comey s testimony as potentially clearing president trump personally, then you kind of have to say that you rely on comey s testimony and everything he says is accurate, phil? reporter: yeah. that s what they are going with up to this point. we ll see if that changes tomorrow, but as of now that s the statement that they have put out. phil mattingly on capitol hill for us, thanks so much. let s talk this over with my panel. 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,
investigation of one of his former top aides. as comey writes, quote, i had understood the president to be asking we drop any investigation of flynn in connection with false statements about his conversations with the russian ambassador in december. it was very concerning given the fbi owes role as an independent investigative agency. the fbi leadership team agreed with me that it was important not to affect the investigation with the president s request which we did not plan to abide, unquote. as president trump previously claimed the former fbi director notes three different times that comey told president trump that the phone was not investigating him personally. once on january 6th when comey first presented the summary of the salacious and unverified dossier of uncompromising information the russians claimed to have about president trump, the second time during the january 27th dinner when comey says the president asked for loyalty and a third time in a march 30th phone call.
investigation. well, that s a strong thing to say. watergate obviously ended with the end of the presidency of richard nixon. based on what comey is alleging in these prepared remarks, do you think president trump potentially obstructed justice? what i can tell you, and you and i have sparred on these legal issues before, that s going to be a topic for lawyers, but i ll tell you if it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck it just might be a duck. it is worth noting that according to comey s own testimony he did assure president trump at least three times that he was not personally under investigation. is that not significant? what i can tell you is that comey confirmed that the president did ask for a pledge of loyalty. i think his exact words were is i need loyalty. that s not what our great institutions are all about.
call he said, it so he said it once at dinner and then he said it twice during phone calls. did you call him? in one case i called him and one case he called me. and did you ask am i under investigation? i asked him, yes. i said if it s possible, would you let me know am i under investigation, and he said you are not under investigation. reporter: comey describing an oval office meeting with mr. trump and other counterterrorism officials where all but comey were dismissed. i want to talk about michael flynn, comey quotes the president as saying, referring to his recently fired national security adviser. i hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting flynn go, comey says trump told him. he s a good guy. i hope you can let this go. comey goes on to say he prepared an unclassified memo of that conversation, understanding that the president was requesting he drop any probe into flynn. he shared that assessment with his fbi leadership team but declined to share i