defined. the statute that i was talking about, session title 18 section 2,000, section 15203 an 1512, the defendant has to act corruptly. that is usually left up to the jury to decide, corruptly. but i suppose donald trump could say i was just acting out of humanitarian reasons. frankly, it is very difficult to come up with a noncorrupt reason to shut down an investigation of your own campaign. lots of questions for the white house. even if you feel sorry for mike flynn, you know, the idea that you were doing this simply as a humanitarian gesture, i think that would be tough to persuade. but gloria you re right, the issue of motive is certainly a relevant one for this question. sorry, wolf. i interrupted. one of those memos written by comey, he is a good guy referring to flynn, i hope can
sense. look back at states. he first had the dinner back in january. with director comey when he said he was told multiple times he wasn t being investigated. then in february, as we learn today, the president approached the director in the oval office having asked everyone else to leave saying, let s just drop this with michael flynn. good guy. then a m later, fbi director testified that the president in his campaign were under investigation for collusion with russia so now ultimately the president seems to have exhausted any hopes he had of persuading the director to drop the investigation and thus we find out about the firing. with perspective to how this is being interpreted around the world, i think you are seeing foreign leaders, particularly allies, questioning whether or not they can trust the administration, whether or not they can trust this president. this latest bomb shell is days before the president s getting ready to leave the white house and head over to saudi arabia,
his first overseas trip. gloria borger, white house pushing back, saying the president never asked to end the investigation into michael flynn. calling this report not truthful. how should the white house engage in what is called damage control? i think that s their effort. what they are trying to say also is that comey s friends are trying to lit size this. in fact, if comey was so concerned about this, should have talked to oversight committees about this. why is this coming out at this juncture? it is a way for a pay back for for the firing of comey. but i have to say, wolf, when you take these two days and look at them and take a step back, you have to say that this is a president who maybe doesn t
important to establish. we are in the beginning stage in this process. first we learned of this conversation. and fbi, white house says there was no attempt to shut down. if there was no attempt to shut it down, there was no crime, no impeachable offense, end up story. but you have to look at all the circumstances. obviously the first circumstances, are there notes and are there tapes? and that s what congress has got to determine very quickly. that s critically important right now. stand by. want to bring in elijah cummings of maryland. ranking member of the white house oversight committee. when you hear the cnn report, new york times report that former fbi director james comey, he wrote a note that president trump asked to end the investigation of the national security adviser, former national security adviser, michael flynn, do you see that
fbi director to end an investigation after he had fired general flynn is something now, given our system of government, which the congress needs to investigate and the president needs to talk about and james comey himself needs to testify. so that all the charges of who s politicizing what, why did comey s friends come out with this now and the white house saying why didn t comey tell the oversight committee about this, these are all legitimate questions. i think honestly, it s up to the congress to get the facts out so that the american public can judge the seriousness of this story, and i think it behooves everyone to let the facts come out and let congress do its work and let comey and the president tell their sides of this story,