The FRONTLINE Interviews

Yamiche Alcindor

PBS NewsHour

Yamiche Alcindor is a correspondent for PBS NewsHour, where she covers the White House. She also serves as a political contributor for NBC News and MSNBC, and was formerly a national political reporter at The New York Times.

This is the transcript of an interview with FRONTLINE’s Gabrielle Schonder conducted on July 25, 2018. It has been edited for clarity and length.

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Putin and the Presidents

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[Deputy Attorney General] Rod Rosenstein is a very big character in this particular film.… The president approaches him and [Attorney General] Jeff Sessions and says, “I need you to write a memo."Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Yeah.At least from my understanding, the president knew he wanted to fire James Comey.He knew that he had to do it in a way that was not going to be too scandalous, that was not going to make people think he was trying to protect himself.As a result, he summoned Rod Rosenstein into this meeting with Jeff Sessions, and he’s crafting this idea that “If I can get them to say that James Comey handled the Hillary Clinton issue wrongly, then maybe that, in some ways, covers me."

To me, it’s an incredible moment, because Rod Rosenstein has to make this decision.Do I put my name on the line?Do I sign this letter that says this is why James Comey is going to be fired, or do I push back against the president?Time and time again, you find these men who have had long, storied careers, who have dealt with legal issues, who understand right from wrong, but who then go on to say, “OK, I'm going to go inside with President Trump even if I'm on shaky ground here."

So he makes that decision, and I think we start going down this road of President Trump and Rod Rosenstein’s relationship starting to fray, because it is a seminal moment where he makes this decision that alters a lot of different things, including putting them both on the path to a special counsel.

Is he a bit of a fall guy at this moment?

As a reporter, it’s tough for me to say that Trump was looking for a fall guy, because the president thinks that he’s very much justified.But I would say the critics of the president absolutely think that he’s looking for a fall guy to justify why he wants to fire [then-FBI Director] James Comey.And James Comey, of course, is someone that he’s grown to really be frustrated with.When you talk to James Comey, and when you listen to his interviews, you realize that James Comey is talking to him about the Steele dossier, he’s bringing up kind of the legality surrounding all these different things that the president doesn’t want to talk about.He’s talking about Russia interfering in the election.These are all subjects that President Trump doesn’t want to be talking about, especially not with his FBI director.

So yes, I think that some people would say that he was absolutely looking for a fall guy.And Rod Rosenstein, with all of his career on the line, with this storied history of being very adherent to the law, decides to be the person that the president puts his name on when he wants to fire James Comey.

That’s great.Let me ask you a little bit more about Rod.What does this moment between the president and Rod tell us about how the president approaches the law, and the norms between the Justice Department and the executive branch?Because it seems like it’s a real moment in which we see the president using everyone and everything in order to get an outcome that he wants.

I think that the president, even before this moment but definitely cemented in this moment, sees the Justice Department as an arm of his presidency, sees it not as an independent part of the government that needs to be respected but instead sees it as a tool to be used for his political gains, and for the things that he wants to accomplish politically.So in this moment, you see him asking someone who knows a lot about the law to do something to justify how he can fire James Comey.

It goes to the idea that there are a lot of people who look at this president, who look at President Trump, and say: “This is a buffoon.He doesn’t understand what's going on.He’s kind of going at this very haphazardly."Instead, you see that he realizes he has to not just say, “I'm going to fire James Comey,” but to say, “I need to put a plan in place to fire James Comey, and I need to find somebody who’s going to put their name on this firing, so that it’s not just me, the president of the United States, taking this step."

And then, of course, there's the Lester Holt interview [on NBC] shortly after.You're an observer at this moment.How jarring is this moment?

Lester Holt getting President Trump to say that he fired James Comey because of that “Russia thing” goes down in history as one of the seminal moments of journalism and of the president’s presidency, I think.He is someone who, while people often say he’s not telling the truth, there are times where he can be so transparent about why he’s doing things that it baffles the mind.In this case, I'm sure he had lawyers, he had personal friends, he had all sorts of people probably telling him: “This is how we’re going to do this Lester Holt interview.Here’s your talking points.Here is how we’re going to do this."And you can kind of see him throw those talking points out of the window and say: “Yeah, I'm the president.I can fire James Comey because of this Russia thing."

It’s also, I think, why, if you fast-forward, why his lawyers are very worried about him sitting down with Robert Mueller, because he sits down, and he’s supposed to have all these points, but then just says, “I want to just tell the truth in this moment, and in the moment, I just didn’t want James Comey around anymore, because I wanted him to let go of this Russia thing."

It’s kind of like if he sits down with Robert Mueller, and they start asking him about Russian collusion or about obstruction of justice, if maybe he’s as honest as he wants to be, that could hurt the case against him legally.

… Let me ask you a bit about the Russians who visit the White House shortly after the firing.How do you find out about the meeting?How does the content of that meeting come out?Certainly there's a pretty incredible line that the president says to the Russian foreign minister, [Sergey Lavrov], and ambassador [Sergey Kislyak].Just tell me a bit about that moment if you can.

