Page 3 - July 5th Statement News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

>> yes, sir. >> his specific ask was you'd tell the american people what you'd told him, told the leaders of congress, democrats and republicans, he was not personally under investigation? >> yes, sir. >> what he was asking you to do, would you have done here today? >> correct. yes, sir. >> again, at that setting, did you say to the president, it would be inappropriate for you to do so and then talk to the white house counsel or somebody so hopefully they'd talked to him and tell him he couldn't do this? >> first time i said, i'll see what we can do. second time, i explained how it should work...

With the president in which you reminded him that congressional leaders have been briefed that we are not personally, the fbi was fought personally investigating president trump and again, was that statement to congressional leaders and to the president limited to counterintelligence investigations or was it a broader statement? i'm trying to understand whether there was any kind of investigation of the president under way. >> no i'm sorry, if i misunderstood, i apologize. we briefed the congressional leadishship about what americans we -- leadership about what americans we had open counterint...

And again, all of you know this. maybe the american people don't. the challenge, and i'm not picking on reporters about writing stories about classified information is the people talking about it often don't really know what's going on, and those of us who actually of us going on don't talk about it. we don't call the press to say, hey, you don't that thing wrong about the sensitive topic. we have to leave it there. i mentioned to the chairman the nonsense around what influenced me to make the july 5th statement. nonsense. but i can't go explaining how it is nonsense. >> thank you. all right. ...

Briefed that we were not personally -- the fbi was not personally investigating president trump. and, again, was that statement to congressional leaders and to the president limited to counterintelligence inve investigati investigations, or was it a broader statement? i'm trying to understand whether there was any kind of investigation of the president underway. >> no. i'm sorry. if i misunderstood, i apologize. we briefed the congressional leadership about what americans we had opened counterintelligence investigation cases on. we specifically said, the president is not one of those americans...

Pressure to try and co-opt an american, especially a government official, to act on its behalf, that's a serious concern to the fbi and at the heart of the fbi's counter-intelligence mission. >> so if you've got a 36-page document of specific claims that are out there, the fbi would have to for counter intelligence reasons, try to verify anything that might be claimed in there, one, and probably first and foremost, is the counter intelligence concerns that we have about blackmail. would that be an accurate statement? >> yes. if the fbi receives a credible allegation that there is some effort t...