Describe his interactions with trump on quote, subjects that i understand are of interest to you. That is for sure. He goes on to say, i have not included every detail from my conversations with the president , but to the best of my recollection, i have tried to include information that may be relevant to the committee. So here with me tonight to discuss all of that is david gergen, malika henderson, david ax axelrod, ana navarro. Also scott jennings, former special assistant to president george w. Bush. Lets get into it, james comey describing his first meeting with President Donald Trump on january 6th, at trump tower two weeks before the inauguration. He was breaking the news to president elect, the president elect of a classified dossier full of salacious allegations by russian operatives. Here is what comey says. I first met then president elect trump on friday, january 6th, in a Conference Room in trump tower at new york. I was there with other Intelligence Community i. C. Leaders to brief him and his new National Security team on the findings of an ic assessment concerning russian efforts to interfere in the election. At the conclusion of that briefing, i remained alone with the president elect to brief him on some personally sensitive aspects of the information assembled during the assessment. The ic leadership thought it important for a variety of reasons to alert the incoming president to the existence of this material, even though it was salacious and unverified. Among those reasons were, one, we knew the media was about to publicly report the material and we believed the ic should not keep knowledge of the material and its imminent release, from the president elect. And two, to the extent there was some effort to compromise an incoming president , we could blunt any such effort with a defensive briefing. The director of National Intelligence asked that i personally do no this portion of the briefing because i was staying in my position and because the material implicated the fbis counterintelligence responsibilities. We also agreed i would do it alone to minimize potential embarrassment to the president elect, although we agreed it made sense for me to do the briefing, the fbis leadership, and i were concerned that the briefing might create a situation where a new president came into office, uncertain about whether the fbi was conducting a counterintelligence investigation of his personal conduct. Lets talk about that portion now. This is a critical time that salacious and unproven dossier had been floating around washington for months, and would become public just a few days later, exploding the russia story and they had to tell the president about it, right . Yeah, and you can imagine that moment. With james comey who are is known to the president from news clips, and became obviously a topic of conversation during the campaign, but there he is, revealing salacious and embarrassing details to this president that supposedly russia has on him. Must have been an incredibly awkward moment, and in many ways, it sort of sets the tone for their entire relationship. And you see him there saying that he knows its embarrassing, and theyre taking care in some ways, to educate the president elect on why this is going on. And very careful to let the president know that hes not under counterintelligence investigation at that point, which of course the president later makes a point of several times. And well see his lawyers do the same thing. Ana navarro, their first meeting and comey is briefing the president elect involving salacious allegations, what a way to start off a relationship. You think . I mean what a way to break the ice, right . Look, everything about this, tom, is just so extraordinary. Its so surreal, abnormal. The idea that an fbi director has got to break this news to the president elect of the United States, the idea the president of the United States is at one point calling the fbi director and saying, i have nothing to do with russian hookers. Theres just nothing normal about this situation. So, for those who to want go on, as if life in washington, life in government is normal right now, good luck with that. Because the whole world, and certainly all of america is watching what is happening in washington right now. And until all of it, and the entire truth comes out, there will be no agenda going forward. David, did comey set a bad precedent by having this conversation one on one . That it was okay to have oneonone meetings . I dont think so, don. There are going to be people who claim that on the other side. Well, comey met one on one with trump, so why shouldnt trump be allowed to shoo everybody else out of the room in a subsequent meeting and talk to comey directly . I think theyre apples and oranges. And if anything, he decided comey decided to go one on one because the whole group of Intelligence Officers who went in decided this was a better way to do it, it wouldnt embarrass the president. I think whats interesting about this is of course he was comey became suspicious right from the first conversation, right from this initial conversation. His testimony goes on and to point out. But, comey also came in came in, theres a context with this, and that is, he had watched trump, all the way through the election season. He saw how volatile he was and he also have this information, on this dossier, and so you must imagine that he was sort of wondering, how do i handle this so i have a Good Relationship with the president , but its really important to tell him . And its also true, trump may have been grateful to comey when he first walked in because remember, a lot of democrats were blaming comey for hillarys loss and trumps victory. David axelrod, this testimony was released a day early at comeys request, why do you think he wanted that . Well, i think for two reasons. One is look, hes set the table for the day, all the Coverage Today and going into this hearing is his story exactly the way he wanted to tell it. Which is, i think, pretty smart on his part. He also now he has given the Committee Time to