… I found out about the meeting with President Trump and the Russian foreign minister while watching the news, like I want to say the majority of people in America found out about it, including the people that matter most in the government, which as the Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats says that he wasn’t aware of the content of that meeting.And that says something, because it’s one thing to say, OK, as a reporter, maybe I'm not going to be briefed on the fact that the president is going to be talking to the Russian foreign minister, but the fact that he then kind of divulges some classified information to this foreign minister and doesn’t tell his director of national intelligence, it just goes to this idea that people have yet another Russian tie, that they can point to President Trump and say, “Hey, there's something going on here."

Of course people that are supporters of the president will say, “Well, he wasn’t actually telling him anything that wasn’t very much public knowledge, and wasn’t very much something that they could figure out."So there's this, again, this idea that you can look at these moments, and there are a lot of them, and say—Trump supporters and people of the president look at this and say, “This is him acting very normally."And then Democrats, as well as I think legal observers, and even Republicans who are very conservative, look at that moment and say, “He’s breaking a lot of norms."

Fantastic.So after the firing—

—which was incredible.

Let’s talk about that.Yeah.

I mean the firing of James Comey, because it happened in L.A. Felt like an O.J. Simpson moment.I remember looking up on the television screen and seeing a live picture of Comey’s motorcade as if it was a high-speed police chase.He was just going to the airport.But this idea that it became this complete entertainment-like episode, where the director of the FBI is now hoping he can get a flight back to D.C. And then it also told me that this is a president who wanted to, in some ways, make an example of James Comey, and he made a very big example of him.

James Comey, there were people on both sides of the aisle, Democrats and Republicans, who didn’t like him, and it seemed as though the president was punishing him publicly.And it worked, in some ways.This was a punishment that was heard around the world.The fact that James Comey, this—again, someone with a storied career, someone with a storied career that had to be followed in a live motorcade during his firing, just seemed—it boggles the mind.It was just so—I felt like it was the legal arm of the government meeting this reality TV, meeting O.J. Simpson and the spectacle of covering people in L.A. It was just so striking to me, yeah.

And it happened right—I remember the plane is on the tarmac as evening news is starting on all broadcast networks.I mean, it was a made-for-TV moment.

It was a made-for-TV moment.And James Comey is talking to people at the FBI in L.A., not realizing that he is no longer the FBI director.So not only do you have his motorcade being followed by choppers and this playing on live television, you also have the personal moment where the people that he’s supposed to be mentoring and talking to at the moment have to learn that this is someone who no longer has authority to talk to them.It’s a very, I think, personally embarrassing moment for James Comey, and it’s why we see him, several months later, writing a book and going on TV, and then, now talking about the need to elect Democrats.It’s because he personally feels pained by the fact that he was fired in the way that he was.

That’s great.Let me ask you about the special counsel appointment.So Rod Rosenstein calls [White House Counsel] Don McGahn to say he’s appointing Bob Mueller.Jeff Sessions has the bad fortune of being at the White House when this call comes in.Do you know how the president reacts to the news and how he reacts to Jeff Sessions?

I can't remember if this is the moment where he yells at Jeff Sessions, belittles him.Is this the same?

Yeah.

OK. The president gets this news that there's going to be a special counsel, and he was already very much frustrated with Jeff Sessions for recusing himself on all matters having to do with Russia.Now you see him really unleash all his anger on Jeff Sessions and plainly tells Jeff Sessions that “You are the reason why all of this is happening."It, I think, scars their relationship for the remainder of Jeff Sessions’ tenure.Jeff Sessions really can never, ever make it up to the president.Even if he’s doing all these things with immigration and doing all these things with policing, there's this idea that Jeff Sessions is really doing his job in a way that President Trump would have liked had he not recused himself from Russia.But because he took that step, President Trump never forgives him.He never forgives Jeff Sessions.And it really I think just goes to their relationship being damaged forever.

It’s incredible.I mean, this is the first member of Congress to support the president as a candidate.Their history goes back for, in Trump’s case, a pretty long period of time, and the loyalty certainly is there.And yet it seems in this moment to just kind of erupt.

Yeah.Jeff Sessions, before the special counsel is appointed, and before he recuses himself from the Russia, all things having to do with Russia, the president does see him as someone who’s very loyal.He went out there as an Alabama senator and endorsed President Trump, was by his side when so many other people would not touch President Trump, when so many other people ridiculed his presidency and his candidacy.But Jeff Sessions, when President Trump wants him to be the most loyal, says, “No, I can't do this for ethical reasons."And President Trump just is very angry at him for that and does not understand why, even if it’s ethically questionable, why Jeff Sessions can't be the person to take this “Russia thing” away from him.

I think it also frustrates President Trump, because Jeff Sessions has friends in the Senate that say that, “We’re not going to confirm another attorney general."So you now have someone working for President Trump who he can't get rid of, and that really, really irks the president, because he’s been someone who’s been able to turn the White House sometimes into a revolving door, almost a temp agency at times, where people can be fired and let go and be forced to resign at the will of the president, where you have Jeff Sessions in this high-profile job, and the president can't get rid of him.

