first to our justice correspondent, evan perez. he has exclusive reporting for us tonight. evan, tell our viewers what you are learning. >> russian hackers were behind a cyber breach between qatar's state news agency. hackers placed a fake news report that is now used by saudi arabia and other u.s. allies as a reason to carry out an economic and political blockade of qatar. u.s. and qatar officials tell us that fbi sent a team of investigators to doha to investigate the alleged hacking incident reported in late may. intelligence gathered by u.s. security agencies indicate that russian hackers were behind the intrusion. it would add to concerns by u.s. intelligence and law enforcement agencies that russia continues to try to use some of the same

thank you so much, evan perez. thanks to all of you for joining us. don't forget to watch "outfront" any time. go to cnn go. "ac 360" with anderson cooper begins right now. >>> good evening and thanks for joining us. several big breaking stories tonight. exclusive new details on what fired fbi director james comey will say when he testifies thursday morning. we begin, though, with more along the lines of evan perez's reporting moments ago. multiple reports including from magg maggie haberman is that jeff sessions has volunteered to resign. >> how would you describe the president's level of confidence in the attorney general jeff sessions? >> i have not had a discussion with him about that. >> the last time you said that, there was a development. >> i'm answering a question, which is i have not had that discussion with i am had. >> would you say confidence as his attorney general? >> i have not had a discussion with him on the question. if i haven't had a discussion with him about a subject, i tend not to speak about it. >> more now from maggie haberma

evan perez is breaking this news for us. evan, what are you learning right now? these are heated exchanges between attorney general jeff sessions and the president in light of the recusal by the attorney general from anything related to the russia investigation. as you know, the president is concerned that because of that, this investigation has sort of blossomed and expanded and caused more problems for the white house, distracted them from their agenda. but we're also told that the frustration goes both ways here between the justice department where officials feel that the president's tweets and some of his comments and interviews have actually made things worse and prompted the deputy attorney general rod rosenstein to have to appoint a special prosecutor, a special counsel to oversee the investigation. now, bob mueller is that special counsel who is now doing this investigation and, again, they feel that some of the president's own comments have exacerbated the problems for him. >> evan, in these heated exchanges, how direct has the attorney general been? has

evan perez joins us with that. the new question is, will the attorney general rob rosenstein recuse himself from the russia probe. >> john, it's looking more and more like that's where he's going to be, probably not in the next couple of days, but certainly as probability mueller starts staffing up his investigative staff, he's got about a dozen lawyers now, the real possibility is that rob rosenstein is going to become a witness in that investigation, because obviously he was part of the decision making to fire james comey the fbi director, and now that is going to be wrapped into whether or not the president was trying to interfere or obstruct the ongoing russia investigation, obviously this is something that has been on rob rosestein's mind. he has said he will recuse himself, when he learns from robert mueller whether he's going to be a witness, then he's going to have to make that decision. >> and we're learning more information about tension building inside the justice department. what are you learning? >> i

evan perez broke this story moments ago. evan, we know that the president is -- has been at least stewing, if not angry at rosenstein. what's happening inside the justice department? >> i got to tell you rod rosenstein is also getting some of the same pressures inside the justice department. there's a lot of displeasure by people surrounding the attorney general jeff sessions of the fact that rod rosenstein is the one who brought in robert mul every, the special counsel. lot of people didn't feel like that was necessary, at least not yet. a lot of people, especially at the white house and on the fifth floor where the attorney general sits believe that god -- the miami of mueller has made a lot of things a lot worse for everybody. since mueller was hired you've seen a lot more people have to hire lawyers. a lot more pressures that are hearing from the president. the. is extremely angry and he's telling the attorney general an the attorney general in-turn is letting that flow down to rod rosenstein. >> at this point, evan, wha

let's bring in evan perez. evan, forget for a moment about what "the washington post" is reporting. what do we know? what is going on? >> we know that the fbi and the special council are gathering information as part of the investigation. we know they're going to talk to dan coats, the director of national intelligence. michael rogers who is the head of the national security agency as well as the former deputy at the national security agency. what they want to do is try to gather information to determine whether or not they're going to launch a full-scale information of possible obstruction. there's a few steps here before we get to that stage. but, look, there's no doubt here that that is where everybody believes this is going to go, because the president has made it almost impossible for the fbi or special counselor not to investigate him. one reason he fired james comey was because comey wouldn't go out publicly and say he wasn't investigation. at the time that was true. by his actions and tweets and statements, he's now made it impossible for that to be still true. >> let's game

