. comey. >>> the second big story is this government shutdown now in it's 23rd day and now officially the longest ever. what we're seeing is not so much the consequences of divided government, which voters say they like because each party acts as a brake on the other. what we're seeing are the consequences of a polarized government with two parties that often don't talk to each other, sometimes can't talk to each other, and right now may not want to talk to each other. caught in the middle, some 800,000 federal employees who are out of work and not currently getting paid. that has actually led some in washington to hope president trump follows through on his constitutionally questionable threat and declare a national emergency. if he does, this would be a national emergency designed to solve his own politica

that's when he said firing nut job comey erased pressure on him. how would that resinate in the intelligence community? >> not well. it would be a real red flag. i think in an earlier segment she cited the behavior. this earlier pattern of going back to win -- >> can i play that sound bite for you? >> sure. >> here it is. >> all i can do is ask the question. my people came to me, dan coates came to me and some others. they said they think it's russia. i have president putin. he just said it's not russia. i will say this, i don't see any reason why it would be. >> so continue, director, about the red flags that that would raise. >> well, again, i think that that performance and statement was a red flag, no pun intended, and it seemed to reinforce what the intelligence community was long concerned about, and i was before i left in january 2017 about this deference to russia and the vilify kags lification intelligence community and the fbi and anybody else that was in anyway involved in our assessment or the investigations and when i think the low wat

you know that james comey -- maria: james comey himself said that it was not accurate.es comey himself said that later. >> no, no, he didn't. he said that it was raw intelligence but we're losing the forest through the trees here. james comey probably handed the presidential election to donald trump so this idea that the fbi and james comey somehow were working hard against donald trump is just absurd on the face of it. maria: let me ask you something congressman because i've got this report here that you and your colleagues have said that you have hard evidence of collusion between the president and the russians. are you going to tell us what that hard evidence is? >> what report is that? i've not seen that report and i don't believe we do have hard evidence of collusion. i'm not sure what it is you're referring to. maria: you have said the committee has said you have more than circumstance um stan shall evidence occlusion. where is that evidence? >> there's far better than circumstance um stan shall. we have the president's son inviting russians to trump tower and ask

it's interesting, whether i like james comey or not, comey said he had never spoken to barack obama moreice during his entire tenure. as presidents of the united states, you are supposed to leave the fbi alone. leet leave them alone, right. >> exactly. i want to play a little bit of the interview i did with congressman jim heinz that sits on the house intelligence committee last night and i have a quick question for you on the other side of that. >> do you trust donald trump with the national security of the united states? >> i absolutely do not. this president, of course, over the last two years, has demonstrated that he has one concern and one concern only. and that is how much of a big man he is. and how respected and how much he wins as a person. it has nothing to do with the safety of the country. it has nothing to do with the national security of the united states. >> you know, malcolm, republicans have typically sort of gone back to the innocence of donald trump in politics. and he just doesn't know, he doesn't adapt, as sam said, and i don't think sam is spinning. but the reality

not a big supporter of comey.ut you can't fire comey for the wrong reasons. you can't fire him to stop an investigation. especially an investigation that could be leading to russian activity, whether he was a witting or unwitting participant in it, he may not have realized it. but that's an investigation you want to go forward. >> you know, i have been listening to a lot of people, to rachel's podcast about the spiro agnew case, and much of the drama there is the uncharted constitutional legal waters of young prosecutors who have found out this thing about the vice president, taking bribes literally in the white house, and they're thinking to themselves, what can we do? can we indict him? what are the boundaries here? it seems there's a parallel here in termsoffs the constitutional legal thicket that the fbi and department of justice finds themselves in at this moment had they're thinking an unthinkable thing, what do we have the power to to? >> you remember in the agnew/nixon era, elliot richardson was the grown

how chaotic the period was following the firing of james comey. specific episodes that alarmed some of these security officials and fbi agents in the wake of that. explain what they were. >> obviously the firing of comey and the investigation of the president. the second half back to that was the next day of the lester holt interview. he said he did it because of russia. the fbi is watching this and they say and telling us why he did it. he did it on behalf of russia. they opened up his multi tiered investigation that has a criminal aspect and an intelligent aspect to it. >> and when the president had the oval office meeting with the russian ambassador where he bragged about firing james comey and calling him a nut job, that was in their mind of vindication for the investigation? >> yes, well, a vindication, they bolster the reason. then it comes out of that meeting and he says took the pressure off of comey. that itself was -- the people saw it is reactivation of the region opening on the president. >> counter investigation indicates that they we

