Giuliani, after one legal a lister after another turned him down. Now giuliani tells cnn hes coming on to help push the Mueller Investigation to an end, according to him, that end could come in a matter of weeks which seems a wee bit optimistic but its exactly what President Trump wants to hear. Also today, james comey telling cnns jake tapper why he thinks its possible the russians could have compromising information about President Trump. Theres a reason i say its possible. Two things struck me. One, the president s constantly bringing it up with me to deny it. And in my experience as an investigator, its not an ironclad rule, but its a striking thing when someone constantly brings up something to deny that you didnt ask about, and second, ive always been struck in my encounters with him that he wouldnt criticize Vladimir Putin even in private. Which struck me as odd. So, it is important to know that comey didnt cite any actual evidence, just his gut feeling that its possible. Lets discuss. I want to start now, bring in cnns justice reporter, Laura Jarrett with our breaking news on the comey memos. Laura, good evening to you. Thanks for joining us. It is cnn news now that cnn obtained the comey memos provided to the Justice Department from capitol hill. Give us the lowdown on what were learning. Don, the memos are detailed and they are vivid. They largely track what james comey has told congress on previous occasions about his interactions with President Trump and also what he says in his book thats just been released this week, but there are some new nugget in here, including his recitation, at least, that President Trump conveyed serious reservations about the judgment of former National Security adviser Michael Flynn. But were also learning in this memo that james comey had an interesting interaction with former chief of staff Reince Priebus. On february 8th, just days before Michael Flynn was fired. I want to read to you a part of the memo where comey describes this interaction with priebus. He says that he asked me, meaning comey if this was, quote, a private conversation. I replied that it was. He, that meaning priebus, then said he wanted to ask me a question and i could decide if it was appropriate to answer. He then asked, do you have a fisa warrant on mike flynn . I paused for a few seconds and then said that i would answer here, but this illustrated the kind of question that had to be asked and answered through established channels. I said the answer, blank, its been redacted here, i then explained that the normal channel was from doj leadership to the white House Counsel about such things. He goes on, don, to say, i explained that it was important that communications about any particular case go through that channel to protect us, and to protect the white house from any accusations of improper influence. Now, don, of course, weve gotten some reaction from capitol hill already tonight. Democrats saying that these memos largely corroborate what james comey has already said about loyalty pledges from the president , but were also hearing from republicans who say when he talks about lifting the russia cloud, hes really referring to, meaning the president , is referring to the cloud of salacious allegations. Not trying to do anything improper with lifting the larger russia investigation, don. So, laura, muellers team didnt object to this . No. In fact, im told, don, according to a source familiar that the Justice Department consulted with the special counsels team prior to releasing these memos to congress and the special counsel did not object. All right. Laura, thank you very much. And as laura said, theres we got the memos here. Theres lots i dont know if we can get a wide shot here. I have them all on my desk. Were going to go through them. Its a lot to get through. We have a lot of people assembled here to get us through all these memos. We have them highlighted. Well tell you exactly what they mean. I want to bring in now cnns Chris Cillizza and pamela brown. Also Law Enforcement analyst josh campbell. Okay. So theres lots to get to here. Here we go. This is a thursday night. Josh, the president talks about Michael Flynn a number of times, so i want to read this. He says, he then returned to the topic of mike flynn saying that flynn is a good guy. He didnt do anything wrong in the call. He said, i hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting flynn go, he is a good guy. I hope you can let this go. I replied by saying i agree, i think hes a good guy but said no more. This sounds like what hes been saying all along and whats been reported earlier about this. You think this supports comeys claims that the president pressured him . I think it does. I want us to take a step back as we look through these memos. Ive been looking through them as well. Theres something in the Intelligence Community within the fbi we call circular reporting. When you have sources of information that turn out to come from the same source, that doesnt mean you have an additional way to validate what was said. I want us to keep in mind here although weve heard some of this report before from jim comey, these are jim comeys notes that were reading. Its not as though theres an additional source. Where they are extremely valuable is if we look at them, think about the time and place that they were written, these are contemporaneous notes filed directly after the meetings with the president and some of these white house officials which i think give credence under our system of justice that someone who documents these types of meetings, these are valuable in the sense that they provide that possibly corroborating information. The one thing that strikes me, you asked about mike flynn, not only the sense you have the president saying, you know, no the directly, hey, dismiss this investigation, but kind of working up to it, working around it, if you will, but as laura mentioned a second ago, me as a former fbi agent, the most striking thing that i found in these memos so far beyond simply lets get rid of this investigation is the fact that you have the white house chief of staff asking the fbi director whether one of his colleagues, the National Security adviser, is a subject of a fisa order. