Big deal and i may quit. in this white house, given the nature of the cabinet we ve seen so far, that s a strong statement from my perspective. and it s trying to forestall something he s worried will happen. let me ask you this. you re pointing out, neera, the comey memos, which appear to be quite accurate, paint a bad picture of trump, but they also i think this speaks to their accuracy, paint a mediocre picture of their author, james comey. how do you think he fairs now that we ve seen the documentation? i don t think there are a lot of heroes here. i m glad he took those notes. i m glad he shared the notes with a wide variety of people. i think it s fascinating that president trump seems to be targeting the corroborating witnesses of james comey. but i don t think his behavior here in the leadup or the weeks and months before his firing gives him any profile in courage
People in this administration, people loyal to trump, are worried trump would fire mueller s boss over a lawful raid of the president s lawyer. the president does have the power to fire doj officials for any reason, except an illegal reason, an obstruckive reason. the washington post goes on saying sessions wanted to convey the untenable position that rod rosenstein s firing would put him in, sessions in. it may be more than untenable for sessions if he has reason to know a firing is takes place for an illegal reason and he stands by as that happens at the doj that he is in charge of, that could lead to his own problems, husband own criminal liabilities, what are anyone thinks of jeff sessions, who served as a criminal prosecutor, he knows richard nixon s attorney general served 19
You know, i m saying that cohen is you know, cohen has connections that are useful to trump. that he s got it sounds like you re saying and tell me if i m getting this wrong because i m interviewing you, it sounds like michael cohen was not hired for his ability as an attorney or fixer but there were other sources of money that linked him in a way that might be of interest to federal investigators. sources of money that opened the door. his role was as a fixer. i can t go much beyond that. we ll pause it there. maybe we ll come back and get into it more. it s interesting stuff. thank you both. coming up how leaking james comey memo could be playing into the republican s. our special guest tonight wendy sherman on trump receiving a compliment from north korea.. play do it like this .
thank you, i was fascinated to watch. i hope you have a great weekend, rachel. i m ari melber in for lawrence o donnell tonight. we begin with a blueprint of what a saturday night massacre would look like. jeff sessions warning the white house he will do something if donald trump tries to take control of the mueller probe by firing mueller s boss, deputy attorney general rod rosenstein, and the news is sessions says he might quit over that, which is the kind of move that can change a single personnel decision into yes a massacre. the washington post reporting tonight sessions went through the official channels as trump s furry at rod rosenstein s peaked after approving the fbi raid on his personal attorney, michael cohen. there s a lot packed into that sentence. first the idea of corrupt intent.
david jolly and anna marie cox. go. well, i think one thing i want to comment onno my s even his demeanor in that interview with rachel and his interviews, he has trouble processing is president. i m not sure that hyper bolically, i know he knows what it means. but not when it comes to the president. like following the conversations in a jigsaw puzzle. one of the things is the putin phone call as told by trump in service of saying how he doesn t think that michael flynn has good judgment. which is odd because what he s saying is michael flynn doesn t have good judgment because the way he was behaving about putin? i ve seen right wing outlets say this doubt trump has about flynn
Circumstances the number three in the fbi. that deputy director s chief counsel is lisa page. vox, trump s efforts to discredit strzok and page came after trump was advised last summer by his then criminal defense attorney john dowd page was likely a witness against him in special counsel robert mueller s investigation into whether trump obstructed justice. so he knew page might be a witness against him and they say that hasn t been previously reported or known. so donald trump trying to discredit and remove lisa page before she could be a witness, which is the same playbook against mccabe, much of which is corroborated by the newly released comey memos. joining me is one of the journalists who broke this story tonight for the washington post. why do you think this is coming out now? this is quite fresh and i think what happened was you might remember this time last week there was great feeling
Was proof he was on to flynn early on and thinking flynn was somehow for trump is misguided because trump had doubts about him. but his doubts seemed to be along the lines of servicing some kind of relationship with russia. so. david? i think the bigger story here is the hill gop and the fact that the fix really is in among the hill gop insulating this president should he move to dismiss or have rosenstein dismiss mueller or dismiss rosenstein himself. consider you have freedom caucus members talking about impeachment of rosenstein. mcconnell has suggested they don t need to protect mueller. this is the hill gop playing jv.
there is no evidence here on any obstruction of justice. he told the president i don t leak. what did he tell george stephanopolous? good question. he leaked. this tells us four things. one, whatever you take of comey s judgment, he has a good memory. two, whatever you think of trump s politics he s inconsistent and not reliable, according to comey because the memos show contradictions and misleading statements by trump. three, what everyone thinks of the dossier, trump was obsessed with parts of it and four, trump wanted to keep putin happen. he writes, discovered during his toast to theresa may that redacted had called four days ago. flynn said the return call was scheduled for saturday, which prompted a heated reply from the president that six days was too much.
The jurisdictional targets can be expanded to, which we know because when manafort s lawyers attacked mueller for potentially exceeding his jurisdiction it backfired and we got a redacted court document that showed rosenstein had previously expanded the jurisdiction to deal with some of manafort s allegations prior to 2016. the redacted parts we don t know what they are, but it wouldn t be unreasonable to see if they might pursue michael cohen. if that was the reason he was looking to fire rod rosenstein, would that be up here like obstruction sandwich? it becomes very, very difficult for attorney general sessions at that point in time, depending on what he knows so that if he s had conversations with president trump where trump or where someone in the white house has conveyed to sessions that it s time for rosenstein to go because he s been giving
House and the department of justice are very aware of those questions. what is the significance of the michael cohen raid in the mind of the president if that, if him, is so scary that it would trigger him doing the very thing that everyone, including some of his loyalist allies on television have been pleading with him not to do, alan dershowitz was on the beat earlier this week, he s a loyalist of trump and he s pleading with him not to fire rosenstein. all the reporting shows the president was deeply rattled by that development, deeply concerned, deeply angry, believed it crossed some kind of red line. you know, on the other hand, it s now been, you know, what, nearly two weeks since it occurred. and this is a president who has