you don't get because they fired comey.is is because there are specific legal and regulatory tle thresholds that have to be met. they had that. that's why the investigation moved forward. this is a significant thing. >> i want to bring in now congressman castro. he is on the intelligence committee. he joins us now by phone. thank you very much. what do you make of this breaking news tonight? >> it's just jarring. even as someone who sat through all those interviews on the intelligence committee as an american to read that fbi has opened the counter intelligence investigation against the president with the idea he made may basically be an asset working on behalf of rush yashgs particularly fwifrn the history between the united states and russia is jarring. like millions of americans, it's not surprising based on everything we witnessed and based on donald trump's behavior over the past three years or so, you know, starting with for me and it's mentioned in the article, when he openly invited russia to hack into the e-mails o

lying james comey. all the greatest hits. >> usually he saves these for the encore but is opening up with the hits this morning. >> all four. >> and probably more to come. this is, again, historical perspective how significant it is, but it also casts light the battles this white house is battling, sort of facing every day. it is part of it and we, of course, don't know how "the times" came across the story. credit to them, it's terrific reporting. whether this came from the newly installed democratic house or not, i think the white house should be prepared -- i know they're taking steps to prepare -- that now that the democrats have control, it's going to be leak after leak after leak in an effort to win these public relation battles to put the white house even further on its heels as the mueller probe is heading to the second-year anniversary. >> tim, "the washington post" had a great tweet that there's a forecast for snow with a high chance of tweets today in washington, d.c. let's talk about the cat

comey. thishe second big story is government shutdown now in it's 23rd day and now officially the longest ever. nowhat we're seeing is so much the consequences of divided nt governwhich voters say they like because each party acts as a brake on the other. what we're seeing are the consequences of aed polar government with two parties that often don't talk to each other, sometimes n't talk to each other, and right now may not want to talk to each other. caughtmen the middle, s 800,000 federal employees who are out of work and no currently getting paid. thatua has ay led some in washington to hope president trump follows through on his constitutionally questionable threat and declare a national emergency. if he does, this would national emergency designed to solve his own political emergency. >> shutting down the government is not oroverning. >> president trump, the focus on a wall and the symbol it represents to his supporters may be the political crisis he needs to deflect focus from his own

and comey said his antenna went up, he thought she would win and it would be tainted.onversely he won and it's taint. >> there's someone else who figures and that's mitch mcconnell, and i want to read you this from the "washington post," obama administration officials asked senior congressional leaders, back in 2016, in both parties to go public with the united front against russian interference, mcconnell refused claiming in the post's words that he would consider any effort by the white house to challenge the russians publicly an act of partisan politics. >> mitch mcconnell was the majority leader and the so called gang of eight includes the majority leader and i remember vividly when harry reid, his counter part from the democrats one day sent this scathing letter that it's worth reading in hindsight basically said, hey, mitch you know what i know, and comey, you know what i know, and you know, mitch mcconnell has been absolutely complicit, and it goes back before trump. it goes to obviously the merrick garland, but i think mitch mcconnell did a huge disservice to h

comey's firing, may 2017, particularly two instances in which mr. trump tied the comey dismissal to the russia investigation helped prompt the counterintelligence aspect of the inquiry, the people said. and according to "the times," one of the instances was a letter that trump wrote with the help of senior aide, steven miller, before he fired comey laying out the underpinning reasons for doing so. "times" reported on that letter back in 2017 and notes that then white house counsel don mcgahn stepped in, preventing it from being sent. now the second instance that troubled investigators, this one you've seen before. it happened in plain sight as it was broadcast to a national ne audience. >> i was going to fire comey. there's no good time to do it, by the way. >> in your letter, you said i accepted their recommendation. you had already made the decision. >> i was going to fire regardless of recommendation. he made a recommendation. he's highly respected. very good guy. re very smart guy.d the democrats like him. the republicans like him.at he made a r

house judiciary chair jerry nadler said he wants to further examine the firing of comey. he also said he wants to take steps to protect career investigators from, quote, the president's unhinged attacks. tom. >> tara, thank you. >>> next to the other major story out of washington. the government shutdown. now officially the longest in american history with no end in sight. hundreds of thousands of americans waking up this weekend after missing their friday paychecks. the kitchen table concerns clearly mounting, and from the white house, president trump firing off tweets insisting he has a strategy. abc's lana zak is at the capitol. >> reporter: tonight, the longest government shutdown in history showing no sign of ending any time soon. president trump tweeting today, i do have a plan on the shutdown. but no word yet on what that plan is, besides the democrats giving in on his request for a wall. for his part, the president says he will never back down. >> i swore to protect our country and -- >> reporter: releasing this campaign-style video on twitter, and asking democrat