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance act order, which is beyond inappropriate. One of the arguments weve seen from this administration, you have a lot of outsiders that come in, they dont really know the government. This was Reince Priebus, this is someone who is a washington insider. He should have known better. Im looking at another one, this is for you, chris. Sure. I have to say this phrase because its a quote from the president. Comey writes that he also brought up the steele dossier using the phrase, golden showers thing. Were seeing comeys own words about how much that detail bothered the president. Yeah. Im glad the show airs after 10 00 p. M. And my children are in bed, don. You know, look, he brings it up on more than one occasion. I skimmed through the comey memos. I havent read all it, but i skimmed it. Brings it up on two occasions. We know that this is something that irritates him. Now, lets lets argue one side of in which is i think it is uniquely possible that for whatever reason, the first lady, as jim comey writes, donald trump believes that the first lady, melania trump, is annoyed, is bothered. This irritates her and donald trump wants to eliminate all doubt there. And so maybe thats the motivation, but whatever the motivation is, hes quite clearly focused on this and i do think laura mentioned this, but i do think to my big takeaway from that comey interview with jake earlier today was comey making the point which was he just he, donald trump just kept bringing up the russia stuff. The answer yesterday at the press conference with shinzo abe that no collusion, no collusion, no collusion. Its clearly something that really bothers him. Has bothered him. Continues to bother him. The why, i know some people roll their eyes and say we know. I would say we dont know based on the fact but we do know it bothers him. Okay, so, listen, let me ask you just this about you can understand how this might bother someones wife. Yeah. Any husband would be concerned about that, but i think its sort of weird in the phrasing where he says, if she even believes this 1 if its not true, then, you know you can understand why hes concerned about his wife and, i mean, this is really salacious. Thats right. I think it would be i mean, comey writes in the book that he found it odd that that conversation was happening and that the comments on the husband wife dynamic with melania and donald trump. I will not go into that, i learned long ago not to judge other peoples marriages and relationships. So i do think i think we have to say this is a possibility that for whatever reason he wants to lock this up from a third party to say this did not happen, this is personally making it difficult for my life, my wife is bothered by this. Got it. I want to get this resolved. Okay. Pamela, lets bring you in now because we also in this memo, where we talks about the hooker thing, it says the president says the hooker thing is nonsense but that putin had told him we have some of the most beautiful hookers in the world. So we dont know when that supposed conversation took place, pamela, between donald trump and putin, but we know that they talked and the president was president elect, when he was elected in november of 2016, as president january of 2017, it seems outlandish that this would have come up in those conversations. What do you make of this . Yeah, its a little confusing if they only had two conversations. They didnt know each other that well and putin allegedly is saying that russia has the most beautiful hookers in the world. I dont know if its getting conflated with what was said in an interview that putin did with bloomberg where he mentioned something to that effect. Its a little bit confusing. A little bit odd, obviously, in terms of why that would ever come up in a conversation and what context. Theres a lot that sort of make you raise your eyebrows here. Also just reading through this, don, seeing just the chaotic nature of these conversations between james comey and the president when they were oneonone, james comey described it as jigsaw puzzle a way with pieces picked up then discarded then returned to when you had the president bringing up putins comments on one hand and bringing up the inauguration and the crowd size on the other hand. The extraordinary luxury of the white house, his young sons height, the viciousness of the campaign. All of this within a pretty short timeframe. What struck me, too, in reading this is the first meeting they had that dinner at the white house just oneonone, even though the president appeared to meander and talk about all these different issues, he circled back to the loyalty question. He brought it up. Comey claims that he didnt give any sort of signal, didnt nod, do anything. Then they went and talked about these different issues and the president circled back to it toward the end of the dinner. Its clear based on comeys account of things that this is something the president wanted to reach an agreement on with comey, don . Listen, josh, there was a comment of the nature from Vladimir