. >> now, what could be happening, here is cnn's justice correspondent evan perez. >> rosenstein is ahest official overseeing the probe. he wrote the memo used by president trump to fire james comey. james comey's firing is expected to be the investigation where the president tried the interfere with or tried to obstruct the investigation. if rosenstein becomes a witness from this investigation, he may have to recuse himself from the probe now being led by robert mueller. tensions are building inside the justice department over rosenstein handling of the russia investigation. it comes back to rosenstein decision to hire mueller to run the investigation. that move took rosenstein's boss, jeff sessions, by surprise. it caused frictions between the white house and the russians. the official on the president on down blame rosenstein for making the controversy of russia only getting worse. >> back to you. >> thank you so much, evan perez, lets talk more about this now and what this could mean of the overall investigation. joining me now our political reporter of the political blog. also, a

also join us, justice correspondent evan perez. i want to quickly get your reaction, all of us are journalists. we've worked covering the white house over the years. it's pretty surprising. there are gag else that they do at the white house that are off camera, usually in the press secretary's office where they want to review certain issues. when the press secretary goes into the briefing room where there are a lot of cameras, usually almost always they allow us to take that live if we want to. >> you know, the press secretary and the staff of the white house work for the american public. the job of the press secretary is to tell the american public what the president is thinking. and what the white house is thinking. today, as you point out, is a heavy news day. i would say that just minutes before this briefing was originally scheduled to begin, the president tweeted about the tapes. and i think that that leads us to believe that the only person who can speak on camera perhaps for this white house is now donald trump himself. and

i want to bring in our justice correspondent evan perez. evan, good evening to you now. "the washington post" is reporting that special counsel robert mueller is investigating president trump for possible obstruction of justice. he's interviewing three top intelligence officials as early as next week. this is a huge development. >> well, it would be, don. we know that the fbi and the special counsel are gathering information and that eventually we could be at a place where the president is under criminal investigation. our understanding is that it's still at the information gathering stage. look, the post we've been able to confirm that at least two of those officials, dan coats, director of national intelligence, and the director of the national security agency, mike rogers, are expected to provide information to the special counsel and the fbi and as part of that, obviously they are looking at whether or not the circumstances of the firing of james comey was something to impede the investigation. the investigation that was being impeded was the one into mike flynn, the

evan perez, what are you learning?day the intercept web side publiced from the nsa destale is russian efforts to hack into an elections vendor in florida. the story we previously reported back in october and just a few hours after the intercept was able to publish this nsa document, the justice department announced they arrested the leaker of that document to intercept federal contractor by the name of reality lee winterer who is a contractor in georgia who works for the nsa. according to the dock pts released by the justice department and fbi, they were able to track down this person who leaked this document to the intercept because the intercept provided a copy of the document to the nsa. nsa quickly was able to determine that only six people had printed the document in question and were able to figure out that this person, winter, had been the only one of the six in touch with the intercept, the news organization that we reached out to the intercept to see if they want to comment at all on this. we have not heard ba

evan perez is a great reporter, a justice department official says this. i give him the benefit of the doubt. doesn't smell right. >> now we have to tell you about this next story. you probably know congresswoman jackie spear. she's been on our air as well as many other networks. she herself survived a shooting that left her congressman dead and severely injured her. so we will get her take on this week's horrible attack on republicans. that's next. we send our kids out into the world, full of hope. and we don't want something like meningitis b getting in their way. meningococcal group b disease, or meningitis b, is real. bexsero is a vaccine to help prevent meningitis b in 10 to 25 year olds. even if meningitis b is uncommon, that's not a chance we're willing to take. meningitis b is different from the meningitis most teens were probably vaccinated against when younger. we're getting the word out against meningitis b. our teens are getting bexsero. bexsero should not be given if you had a severe allergic reaction after a previous dose. most common side ef