Well, let me ask: Sessions offers to resign.This is one of two times he’ll do that, but this is a very dramatic moment for him.He’s very, very upset.How remarkable is that moment, that the AG is really pushed to the brink?And what I'm curious to know is, what does it signal to the institutions that Sessions represents, because Trump seems to sort of be unleashed and is really attacking these pillars of rule of law?

First, about Jeff Sessions resigning, I think Jeff Sessions offers to resign because the president really does unleash this really embarrassing tirade on him.Jeff Sessions really, really wants that job.He really, really wanted to be attorney general, so when he offers to resign, I almost wonder if he realizes that, “Yeah, I can resign."But the president knows, and he knows that it would look really, really bad if a special counsel is appointed, and the person who wanted to recuse himself from Russia and did recuse himself from this Russia issue, that he then resigns, that will make President Trump look even worse.

Again, you have that promise from the Senate, which maybe the president is not fully aware of, but that Jeff Sessions certainly knows, that it’s going to be very hard to fill that position.So if you then have a president who forced his attorney general to resign, and can't get another one in a timely fashion, that’s going to make President Trump look even worse.

In terms of what it signals to the institutions around people, it’s a double-edged sword.You have Jeff Sessions who says, “Yes, I’ll resign,” but you also have a special counsel.In one lane you have the Justice Department acting the way it would act if there's something wrong with the president, and if there's a legal issue that needs to be investigated.There's now a special counsel that the president can, through a series of events, he can fire, but who really he can't control.And then you have the attorney general who, of course, he can force to resign or accept his resignation.

But I think, in some ways, the institutions, they see both of these things happening, and there's kind of a realization that the institutions are still working the way they're supposed to because the special counsel is there.Jeff Sessions resigning—and I would say Rod Rosenstein saying that he would be the fall guy, or the person who would put his name on the Comey firing, is problematic.You hear all these stories that say that the work and the rank-and-file people in the Justice Department and in the FBI, that they are feeling pressured by this president, that morale is very low.But at the end of the day, the institutions are working the way they're supposed to.So there's not, I think, as big a fallout as there could be.

How significant is loyalty from people like Jeff Sessions and Rod Rosenstein to the president?We talked about it working the other way, but how is the president—what is he expecting of them in this moment?

The president expects of Rod Rosenstein and of Jeff Sessions, and really a lot of people around him, complete loyalty.He wants people to protect him.He wants people to, if possible, bend the rules a bit so that they can make sure that they have his back.He feels as though this “Russia thing,” which is what he calls it, these series of questionable contacts with Russia, [he sees] as something that’s going to dog his presidency, and it’s a “cloud” over this White House that President Trump cannot shake off.He personally sees it as something that’s calling into question whether or not he has the right to be president.And he knows what that can do, because he had the birther issue, where he hung that over President Obama’s head and was trying to make it seem as though he wasn’t a legitimate president.Now he is facing the same sort of legitimacy issues with the Russia investigation, except that in this case, the Justice Department has a special counsel investigation into whether or not his campaign colluded with Russia, and of course, later on, whether or not he obstructed justice.

There's this idea that he wants people to just be there for him, by his side, and do whatever they can to act almost like his family.His children do that.His children are very loyal to him.They do what they have to do.They quit their jobs.They come to work for the White House.They put their names on statements that he dictated in the case of Donald Trump Jr. So his family does whatever they need to do for him.But the Justice Department and all the people who work for them, those organizations, are not his family, and he’s frustrated by that, I think.

Let me ask you about family, actually, just for a moment.So this is early in the Mueller investigation.[Trump’s son-in-law and adviser] Jared Kushner becomes a person of interest.We know that from reports at the time.I'm wondering if you know a bit about some of the places that maybe Mueller’s investigators are looking at as it comes to Jared Kushner.

Well, the thing is, Mueller has been pretty tight.There's speculation of what he’s looking at, but in reality, which is probably what is irking the president so much, the Mueller investigation is running a very tight ship.There are dribs and drabs of information.There are some FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] warrants that we learn about.But we learn about the things in the Mueller investigation months and months and months later.

I know that obviously they're looking at Jared Kushner, likely for his business dealings, likely for whether or not he’s using his clout with the president and the debts that he has with his personal family business to monetize his relationship with President Trump.He was also at the meeting at Trump Tower where Donald Trump Jr. thinks he’s going to be getting some dirt on Hillary Clinton from this Russian woman.There's this idea that he’s definitely a character who’s around and may know things, so of course they're looking at what did he know, I'm imagining.

But in reality, the Mueller investigation, we don’t know what particularly they're looking at.They could be on a trail of knowing that Jared Kushner has a relationship with this Russian person, maybe gave them money.But I have no idea.

That’s good.Let me ask you about an attorney that Trump brings in to fight back Mueller and his team, and this is Marc Kasowitz.This is his sort of rough-and-tumble counsel from New York that he’s used to working with on a number of different matters.But my interest is in how Kasowitz begins to personalize the attacks on Mueller.He immediately attacks the 12 or 13 Democrats that are working on that team.This is an emerging strategy that kind of develops around this time.It sounds like a very uniquely New York kind of legal strategy, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts on it.