james comey called it a 500 year flood and i agree. in 2016 he and his team were faced with tough choices. easy for people like me to look back years later and say you should have done this, should have done that. the only thing i am concerned about and i think we'll find out when the report is released into the investigation, did the fbi follow all processes and protocols or were they driven by emotion. sometimes it happens. i spent 25 years doing investigations. emotions can sometimes take hold but that can't happen. the fbi has to be the calm in the chaos. when i read that last night in "new york times," that wasn't the feeling i walked away with. >> and greg, do you feel this material is public a year and a half after the fact it precipitated, the fbi investigation precipitated the special counsel investigation, do you feel that because it is public now that is an indicator that the special counsel probe is soon to end? >> not necessarily, fred, no. there's been a lot of speculation about the timing of the conclusion of the special

when president trump fired fbi director james comey, shortly after drafting a letter thanking comey he not the subject of the fbi russia investigation. after an interview with lester holt the president then tried tying comey's firing to the investigation. >> regarding of recommendation, i was going to fire comey, knowing there was no good time to do it. and in fact, when i decided to just do it, i said to myself, i said, you know, this russia thing with trump and russia is a made-up story. it's an excuse by the democrats having lost the election that they should have won. >> that was a tipping point for the fbi, and they started looking into questions of trump and the election. of course, we know as candidate for president, the fbi found those close to trump held meetings in trump tower with russians closely connected to russian president vladimir putin. that was june 9th, 2016. during the campaign, trump called on russia for help. >> russia, if you're listening, i hope you're able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing. >> that was july 27th, 2016. there's also the steele dossier

, i was going to fire comey. knowing there was no good time to do it. in fact, when i decided to just do it, i said to myself, i said, you know, theis russia thing wih trump and russia is a made up story. >> the white house is stating the report is absurd and calling comey a disgraced partisan hack. and the press secretary saying if there was a counter investigation, it would result in some action taken. joining me right now is julia manchester on capitol hill and white house correspondent for "time" magazine. tessa, you first here. is this report absurd and nothing as rudy giuliani contends or evidence of wrongdoing on the president's part? >> i don't think it is evidence yet on the president's part. nor is it absurd. it is a big deal the fbi launched an investigation into the sitting president of the united states. for an investigation like this, they must have had very good reason to do so. it likely would have been signed off on by the very highest levels of the justice department. we know the probe was refer

trump's behavior, his actions after he fired james comey. it's unclear if special counsel robe robert mueller is looking at that probe. >>> an explosion at a bakery. police say it was caused by a gas leak. an official tells cnn there were victims, but it's unclear how many at this time. police are saying the explosion is not terror related. >>> the united states starting to withdrawal military equipment out of syria. the pentagon spokesperson says the u.s. is working with allies and partners to ensure a deliberate and coordinated withdrawal and they are fighting isis in the meantime. >> the partial shutdown of the u.s. government is entering the fourth week, the longest in u.s. history. a federal employee union reports unemployment claims among furloughed workers spiked 400%. those who are required to work without pay are not eligible for those benefits. joining me now is whitney brown, a curator at the smithsonian. whitney, thanks so much for talking with us. >> you're welcome, nice to be here. >> nice to have you with us. first of all, i w

here we go again with comey. does that argument on behalf of the white house have any merit to you, steve moore? >> well, here's the problem with narcs i i agree completely with steve about the counterintelligence aspect of this. the president is acting unwisely in this. however, when comey was fired, who was in charge and who could have authorized even something as small as a preliminary inquiry against donald trump? it would have been the acting director andrew mccabe and the deputy assistant director in charge of counterstrell jens strzok. sow have two people compromised, not in the counterintelligence way, but the american people have that compromised trust in them because they were both marched out because of political bias, apparently. so the problem is you have the fruit of the poisonous tree. people are fought going to believe an investigation that is opened by those two guys after their boss got fired. and so i think it should rightly go to mueller because he apparently doesn't have that baggage. >> we w

director comey, this book is largely about leadership. i think part of your original idea of the genesis was a leadership book. help us with this leadership paradox. how do you be confident enough to be humble? >> it requires enough sense of self, a basic conviction that i'm okay, that also allows you to realize i'm not okay enough and gives you the comfort to learn from other people and show the humility that's necessary to listen to other people. so it requires this balance. too much confidence, and it swaps -- it swipes humility off the board. too much insecurity, makes it impossible to listen and to learn from others. what i mean when i use that term, a comfort in yourself that also allows you to realize you're not good enough and the path to getting better is learning from other people. >> and what ingredient would you say is most often missing from leaders or maybe was most often missing from your bosses? >> humility. i've known a lot of leaders and seen a lot of leaders. actually i think overconfidence is one of the great challenge