let's bring in evan perez.s the latest on what investigators are saying about this shooting. >> wolf, at this point, the fbi is circulating that seeking information poster that we saw earlier in the press conference. one of the things here they want to do is try to put together a picture of this man, this shooter's last couple of months. obviously, according to the fbi, within the alexandria area now for a couple of months. since march. and apparently living out of his van and essentially using the ymca that is right next to this baseball field. we don't know whether he has been planning this for a while or whether this is something he figured out he wanted to do within the last couple of days. we know the fbi has been looking at his social media footprint, electronics, e-mail, anything to see whether or not he has been planning this for a while according to the facebook posts and social media it is clear he has had something against the republican party. as bernie sanders said, worked as volunteer in his campa

cnn's evan perez joins us with that. what's the latest on whether rod rosenstein might recuse himself from the russian probe? >> well, we're edging closer and closer to that point. the problem is he played a role in the firing of james comey. everything indicates that's where this investigation is going next. robert mueller is staffing up. he's got about a dozen lawyers now on his staff. part of what he is looking at is whether or not to launch a full-blown investigation into whether the firing of comey and whether the other aspects point to obstruction and interference by the president in this investigation. if that day comes where he gets a call from mueller saying that you are a witness in this case, it really makes the decision very difficult for him to remain involved in overseeing this investigation. >> you are getting new information tonight about infighting, tension inside the department of justice. what can you tell us? >> the tension is between the staffs of the attorney general of the fifth floor and the fourt

let's get to evan perez and the chief investigative correspondent and cnn political analyst tara. all right. lot to get to, evan. good evening, by the way, to all of you. tonight we have an escalating crisis between jeff sessions and president trump. >> we've been told there have been a series of heated conversations between attorney general jeff sessions and the president. he decided it was time to recuse himself from the russia investigation, including the fact he hadn't disclosed some meetings with the russian ambassad ambassador, kislyak, if you remember. and he's surprised the governor had recused himself and blames that for the fact that now the investigation has grown and become a bigger crisis for the white house. now we're told though that justice department officials are frustrated themselves. they think the frustration goes both ways. because they believe certainly the firing of james comey was poorly fired by the white house and the president fuelled the fire with his tweets and his comments, making things a lot messier for the attorney general and rod rosenstein. >> he

i want to get to justice department correspondent evan perez. evan, let's talk about what you're learning. the new reporting that you have on some of the growing tension going on over at the justice department, over at the justice department over this russia probe, what do you know? >> that's right, don. everything goes back to rod rosenstein's decision to bring in robert mueller as a special counsel. look, that has unleashed the anger of the president, as you saw from that tweet that he sent out earlier today. and it also applies to his fellow colleagues at the justice department where the attorney general sits a floor above him on the fifth floor of the justice department. a lot of consternation and, frankly, anger at the way that rosenstein has handled this. the attorney general was surprised, to say the least, that they were going to bring in mueller. at that point, it looked like mueller was going to be interim fbi director. he was surprised by this announcement by rosenstein and now we know that rosenstein himself may end up having to be a

we begin with evan perez's reporting moments ago. multiple reports that attorney general jeff sessions has offered to resign. today at the white house press secretary sean spicer declined to answer questions about the attorney general. >> how would you k d scribe the president's level of confidence in his attorney general? >> i have not had a discussion about him. i'm answering a question which is i have not had that diskus discussion with him. i don't -- if i haven't had a discussion with him about a subject, i tend not to speak about it. >> so i understand you're learning more about what's been going on behind the scenes. >> this follows upen the posting that peter baker and i did that there have been tensions between the attorney general and the president going back to when jeff sessions decided to recuse himself from any russia related probe that was going on. a disaster. he did not disclose he had at least one meeting with the ambassador from russia. and it became controversiacontr. he has continued to intermittently seed over i