Trump’s lawyers make the calculation that they can't attack just the special counsel.They can't just attack Democrats who want the special counsel to do its work.They have to go after the person who’s the face and the name behind the special counsel, and that’s Robert Mueller.Even though he’s a Republican, and even though he is someone with a very respected career, they know that if they can kind of chip away at his credibility that they can maybe make some headway into making this investigation look as though it’s questionable and should not have ever been started in the first place.

And it’s a smart strategy, because President Trump got to be president by doing that with his opponents.The fact that he had “Little Marco” and “Low-Energy Jeb” and “Crooked Hillary,” the fact that he didn’t just go after people’s policies, he went after their beliefs and who they were as a person, and then rode that wave, and rode that wave to be president, shows that it’s working.

In Robert Mueller’s case, Trump supporters, not only do they think that the investigations are problematic, but if you go out on the street and talk to people, the name recognition of Robert Mueller is sky-high.People know Robert Mueller’s name.They know what he’s up to.They think they understand that he is someone who has a vendetta against President Trump, and that’s largely because the lawyer to President Trump made this calculation that they needed to go after the man.

It’s like a comic book narrative in many ways.You know, they’ve created this villain, and they’ve placed this name recognition out in the country that seems to be pretty successful.

Yeah.I think that they make Robert Mueller a villain, much like President Trump made Hillary Clinton a villain.They don’t just say: “We need to look at the evidence.This evidence doesn’t show that President Trump did anything."They don’t say: “Oh, well, we can show you all these documents.We’re happy to work with the special counsel, because we know that this counsel and the special counsel isn't something that—they're not going to find anything."Much like they don’t say: “We don’t like Hillary Clinton’s health care plan.We don’t like the fact that she is going to maybe raise taxes."They say those things, but what it really is about is a “Lock her up!” chant, and it’s really about the fact that you personally shouldn’t trust Hillary Clinton because she’s crooked.

That’s very much what they're doing with Robert Mueller.They're saying there's the evidence issues that maybe he doesn’t have evidence, but he personally doesn’t think that President Trump, the person that you voted for, should be president, and as a result, you shouldn’t trust him.

That’s very compelling, and it’s a politization that we haven't really seen before.

Yeah.And I’ll say that it also, I think that President Trump’s strategy with attacking Mueller personally is getting ahead of whatever Mueller’s report is, because by the time Robert Mueller finally has a verdict for the nation to understand and to hear, there's going to be already people who are ready to see anything that he writes as a partisan document.That means that President Trump is in some ways shielded and protected in those people’s minds, because they're never going to believe what Robert Mueller says.And the fact that you have now James Comey coming out and asking for Democrats to be elected, and Democrats championing Robert Mueller’s work, it then goes to this idea that you're going to have Democrats celebrating Robert Mueller’s report and the Republicans that are loyal to President Trump saying that this is all partisan.And then you're going to have the people in the middle who are really the Republicans who, if they still have control of the House and the Senate, they're the ones who have to really decide how they're going to look at the report, and whether or not they're going to maybe go against their people who elected them, and look at it in a real way.

This is around the time where Trump starts tweeting about “witch hunt” for some of the very first moments, and we in the film believe that he has learned some of these strategies to attack, to attack, especially by using the media, from a guy named Roy Cohn.Do you know much about sort of Roy Cohn’s influence, … the idea that he’s introducing some of the lessons he learned from Roy Cohn here in Washington?

… Well, I’ll say this: President Trump calling the Mueller investigation a witch hunt has an impact in Washington in that the people who want to be loyal to President Trump can use that same language.It gives the Republicans who are loyal to President Trump a vocabulary to work with, about how they can talk about Robert Mueller, and it’s a vocabulary that lawmakers usually don’t use.Lawmakers might say that “this is unqualified,” or “it’s something that isn't good for America,” but they usually don’t scream the word “witch hunt."

So I think there's this idea that President Trump does that, and then it also allows him, I think, when he goes outside of Washington, to create yet another chant, another way for crowds to quickly understand what he wants to say to them, without it being this long, complicated thing.A lot of people who watched Hillary Clinton and covered her, the thing that they thought was [sometimes it] was hard for her to resonate with voters, is because she was almost so wonky, that people thought, OK, she’s really into health care, but I don’t really understand all the different platforms that she’s talking about.Even though she laid them out, they were on a website, they seemed in some ways, especially to her supporters, easy to understand.

But President Trump, it was “the wall."It was “crooked."Now it’s the “witch hunt."It’s almost like, in one word, he’s been able to sum up his entire strategy of how he’s going to combat the Mueller investigation.I'm not sure if it’s going to prove to be a brilliant one, but it definitely is one that seems to be working in D.C., but also around the country.

Let me ask you about some of the congressional allies.What is going on?Because at this point, at least—this is sort of early—they are sort of latching onto some of the same vocabulary, as you say.These are ideas that Trump has put in the water here, and there seems to be a rabid energy around him.

Well, I think that there are some lawmakers—[Rep.] Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), [Rep.Devin Nunes (R-Calif.)—who have made the decision that they want to stand with the president on this issue, and until Robert Mueller comes out with something that maybe is so damning that they can no longer stand by his side, that they are going to back the president in the way that Jeff Sessions and Rod Rosenstein did not.The president is craving that.And as a result, they get to be invited to the White House; they get to be involved in the executive branch.And that is maybe helpful for them in their future.So I think that that’s, in some ways, what's going on there.