of comey but you can't fire comey for the wrong reasons you can't fire him to stop an investigation,y an investigation that could be leading to russian activity whether he was a whiting or unwitting participant, he may not have realized it but that's an investigation you want to go forward. >> i've been listening to a lot of people to the pod cast about this case and much of the drama there is just the uncharted constitutional legal waters of the young prosecutors who found out this thing about the vice president. he's taking bribes literally in the white house and the vice president's residence and they are thinking what can we do? can reindiwe indict him? there is a pattern the fbi and department of justice finds itself in at this moment when they think to themselves, they are thinking an unthinkable thing, what do we have the power to do? >> you remember in the nixon era, the he was the grownup in the room to help the u.s. attorney. >> yes. >> who is the grown up in the room now? rod rosenstein departed by all accounts is a person devoted to justice. does he know something we don'

may 12th, trump threatens comey in a tweet. quote, better hope there are no tapes of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press. may 17th, mueller is named special counsel. let's get to our panel. chuck rosenberg, former senior fbi firm. matt miller. and betsy woodruff, all nbc news contributors. mr. rosenberg, was this an appropriate step for the fbi to take, to launch this investigation? >> you know, that sounds like a simple question, craig. the answer, if it is any other person on the planet, is yes, with all the predicate facts you just laid out. it would be surprising to me if the fbi did not open a counterintelligence investigation. the problem, of course, is that this is the president of the united states. any president sets the foreign policy and intelligence priorities of the country. so you're in this really strange situation, where somebody has done something that suggests they're an agent of a foreign power. yet, they are the person who gets to determine who our friends and allies are and who our oppon

this was another. >> i was going to fire comey. my decision. it was not -- >> you had made the decision before they came into the room. >> i was going to fire comey. and, in fact, when i decided to just do it, i said to myself, i said, you know, this russia thing with trump and russia is a made up story. it's an execute by the democrats for having lost an election. >> this story fundamentally changes our understanding of what has been and what is being scrutinized. it has the president firing off tweet after tweet after tweet after tweet this morning. on msnbc last night, michael schmidt explained what led the fbi to start this inquiry. >> there's a long standing relationship that trump has with russia. there is all these things going on and they decide to go forward with the monumental historic decision of opening up a counterintelligence investigation into the president. is the president tied to the adversary? >> it's important to take this new information and dovetail it with what we heard from james comey just a couple months before he was

and the act of firing comey, he told congress was a national security threat. was a national security threat. >> to this response, why are the responses in the white house always a push to obama or hillary clinton, it's never a direct response to the allegations or the evidence there. it's some sort of deflection and name calling. what's going on. it's obvious they don't have a good response. they don't either know and they're winging it or they're trying to deflect, but they don't seem to be able to hit any of this head on. i've seen this and another white house from the other side and very similar tactics when you don have a good response. >> we have been talking about the reasons that this came up. according to the new york times, adam and his co-workers, investigators were concerned over a letter that trump wrote to comey thanking him that he is not a subject to the fbi. and this interview caught their attention. >> regardless of recommendation i was going to fire comey knowing there was no good time to do it. and, in fact, when i decided to just do it, i s

jim comey had these weird interactions with the president. where the president had asked him to stop looking into michael flynn's conversations with russian ambassador sergei kislyak. >> the pledge for loyalty. >> asking him to pledge loyalty. remember, fbi official, other fbi officials, were aware of those conversations at that time. the fact that those conversations came out was part of the pressure that came on rod rosenstein to appoint robert mul earl mueller as the outside special counsel. after comey's firing, the president is in the oval office with sergei kislyak and russian foreign minister sergey lavrov latching about the firing and -- >> celebrating. >> celebrating and saying this really gives me a lot of breathing room or something to that effect. you know, that this takes the pressure off me. and, you know, it's -- these fbi agents are sitting there saying, oh, my god, what if the unthinkable is actually not unthinkable? >> and then, ronado, isn't that what the fbi is supposed to do? things that raise suspicion, follow up on it.

just like james comey a week ago . he was interviewed by congress and unfortunately people did not see. the republicans with paul ryan unfortunately they did not of them out there. what he said, either he's a bad liar or he's grossly incompetent. you can read the transcript. [indiscernible] >> you know how i feel. we will see you. i am not looking to call a national emergency. i have the absolute legal right to call it but i'm not looking to do that because this is too simple. the democrats should say we want border security. we have to build a wall otherwise you can't have border security and we should get on with our lives. the democrats are stopping us and stopping a lot of great people from getting paid. all they have to do is say we want border security. that automatically means a wall or barrier. >> today is the 24th a of the partial government shutdown. president trump continues to demand democrat survive money for a border wall while nancy pelosi and chuck schumer insist the government be reopened for further n