we know that thanks to cnn's evan perez, the justice department said he was not asked by the white houseut on a thursday night, sort of randomly, is odd in and of itself but the contents even stranger. look, rod rosenstein is in a position like i think a lot of folks in the trump administration. and the next minute you are not. he changes on the dime with the exception of his family. his family and a handful of loyalists around that family. there really isn't anyone who is on solid ground with him for more than a few weeks. i go back and think about this presidency. first it was it's basically president steve bannon and then steve bannon is going to get fired and then jared kushner has all of the power. he does this on purpose. i think there's a method here and a strategy. all of the people are still there. i think it's to keep people on their toes but it produces things like this statement from rod rosenstein where you just kind of wonder what the point was. >> the twix in between. can you do that next break in. >> absolutely i can. >> thank you all so much. >>> coming up next, a major

evan perez you covered the fbi.urprised about comey's admission, how he went ahead and orchestrated the release of those memos to the news media? >> there's a couple of things that stood out, because if you're the fbi and you're an employee at the fbi and you're wondering can i do that, the answer's no. you can't do that. so the fact that the former fbi director actually wrote these memos and then passed them off to friends and then had the friends leak it to the "the new york times" and to the other news organizations that's a strictly forbidden practice for anybody else at the fbi. so that's one thing. the secondly i think one of the things you saw today was an attempt by comey to control the narrative of this. he knows that the white house is coming after him. he knows that they're going after his -- whether or not he's telling the truth and whether he can be believed and you can hear that in some of his testimony and this is one example of him controlling that narrative. he knows it's going to come out so might

evan perez joins us live with more. evan. >> anderson, the awkward relationship between donald trump and james comey, his fbi director begins with the first meeting on january 6th. now, we don't know a lot of exactly what was -- what trump's reaction was during that briefing, but we know that comey decided immediately that he needed to begin writing memos detailing his interactions with the president. according to comey, he hasn't done that with president obama. those two men only met twice over three and a half years. comey says he had nine one-on-one conversations, including three in person meetings with president trump over three and a half months. now, comey's testimony goes on to detail a january 27th dinner where the president seemed to want comey to beg for his job. comey says that the president asked him then to promise loyalty to him. and then there was a february 14th oval office meeting where the president ushered everyone else out of the room so he could talk to comey and that's the meeting where the presiden

. >> evan perez, thank you. joining us now jeffrey tubin, gloria borger and jim sciutto. you all have chief or senior in front of your names. you are very important people to discuss very important things this morning. so washington post comes out with this story last night saying the president asked coats on march 22nd, two days after the comey testimony that if he could intervene in the flynn investigation. if coats testifies to that today, add on to that our previous reporting that the president asked comey himself if he could just walk away from the flynn investigation. is there a pattern here? a pattern that could show obstruction of justice? maybe not one thing, but add it altogether and you get? >> that's the question. that's what this hearing is about. that's what this whole investigation is about, at least the comey part of it, which is did the president take improper steps to stop an fbi investigation of his friend, michael flynn and of his associates all involved in the campaign? and certainly this is another piece in the puzzle. approached the director of nati

multiple sources tell me and colleagues evan perez and manu raju director of intelligence dan coats and national security agency director admiral mike rogers said that president trump suggested they say publicly there was no collusion between his campaign and the russians in these closed door meetings with special prosecutors. at least the team and the senate intelligence committee both intel chiefs described these interactions with the president about the russia investigation as odd and uncomfortable, but they also said they don't believe that the president gave them orders to intervene in the investigation. you mentioned that public testimony earlier this month. both coats and rogers said at the time they never felt pressured, but it got contentious. they won offer specifics about the interaction with the president until they went into classified settings which is what we're reporting about this morning. the fact the president had these conversations at all about the russia probe with these two gentlemen was initially reported last month by "the washington post." one of the multiple d