I’ll come back to that, because that obviously boils back up a little bit later.Let me ask you about the Trump Tower meeting.It is obviously revealed in sort of sequential stories in the Times.What I'm curious to know is your take on what we’re learning about the president’s PR strategy, his political strategy, his legal strategy as we kind of examine that case study.

What we learn about the president’s legal strategy and his public relations strategy is that he is at the center of it and driving it.He really doesn’t have someone that can check him on what the strategy is going to be, and how to maybe change the strategy.So with the Trump Tower meeting, you have the president physically dictating a message that he’s going to put in the name of his son Donald Trump Jr., and you have him saying: “OK, well, I don’t like the fact that this is something that they're going to learn about.But if we’re going to, we’re going to make up this idea.I've heard about Russian adoption maybe being an issue.Let’s just say that we were interested in talking to them about this."

If you look and talk to legal experts, everyone kind of read that and thought, “Huh?"That’s kind of like Rod Rosenstein saying that he fired Comey because he wasn’t happy with the way that he handled the Hillary Clinton investigation.It just, in some ways, doesn’t make sense to a lot of people.You would think that maybe if the president relied on people who could push him in a different direction, that maybe they could have spun that Russia, that Trump Tower meeting a little differently.But instead, you have the president making stuff up, literally inventing ideas for why his son would be in a meeting with Russian officials.

That’s a pretty incredible story.Let me just ask about the press and the press’s role in this.There's really sort of, this is, again, one of these moments in which, if we didn’t have reporters continuing to ask for more explanation, it would be pretty difficult to know what really happened here, what the real story is.How important is that check and balance for Trump?But also, how frustrating is that for him?

President Trump calls reporters the “fake news,” because he has to attack the truth, the very nature of truth.They have to really invent alternative facts, because they realize that the facts that the reporters are uncovering are so damning, that they could, I think, damage his presidency and his legacy.If we didn’t have reporters digging in, getting sources to tell them about all these different meetings with Russian officials, all these different things that Robert Mueller is starting to uncover, even if it’s just dribs and drabs, I don’t know if President Trump would ever really explain why his son and his son-in-law were talking to Russian officials.

The fact that they don’t even come up with a statement until The New York Times is pushing them and asking about this meeting tells you that they would never have talked about it if reporters hadn’t asked.

Just really quickly, the significance of top advisers of the campaign that are present at this meeting—I mean, we’re not talking about a low-level group of folks, yeah.

We’re talking about top aides in the middle of the campaign.We’re talking about Jared Kushner, [then-campaign chair] Paul Manafort, Donald Trump Jr., sitting down with a Russian woman who has told them, over email, that she’s going to give them some information on Hillary Clinton.It’s a crystal-clear reason why they're there.They want to have dirt on Hillary Clinton.It goes to show you that, even though “Crooked Hillary” was a chant that was getting people excited, the Trump campaign knew that they had a formidable opponent and that they had to look for other things to do.It’s normal to do opposition research; it’s not normal to go to a foreign government and request their information on your opponent.I think that’s what's at the heart of this.

The Trump campaign, in some ways, is almost making the argument that it’s normal to go to a foreign country and say: “Hey, what do you know about my candidate?Can you give me something?"There are laws in the United States that say that you don’t do that, because you don’t want foreign governments interfering in our elections.

… Let me go back for a moment to Jeff Sessions, because right after this is when Trump does an interview with the Times and really trashes the attorney general in that interview, calls him out by name, says he should have never recused.I'm curious to know less about the content of that moment, but more importantly, the the watering down of Jeff Sessions’ credibility that the president is sort of determined to do, and as a result, the eroding of the credibility of some of the agencies that Jeff Sessions represents.So kind of going back to this rule of law question.

President Trump is attacking Jeff Sessions.But in attacking Jeff Sessions, he’s attacking the very nature of the attorney general’s role, and he’s attacking the very nature of the Department of Justice.There's this idea that I want Jeff Sessions to do things for me; thus I want the Department of Justice to do things for me.Thus the presidency should be able to tell the Department of Justice, “Here is what I need you to do for me."That’s not how things work in America.That’s usually how things work in Third World countries or authoritarian governments.But in America, the Department of Justice is supposed to be something that’s wholly independent.And it’s not supposed to be normal for the president to trash the attorney general.

As a result, you have this—I don’t know.The issue is, the Department of Justice is going to be there long after President Trump is President, so I think at this point, it’s uncertain whether or not President Trump trashing Jeff Sessions and the Department of Justice, and trying to use them as his personal tool, whether or not they will have—that will have long-term impacts on the Department of Justice and the rule of law in America.

That’s the open question.It’s really for the next president, I think, to decide whether or not they're going to act like President Trump, and they're going to then go and—and use it, the Department of Justice in this way.I think one presidency, at least the experts that I talk to, they tell me that they're not certain that President Trump is going to change the norms of the legal community in the way that people sometimes fear he will be.

That the government can bounce back from this?