study the testimony and he probably has a strong sense of where the questions are going to come from, including that question which is you say you didnt want to be alone with the president , but you set the pattern by meeting with him alone in the first instance. Now i want to add one other thing about that meeting between the two of them, remember it came at the end of a very fraught meeting between the president and the Intelligence Community. The president elect had been resisting the notion that the russians had interfered in the election and vigorously resisting the notion that they had interfered with the intent of influencing the outcome in his favor so he had just gotten a briefing on all of that. And that was before he got to the dossier. So, you know, this relationship has been fraught from the very beginning. He had his work cut out, meaning comey. You heard from james comey says about how he revealed that salacious russian dossier to the president elect. But what was it about trumps reaction that compelled comey to document their conversation . So heres more. So in that context, prior to the january 6 meeting, i discussed with the fbis Leadership Team whether i should be prepared to assure president elect trump we were not investigating him personally. That was true. We did not have an open counterintelligence case on him. We agreed i should do so if circumstances warranted. During our one on one meeting at trump tower, based on the president elect trumps reaction to the briefing and without him directly asking the question, i offered that assurance. I felt compelled to document my first conversation with president elect, the president elect in a memo to ensure accuracy. I began to type it on a laptop, in an fbi vehicle outside trump tower the moment i walked out of the meeting, creating written records immediately after oneonone conversations with mr. Trump was my practice from that point forward. This had not been my practice in the past. I spoke alone with president obama, twice in person, and never on the phone, once in 2015 to discuss Law Enforcement policy issues, and a second time, briefly, for him to say goodbye in late 2016. And neither of those circumstances did i memorialize the discussions, i can recall nine one on one conversations with President Trump in four months, three in person, and six on the phone. Van jones, youre next, he joins us as well, so van, what does it say about how president elect trump must have reacted to all of this in that moment for comey to offer the assurance without the president directly asking the question . Well whatever happened, and were still in the process of learning, it was alarming to it was disconcerting to comey, because he had one set of practices with the prior president , which was to be able to speak with him, without feeling the need to memorialize and document. And for whatever reason, when he left that building, there was that had changed in his mind about what he needed to do with relationship to the american president and he wrote it down. He didnt even wait to get to the office. He didnt say hello to the secretary, how you doing in the car. No, in the car, writing this down. Even for people who have a process as i do of memorializing stuff, you dont always do it in the uber. This guy does it in the uber. He does it in the fbi car. Something happened there that was shocking even for a veteran Law Enforcement official. Yeah, so scott, how about comey feeling compelled to document this conversation the second he walked out . Did he feel like there was something inappropriate in nature, do you think . I think were speculating wildly to say that he was found found something disconcerting or something that bothered him. It may be that he had a very awkward conversation as you stated at the top of the show about a weird dossier, and he thought, you know what, this relationship has gotten off to such a strange start that maybe i ought to write things down because its one of the most abnormal kinds of conversations ive ever had to start a relationship with someone. But i gotta tell you, it may be a blessing in disguise for james comey to have been fired as the head of the fbi. He ought to be managing a pr firm. Since he got fired, the the orchestrated Leak Campaign and the rollout of what he has to say has been one of the most welloiled pr machines i have ever seen, culminating with todays testimony release. This guy, if Law Enforcement doesnt work out for you, james comey, go into the pr business. Manage edelman or something internationally, you clearly have a talent for managing your own reputation. This is what its all about and i suspect thats what hell keep doing tomorrow. Go ahead, david. I disagree with that. James comey had a wonderful reputation before the politics of 2016. It got shredded a lot during that time. What i do think is more likely is that he had intimations, this may lead to an explosive situation down the road. Nges. Because he didnt feel the need to take contemporaneous notes with president obama, and only met with him twice one or twice, versus nine times, conversations with the current president. He brought to President Trump, or incoming President Trump an explosive document. If it were true was clearly going to lead to legal problems down the road to hearings and one thing and another. I think he was trying to protect himself and protect the record by doing this contemporaneous basis. Michael, this is one of three occasions that comey he confirmed that the president was saying, what the president was saying about not being under investigation, but comey makes a distinction that it specifically about a counterintelligence probe, how important is that distinction . Well, well see how it plays out in his oral testimony. I think theres a lot of flesh that needs to be added to the bones of this testimony. The written testimony, that is. I think the comey trump relationship, starting with this salacious allegation and the president saying, i had nothing to do with that, focused comey on the notion that the president was going to be very