. >> myself and evan perez learned in the classified session that fired director comey told senators of a possible third in disclosed meeting between the ambassador of sergei kislyak, this is based on the russian conversations discussing this meeting. cnn was the first to report this last week relating to april 2016 at the may flower hotel and this helps explain of a cryptic answer. have a listen. >> our judgment was that he was very close to and never going to recuse himself for a variety of reasons. we also were aware of facts that i cannot discuss in an open setting that would make his continued engagement in a russia related investigation problematic. >> who problematic apparently was -- still investigating that, he still has raw intelligence, these russian intercepts indicating to them that they may have been in a private meeting. he's -- a lot of people assume he will be reading them. >> that's right. his opening statement today which was delivered off the cuffs. he seems to be speaking more from his heart and it did not took him longer than 2.5 minutes before he mentioned the

we have cnn's jim sciutto, evan perez and senior legal analyst jeffrey toobin. jeffrey, let's go to the nuts and bolts of this. is there any crime in this? if everything that jim comey says is accurate, is that a crime? >> there may well be, obstruction of justice, absolutely, yes. >> you think there's an obstruction charge in here? >> the february 14th meeting where he says -- where the president says to everyone else in the room least. i want to talk alone to comey, which certainly suggests that he may know he owes doing something inappropriate and then he goes to the director of the fbi and says can you drop this investigation of my former top aide, that, combined with the fact that days later or a couple -- three months later when comey does not drop the investigation, he fires comey i think lays out a plausible case of obstruction of justice. >> what about the hurdle, i'm being told by people close to comey, intent is a big hurdle. >> the law says corruptly, and what that means is with bad purpose. you don't -- you are not as president of the united states

multiple sources are telling me and colleagues evan perez and manu raju that the director of national intelligence, dan coats, and national security agency director, admiral mike rogers, said that president trump suggested they say publicly there was no collusion between his campaign and the russians in these closed meetings with special prosecutors, that team and the senate intelligence committee. both intelligence chiefs we're told described these interactions with the president about the russia investigation as odd and uncomfortable, but they said they don't believe the president gave them orders to intervene in the investigation. you may remember that in their public testimony earlier this month both coats and rogers said they never felt pressured, but they were reluctant at that point to offer specifics about their interactions with the president until they were in a classified setting. so the details of what the president said to coats and rogers were first reported by "the washington post" last month, and this is more information about what they're actually telling investigator

let's get to cnn's evan perez, also michael isikoff, the chief investigative correspondent for yahoo news and tara palmieri. a lot to get to. evan, i'm going to start with you. good evening to all of you. tonight we have an escalating triesis between attorney general jeff sessions and president trump. what do you know? >> well, don, we were told there's been a series of heated conversations between the attorney general jeff sessions and the president. a lot of this stems from the fact that back in february, the attorney general decided that it was time for him to recuse himself from the russia investigation, including the fact that he hadn't disclosed some meetings with the russian ambassador, sergey kislyak if you remember. the president was sort of surprised -- definitely surprised that the attorney general had recused himself and he sort of blames that fact for the fact that now the investigation has grown and has become a bigger crisis for the white house. now, we're told, though, that justice department officials are frustrated themselves. they think that the frustration goes bot

so evan perez, our justice correspondent, is breaking news right and left on this whole story. the question comes, for the special counsel for bob mueller, what, then, would constitute obstruction of justice? walk me through the steps that he will have to take to determine whether it is or not. >> well, i think what you heard from jim comey just now is exactly what we expect to be the next set of headlines, which is whether bob mueller, now that he has these memos from james comey after having the benefit of watching him testify today which we know over at the special counsel's office, just about half a mile away, they were watching today. whether or not he's going to now look at and investigate any effort to impede this investigation, whether he considers this enough probable cause to basically direct the fbi agents to start investigating the president and anybody else who might have tried to meddle and interfere with the investigation. that's where we're going to go next. we don't know -- >> really, let's just step back and -- this was initially in these conversations, accord