Yes.Some people think that the government will retain its norms long after President Trump is gone, and there are people who are very hopeful that the Department of Justice and the attorney general will no longer be trashed by the next president that comes.Of course there's the flipside of that, that the next president could see what President Trump did and say that was a smart way to deal with things, it was a smart way to protect yourself, and as a result, I'm going to then echo those same behaviors.That’s where I think things become problematic.

Let me ask you again about Congress, because at this moment—and you alluded to this already—Senate Republicans push back on the attacks on Jeff Sessions, specifically Sen. [Chuck] Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. [Lindsey] Graham (R-S.C).They pick this fight, effectively, with the president, or I should say the president really picks the fight, but they really decide that they are going to go to battle with him over protecting their former colleague, Jeff Sessions.Are there motivations to protect the rule of law?What are they motivated by?

Senators who come to the defense of Jeff Sessions are motivated by, I think, two things.There's the personal relationships, which is what Washington has always been known for.It’s the breakfasts in the morning.It’s who do you go to the gym with.It’s the fact that Jeff Sessions is a known person in the Senate and has friends in the Senate who want to stand up for him and say, “We know that Jeff Sessions wanted that job, and we’re not going to just let you trash him."There's that.

But I think there are Republicans who are also rattled by President Trump and by their voters.I think some of the Republicans in the Senate say, “We cannot let this president erode the norms of the legal community in the way that the Justice Department has functioned, even if his supporters back him."So Sen. Grassley has probably some of the same supporters that President Trump has, but he looks at his voters and says, “Even if my voters support President Trump trashing Jeff Sessions, for the good of the nation, I have to make it very clear that the president can't just say, because you personally weren’t as loyal to me as I wanted you to be, that I'm going to somehow change the way that the Department of Justice works."

… Let me ask you about this new legal team that he designs around this time.This is Ty Cobb joining the team, John Dowd, Jay Sekulow to some degree.The attitude and the strategy seems to be, contain the client; cooperate; be forthright with investigators.How does that work with a president who’s got a pretty different perspective?

I think the strategy that the president’s lawyers take of wanting to cooperate with Robert Mueller’s investigation and wanting to submit whatever documents are required frustrates the president and puts him in a position where he no longer agrees with the tactics that his lawyers are using.I think that the president trying to be contained by his lawyers is a losing battle.Everyone around the president that I've talked to says that you kind of have to let the president be himself and let him do whatever he wants to do, and then just try to be loyal to whatever the consequences are of that.[There is] one senior official who says, “You really just have to be constantly adjusting what your expectations are for the day, and constantly being ready to back whatever the president says, and not try to question the president on whether or not you agree with what he’s doing, because that’s a losing battle."

I think that these lawyers find themselves in a position that a lot of lawyers do not envy, which is that you have a client who is very unwieldy and has a Twitter account where he says things that are legally problematic, but that you can't stop him from doing them.

… Around this time is when the investigation picks up speed.The [former foreign policy adviser George] Papadopoulos arrest happens around this time; the indictment of Manafort and [deputy campaign chair Rick] Gates; [National Security Adviser Michael] Flynn admits to lying to federal investigators.That all breaks in the fall and winter of this past year.What again I'm kind of curious about, which I know it’s a crystal ball, is what does it tell us about where the Mueller team is.Again, these aren’t small fish.They're pretty significant players.Anyway, I'm curious to hear what you sort of think about.

I compare often in my mind the Mueller investigation with the Benghazi investigations, because the Benghazi investigations went on forever and ever and ever, and no one was indicted, and no one pleaded guilty.The Mueller investigation, while President Trump likes to say that it’s this ongoing thing that’s been going on forever, it’s still been going on for a relatively short time, and you have indictments of some of the top officials in the Trump campaign.

We’re not talking about people who may or may not have worked with the campaign and maybe volunteered.We’re talking about Paul Manafort, who was the chairman of the president’s campaign.That’s someone who knows a lot about the president.That’s someone who could be very problematic for the president if he in fact colluded with Russia.But that’s also someone, of course, who could very well, very well tell the Mueller investigation or give the Mueller investigation information that proves that they're completely innocent, right?If you look at it in that way, these people are being indicted, and if the charges can't stick on them, then that tells you that, OK, well, maybe the president is completely innocent.He’s been saying all this time that it’s a witch hunt, and maybe it was.

The problem is also that Paul Manafort is indicted for business dealings and dealings that are not completely connected to the Russia collusion, and as a result, you see that the reason why President Trump doesn’t like special counsels is not just because there's this Russia collusion issue and there's obstruction of justice case; it’s the fact that this is a president who has very complex financial dealings and very complex businesses.

And as a result, when you look at the special counsel investigation, they have a very broad mandate.They can go into all sorts of issues that the president doesn’t want them to go into, so I think that part of the frustration that we see, if you look at a crystal ball, is that the Mueller investigation can be looking at all sorts of things that the president finds problematic and that the public has no idea is going on.I think that this probably very much worries President Trump and why you see him trashing the investigation in the way that he does.

We’ll jump to April of this year.The Michael Cohen raid, the morning that breaks, how is the news coming to you?Can you walk us through what is searched and what it appears FBI investigators are looking for?