Putin in an interview with bloomberg in 2017. Heres the quote. It says trump is a grown man and secondly, he is someone who has been involved with beauty contests for many years and has met the most beautiful women in the world. I find it hard to believe that he rushed to some hotel to meet girls of loose morals, although ours are undoubtedly the best in the world. Josh, as you answer this, youre the former assistant, i should note, to comey. What do you make of that comment . Wow. What can you say . You know, i harken back to a recent book from mike isikoff and david corn, russian roulette, talk about thencitizen trump, trying to court putin, those around him, in order to work on possible business dealings and obviously the Miss Universe pageant and i think this shows this is a different world. This isnt the type of government, buttonedup people that were used to. Theres a lot of extraneous details there to put it lightly. Yeah. To put it lightly. Pamela, back to you. Were going to continue to go through this. One of the conversations, one of comeys memos describing the private dinner with the president at the white house, comey describes it this way. He said, the conversation which was pleasant at all times was chaotic with topics touched left then return to later making it very difficult to recount in a linear fashion. That sounds a lot like that sounds like the President Trump we know. It is. This is the president you see out on the stump. The president behind closed doors who really cant stay on one topic for a very long time. Hell go from one thing to the next thing in a matter of seconds. It appears that was the case in his conversation with james comey. Whats also clear here is while he seemed to bounce around on all these different topics there were some things he wanted to convey to james comey, as i brought up earlier, the whole idea of a loyalty oath. Also what i thought was interesting is the Michael Flynn situation, this first dinner that they had, he brings up Michael Flynn seemingly unprompted and saying he has a real issue with his judgment, that he doesnt have good judgment which really struck me. Its the first ive ever heard that. Then fast forward to the other meeting that the two had in the oval office, where then the president allegedly according to comey is asking him to let the Flynn Investigation go. And so sort of confusing on how that squares, why he was so fixated on wanting comey to let the Flynn Investigation go then on the other hand he seems to really question his own National Security adviser at the time questioning his judgment, don. Hey, don, can i add from inside, you know, color here, as far as hearing comey tell me about some of these encounters, you know, he said he was always very uncomfortable because it was so exhausting. Put yourself in the situation of the fbi director. Most of us we sit there and talk to people, well actively listen and nod. He said there are so many topics here that came at you scattershot that any nod may be you basically agreeing with whats being said without even knowing it. A very unique individual. Thats what i want to say also, chris, let me yeah, go ahead. Chris, this is your turn to respond and this is similar to what josh was saying because a detail in the contribution here remarkable, goes on to talk about the conversations. He said it really was conversation jigsaw puzzle, as jigsaw puzzle, he said, in a way, with pieces picked up then discarded then returned to. Go on, chris. Well, so, i think what you see here brought in that quote and then more broadly, number one, the ring of truth, right . We know, as you point out, don, anyone whos ever watched donald trump speak publicly, whether you like him or dont like him, he goes from Electoral College to north korea in three sentences. He did it yesterday. Thats point one. Point two, donald trump is someone who is really, really, really into sort of freelancing. Hes someone who came into politics, he had never done it before, and he trusts his gut. He just talks. Yeah. Hes up against someone, and i dont mean to paint it adversarial. I dont think it was to start. Hes up against someone in comey, this is not his first radio. Jim comey from the start was taking contemporaneous notes. Donald trump is all over the place. Hes talking. Hes on that subject. Jim comey is documenting those conversations so, yes, josh made this point earlier, this is still just jim comeys story fleshed out a little bit but largely the story hes been telling consistent with what he said. My gosh, compared to the donald trump story thats been all over the map, he fired comey because of the rosenstein memo, no, it was because of russia, no, it was i mean, there are so many shifting explanations over here and on the other side its not only the same story, but its documented contemporaneously. And its sort of a mismatch. Pamela, i need to get to the break. Im going to keep you guys. Sure. Were going to continue to go through all of this. Josh, its good to have you here being the former special assistant to comey, you can offer some insight that other folks cant. Stick around, everyone. When we come back, more of what were learning tonight from the comey memos and what they could mean for Robert Muellers investigation of possible obstruction of justice. 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Were back now with our breaking news tonight. New details from james comeys memos about his conversations with President Trump. They have been turned over to congress tonight. Cnn has obtained a copy. Weve got more details now. We have all the details for you. Back with Chris Cillizza, pamela brown, and josh campbell. P