but what we have learned from sources that told me, our colleagues, dana bash and evan perez, that these -- the coates and rogers in classified settings told the senate intelligence committee, told, excuse me, members of bob mueller's team, that president trump, in fact, did ask them to do that. to actually publicly say that there was no collusion between his campaign, trump's campaign, and the russians. and also, don, the president wanted him to -- them to actually clear his name in a lot of ways and say that he -- that the president, himself, was not under investigation. the president was frustrated, we are told, according to coates and rogers telling that the word that he was being told privately was not getting out publicly. now, both coates and rogers found the request, we are told, uncomfortable, that's how they relayed it to the investigators, but they do not feel that he ordered them to do anything but ultimately, don, this is going to be up to bob mueller's team and investigators on capitol hill to decide whether or not the president was trying to act in any way -- >> not how th

and, you know, law enforcement sources are telling cnn and evan perez in particular, that the specialunsel is gathering information on the president and considering whether there is evidence to launch a full-scale investigation. so, you know, you can parse your words anyway you want, but he is doing his research and he's doing his homework and it doesn't matter what you call it. >> lawyeruri, you're our justic department lawyer. is there any way to know whether the president is under investigation by mueller? >> no, not necessarily. in fact, the u.s. attorneys manual which governs justice department lawyers says explicitly that you're not supposed to contact a target of an investigation because, think about it, it could destroy the evidence before the investigation has ever really got off the ground. so, this idea that mueller would reach out to sekulow and say, by the way, the president isn't under investigation seems way too premature. >> we may, repeat may, rebecca, get word by the house the end of this week possibly if there are tapes, tape recordings of the president's conversati

>> well, our evan perez has been doing a lot of reporting on this. what his sources are saying is there has been a feeling for some time, from people in and around jared kushner, that he might not have gotten the best legal advice. not just on, you know, some of the potentially criminal things, potentially criminal things they are looking into but the more mundane, run of the mill, i'm getting ready to be a white house aide stuff, like not filling out his disclosure form properly. so it would not be surprising if, in fact, jared kushner did get different legal advice and hire different attorneys who are more familiar with that and who, from his perspective, would serve him better. jamie is his lawyer. she's gotten a lot of good enough from fellow democrats because she is a democrat. there are a lot of strange bedfellows here. when it comes to basic legal advice, it would not be surprising if he hired someone else. >> dana's series continues today. check out the profile. new hampshire's first female governor. watch that piece. go to cnn.com/badasswome

cnn justice correspondent evan perez is joining me now with all this. s just coming in, and it involves what members of congress want to know, concerns they have. evan, what can you tell us? >> reporter: right. that's right, kate. we have now obtained three letters from senators leahy and senator franken. both of them have been writing, it turns out, since march to the fbi asking for an investigation into any contacts between attorney general jeff sessions and members of his staff with russian officials, including, of course, sergey kislyak, the russian ambassador here in washington. again, they began writing, apparently on march 20th, asking the fbi to investigate this. and part of their concern was in their letters they say that sessions false testimony when he was going through his confirmation hearing. you'll remember he said that he didn't have any communications with russians in response to a question from senator franken. and at the time, the "washington post" had just published a story back in march saying that sessions had had multiple meetings

. >> all right, evan perez, thanks. president promises a, quote, great, great surprise in the health care battle. that was after acknowledging getting the legislation through the senate. we'll take a look at where it stands now next. ♪ it's happening, it's happening! in the modern world, you can control just about anything with an app. your son is turning on all the lights again! and with the esurance mobile app, you can do the same thing with your car insurance. like access your id card, file a claim, or manage your policy. it's so easy it's almost scary. let's get outta here! that's auto and home insurance for the modern world. esurance. an allstate company. click or call. (woman vo) to refinance? time (man vo) yes! mortgage rates just plummeted. the time to refinance your home is right now. get started at lendingtree dot com. the only place you can compare up to five real offers side by side, for free. our average customer saves $20,000. quick. beat the fed's 2017 rate hike. do not miss this window. are you sure you