interested in defending himself and his reputation and that comey therefore in these any sort of one on one meeting would have to have a contemporaneous record of what was said should the president turn on comey as we saw he did ultimately by firing him. Thats different when you go through the other parts of the memo, when you see comey trying to document what he thinks is Improper Communications from the president to him about an ongoing criminal investigation which is prohibited by department of justice regulation. I think there are two types of Communications Going that are going on here to begin with, neither of which throughout the whole relationship makes comey feel at all comfortable. And just for context, cnn reported on january 6th about this meeting, that was four days later. And heres how the president elect trump responded to the reporting at the time. He said fake news, total political witch hunt and later tweeted intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news leak into the public, one last shot at me. Are we living in nazi germany . Whats your reaction to that, ana . Be careful what you tweet because it may come back to haunt you. You know, look, i think that this has been incredibly interesting. And, you know, these three instances that jim comey memorializes where he did tell the president elect, and then the president , that he wasnt under criminal investigation himself, you know, the folks that are trump apologists and that defend him no matter what, want to tell you that jim comey is doing this for political reasons, for personal reasons, that hes doing this to elevate his own profile. Jim comey is saying that that aspect, that trump had already told us about, is true. So if anything, i think jim comey is establishing his credibility and is validating his entire argument. If what he wanted to do was go out and destroy trump for political reasons and because he was a political hack, why would he bring up these three instances . And you know, on the first point that we were discussing as to why he memorialized the meetings with President Trump, the ones with president obama, the one was about general policy. Its a completely different scenario than discussing an investigation. Youve got believe that somebody of the experience, a Law Enforcement professional of the level of jim comey had an instinct, if not an indication, if not a real hunch that this was not the end of it. This briefing was not going to be the end of it. It isnt going this was going to mushroom and grow. And more shoes were going to drop as, in fact, has happened. Going through the entire testimony this evening. Stay with me, when we come back, what happened behind closed doors in the green room. What james comey says about his private dinner at the white house one week after the inauguration. Trumental is that good . Yeah its perfect. Bees bees go go go [ girl catching her breath } [ bees buzzing inside vehicle ] the allnew volkswagen atlas. With easyaccess 3rd row. Lifes as big as you make it. Sfx engine revving silence gave us the power to turn this enemy into an ally . Microsoft and its partners are using smart traps to capture mosquitoes and sequence their dna to fight disease. There are over 100 million pieces of dna in every sample. With the microsoft cloud, we can analyze the data faster than ever before. If we can detect new viruses before they spread, we may someday prevent outbreaks before they begin. Just hours away from james comeys testimony at his request, the committee has released his Opening Statement. Tonight we are reading and analyzing every bit. My panel is back with me. And the next portion, jim comey talks about a dinner he had with President Trump on january 27th, just one week after his inauguration. It was the day the president signed an executive order to temporarily ban refugees from seven muslimmajority countries. It was also the night before the president s longawaited phone call with russian president vladimir putin. So he says, the president and i had dinner on friday, january 27 00th, at 6 30 p. M. In the green room at the white house. He had called me at lunchtime that day and invited me to dinner that night saying he was going to invite my whole family, but decided to have just me this time with the whole family coming the next time. It was unclear from the conversation who else would be at the dinner, i assumed there would be others. It turned out to be just the two of us. Seated at a small oval table in the center of the green room. Two Navy Stewards waited on us, only entering to serve food and drinks. The president began by asking me whether i wanted to stay on his stay on as fbi director, which i found strange, because he had already told me twice in earlier conversations that he hoped i would stay and i had assured him that i intended to. He said that lots of people wanted my job and given the abuse i had taken in the previous year, he would understand if i wanted to walk away. My instincts told me that the one on one setting and the pretense that this was our first discussion about my position meant the dinner was, at least in part, an effort to have me ask for my job and create some sort of relationship. Sort of patronage relationship. That concerned me greatly. Given the fbis traditionally independent status in the executive branch. I replied that i loved my work and i intended to serve out my tenyear term as director, and then because the setup made me uneasy, i added that i was not reliable in the way politicians use that word. But he could always count on know tell him the truth. I added that i was not on anybodys side politically and could not be counted on in the traditional political sense. A stance i said was in his best interest as the president. A few moments later the president said i need loyalty, i expect loyalty. I didnt move, speak, or change my facial expression at any way during the awkward silence that followed. We simply looked at each other in silence. The conversation then moved on, but he returned to the subject near the end of our dinner. Back with my panel. Nia