I can walk you through it to the best of my knowledge.I, as again, like most people, I think like the president, turned on the TV and realized that Michael Cohen’s office has been raided.I'm very close to someone who’s close to Michael Cohen, so that person is texting me, telling me that his office has been raided.There's also a hotel room that he had used and a residence that he had used, and that all of those are being raided.

It’s unclear to me, at the time, what they're actually looking for.But obviously, as the president’s personal attorney, there's the business dealings of him and Michael Cohen, and then there's of course the Russia angle hanging over everyone’s head.On face value, it looks as though this is an investigation that has to deal with Michael Cohen’s business and Michael Cohen’s dealings and payments that he’s made to people.However, the wider question, the question on everyone’s mind is whether or not Michael Cohen is going to get ready to flip on the president because he might have information that deals with Russian collusion.

It’s a moment in which it seems some of the president’s New York business baggage and personal baggage is sort of entering his presidency.The big difference now, of course, is that there's trained expert investigators who are all subject-matter experts in all of these different financial issues and other areas that are now having a magnifying glass to some of this New York history.

Yeah.And I think it enrages the president to see Michael Cohen’s office raided, to see his personal belongings searched by these expert investigators.It’s also an opening of a new front.He’s already battling the Mueller investigation, and now he has to deal with the Southern District of New York coming in and a whole new case against Michael Cohen, and whether or not the two are going to be connected at some point is of course what worries the president, undoubtedly.There's no question that the president is personally frustrated and personally angry at the raid on Michael Cohen’s offices.

And again, he changed up legal representation shortly after.About 10 days after the raid, Rudy Giuliani comes onto the scene.Can you give us a sense of the president’s decision in hiring Rudy and what he’s expecting of him?

The president hires Rudy Giuliani at a time when he’s feeling, I think, very pressured by multiple investigations into Russia, but also into his business dealings and the business dealings of his personal attorney Michael Cohen.He hires Rudy Giuliani, and he really hires a pit bull.He hires someone who is not just going to be someone who is going to talk to Robert Mueller about legal issues, but someone who’s going to constantly be talking to the media and be the mouthpiece of the president’s personal lawyers, and is really going to be launching an offensive strategy to attack people who have issues with the president, who are critical of the president.

Rudy Giuliani comes on the scene, and he’s taking calls from almost every reporter who calls him.I call him.The Washington Post calls him.The New York Times talks to him.He’s on Fox News.He’s out there, and instantly you can tell that the legal strategy is “Fight back on Mueller.Make this personal.Make this angry.Make this thing come to an end."Rudy Giuliani [being] hired, I think, is all about the president wanting the Mueller investigation to end.Rudy Giuliani instantly starts talking about, “Well, this is going to be over very soon,” and there's no evidence at all, there's no inkling that Robert Mueller has told Rudy Giuliani that he’s wrapping up his investigation, so what Rudy Giuliani is doing is really upping the public pressure on Robert Mueller to wrap up this case.

And it seems like less of a legal strategy, and just a political one.

I think it’s a political one, but it’s also a media strategy.I think hiring Rudy Giuliani is a media decision on the part of the president.I covered the Republican National [Convention], and I remember Rudy Giuliani’s speech.There were so many other speeches, but Rudy Giuliani’s speech stood out because he was almost angry and frowning the entire time, and screaming at the top of his lungs.This wasn’t just someone who was endorsing President Trump and happy that he had won the nomination.This is someone who was expressing his anger at the entire system of America, expressing his anger at all the people who thought President Trump shouldn’t be president.

And he does that again as a lawyer.He is someone who doesn’t come in and just say: “Well, here is our legal strategy.Here is where what we think the evidence is.Here is how we think we’re going to handle this."He’s someone who comes in and starts batting and beating up people in the media immediately.

And why do you think the president is drawn to a figure like this?Certainly it seems like a better fit than John Dowd and Ty Cobb, but is it this visceral sort of connection with the audience that Giuliani is able to sort of make, that the president is obviously known for?What is it?

I think that President Trump is attracted to Rudy Giuliani and hires him because of two things.One, the president is having problems finding lawyers.I have spoken to lawyers in D.C. who did not want to take on President Trump’s case, because they didn’t think that he was a client who would listen to his lawyer, which is also why John Dowd quit his legal team, because he didn’t think that the president was listening to the instructions that he was giving him.There's the legal idea that he actually needs help with his legal team.

Then there's the fact that he really looks at Giuliani and says: “This is someone who’s a kindred spirit.He’s someone who’s loyal to me, who’s angry, who can explain to people why I think this is a witch hunt."And there's the idea that he doesn’t shy away from the media.He’s not someone who doesn’t want to sit in the background and not take media’s calls and say, “No comment."He’s someone who is happy to talk to the media and make my case when I'm off doing presidential things.

And also brace for impact and help people brace for impact when a Mueller report eventually is released.Effectively, there is something here in the strategy about undermining that investigation and undermining any sort of byproduct of that investigation.That seeding a lot of doubts, seeding a lot of conspiracy theories into the narrative, is a pretty successful strategy it seems.