we here at cnn were the first to report on the dossier and i was speaking to evan perez before and it was really our inquiries to the fbi and department of justice and to the intelligence community that started this chain of events early in january which forced the fbi and intelligence community to brief him about the dossier, to tell him that these salacious existed. but i think why that's important and this cloud that he refers to that trump refers to in the memos in the conversations with the director and said this cloud over the russia investigation really started with the dossier and in the memo that comey eventually prepared, you know, he said he needed to brief trump about the dossier because the media was getting ready to report it. that stuff is really, really important, brooke. >> it's the dossier, the cloud, the mike flynn, quote, let it go. shimon, thank you. i want to go to michael zeldin, if i may. thank you for joining everyone here as we go through this opening statement. i want to go through each section and i think specifically on the mike flynn, "let this go" bit, t

> both of these men, both dan coates and mike rogers, according to reporting that i've done and evan perezhe classified session -- because they wouldn't talk about it in public -- that it was odd. was strange. it was surprising because it is not certainly the protocol with which a president usually conducts himself with people at this level on an issue so sensitive. but they didn't feel that if they didn't do it they were going to get in trouble. and they don't end up doing it in the first place. only one of the two of them documented the conversation realtime. that is mike rogers. he had his deputy at the nsa do a memo. i was told by a source who saw the memo it was one page. it was nothing like the comey memo. it wasn't detailed according to the clock and -- and all of that. it was just a general, you know, contemporaneous documentation. dan coates didn't even do that. you know, it has certainly been one of the many clouds hanging over this administration ever since the "washington post" reported last month the conversations happened. what exactly did the president say to them? at least

. >> it's interesting that a justice department department official told us evan perez was not the whitewho ordered them to put out this statement but they did so on background declining to say it on the record right after the justice department's deputy attorney general slams the use of anonymous sources, so, you know, clearly what this is, you know, this always comes against the backdrop of rosenstein and how the.is feeling about him. we saw the tweets this morning suggesting that the deputy attorney general was part of this witch-hunt that he has slammed for months now and perhaps there's a thought process going on in rosenstein's mind of maybe i need to do something to get a little bit of job security and certainly putting out this the statement might help allay some fears that the white house on the part of the president that rosenstein is a political figure championing this witch-hunt against him. >> very interesting. you know, rebecca, the former speaker of the house, newt gingrich, he's been outspoken in his defense of the president throughout all of this period. i want you to li

i think according to evan perez's reporting people at the fbi think that's exactly what would happento them. according to the fbi director, he certainly has a lot of support for what he did among the rank and file. >> listen to this conversation. we're talking about whether jim comey committed a crime. why is that -- this is exactly why kasowitz made that statement. i mean, jim comey is not only not president of the united states, he doesn't even work for the government anymore. this is a classic distraction. you know what jim comey was doing? he was talking to a journalist. that's what journalists do. we talk to people who have stories to tell. that's not called leaking. that's called journalism and it's not illegal for either the subject or the journalist. >> i want to talk an the loyalty pledge. we know this is a crucial part of this and it's going to be a crucial part of what's next. we learned a lot about it today. comey talked about the one-on-one with trump saying i need loyalty, i expect loyalty. he expanded on that. here's what he said. >> my impression, i could always be wr

i along with evan perez were told that in private briefings, classified briefings in the senate and withpecial prosecutors team the dni dan coats and head of nsa said testimony a couple of weeks ago which is talked about the conversations with the president and the gist is that the president asked them each in different times to come out in public and say that there is no -- it is odd and strained but they didn't feel pressured. these are conversations that are going on that speak to very big problem. >> good reporting indeed. thanks very much for that. six weeks after he dropped a stunning hint about secret white house recordings president trump now admits he made no tapes of his talked with fired fbi director. i just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance with geico. huh. i should take a closer look at geico... geico can help with way more than car insurance. boats, homes, motorcycles... even umbrella coverage. this guy's gonna wish he brought his umbrella. fire at will! how'd you know the guy's name is will? yeah? it's an expression, ya know? fire at will? you never heard of that?