I think Rudy Giuliani doubles down on the president’s strategy to get in front of the Mueller report and get people already thinking that this is a report that’s going to be biased, that’s going to be partisan, that’s going to be from someone who personally doesn’t like the president, even though none of those things are actually true.There's no evidence that Robert Mueller is a Democrat, because as most people know, he was a Republican.He also is someone who has not said that he personally doesn’t like the president.But Rudy Giuliani and President Trump make it seem as though Robert Mueller is personally going after the president because he doesn’t want him to be president.

So Rudy Giuliani is laying the groundwork for what I'm sure is going to be a very, very big rebuke of the Mueller report if they find that President Trump either colluded with Russia or if they find that he was engaged in illegal business activities.

Let me ask you about Trump going sort of back on the campaign rallies around this time, tweeting again about the witch hunt and the hoax theories to describe the investigators and investigation, having help from conservative media and sort of fanning those flames.Curious to hear if you’ve been—you’ve been, of course, watching some of these more recent rallies in which he’s using this language again.

Yeah, I've physically gone to some of his rallies.President Trump hits the campaign trail again because it’s one where he feels really, really comfortable.These are people who come and stand in line for hours because they want to see this person who is this surprising presidential candidate, who bucked all the norms, and who proved mainly most of the political pundits wrong and became president when everyone thought he couldn’t be president.

He wants these crowds chanting his name, and he wants to feel comfortable.But he also wants to remind people that what Trump tells them is the truth is the truth, and that you shouldn’t pay attention to reporters.You shouldn’t pay attention to what CNN or NBC or The New York Times is reporting, because I'm the person who can tell you the truth.That’s a really, really important strategy of the president.He sets himself up as the only person who can tell his followers the truth, because he knows that the media is constantly reporting things that he doesn’t like.

And he said, he’s even admitted, President Trump, that he thinks fake news is news that he doesn’t like.As a result, he’s out there on the campaign trail to make the case in person and to remind people that they should be excited, because they all backed someone who was president and who is breaking all the norms.

I think a lot of the people who voted for President Trump, and the ones that I've talked to, they wanted to shake up the system.They knew that he was brash.They knew that they were voting for someone who may be a wildcard, as one voter put it to me.But they like the fact that he’s doing all of these things, so things that in Washington seem as though they're breaking norms are things that Trump followers look at and say: “We really, really love this.We really, really want a president to shake things up, and this is what we voted for."

Let me ask you about Congress again at this moment.This is when Rod Rosenstein testifies on the Hill.Trey Gowdy accuses him of dragging this out.Hurry this the hell up, because you're dividing the country.[Then-FBI Deputy Assistant Director ] Peter Strzok testifies shortly after this point.The idea of bias within the FBI is an issue that, again, congressional Republicans really raise and in that hearing in particular kind of lose it, really, on him.But this is sort of a greater question about the real doubt that’s being sown in the country about the bias of these institutions and about the integrity of these pillars of our legal institutions. …

These congressional hearings are very dramatic, and they almost feel like reality TV, because you have so many people who are focused on them, people who maybe before wouldn’t have tuned into a Senate hearing, who are now watching because they want to see Trey Gowdy kind of grandstand and talk about kind of how the FBI might be biased toward President Trump.I think that some of the people on Capitol Hill, like Trey Gowdy, realize that there are people who want to see this and that it could be politically expedient for them to take the side of the president.They also feel like it’s right.There's this idea that Trey Gowdy also … really could believe that the FBI and the Department of Justice have become biased, and that he needs to use his political clout to call those institutions out.

But of course, with no question, as you attack the FBI, and you attack the Department of Justice, you're attacking the very foundation of legal structures in America, and supporters of President Trump are hungry for the truth that President Trump can give them.He set this up in a way as though the people that I've talked to, Trump’s supporters really look to the president, again, for that truth.I was saying Trump’s followers before, but Trump’s supporters look to the president as someone who could give them the only truth that they could really believe in.

The president loves that.The president loves the idea that he can go out on the campaign trail and talk to his supporters and say: “These are all alternative facts.These are the things that you need to really be worried about.Don’t listen to the media.Don’t listen to CNN or The New York Times or the PBS Newshour, because they all don’t want me to be president."

Trey Gowdy picks that up, picks up that mantle and brings that message to Capitol Hill and into these hearings and says, “Aren’t the FBI, aren’t there people rank and file in the FBI who didn’t want the resident to be President?"This all goes back to whether or not President Trump has the legitimacy to be president.

It’s something that I think the president is very worried about, that people are calling into question whether or not he has the credibility to be president, which not everyone is really doing.Democrats are saying Russia interfered in the election; they meddled.But no one so far has said that, “President Trump, you don’t deserve to be president because Russia helped you too much,” because there are 112 factors that went into the 2016 election.As someone who covered it—voting, James Comey’s announcement, Hillary Clinton as a candidate, the history of the Clintons, the Republicans and the 17 people all maybe being, some of them being cut from the same cloth and diluting the vote for someone who might have voted for Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio—there are so many other factors that go into why President Trump won.But I think the president feels personally attacked by the idea that Russia’s help could have been what put him over the top.

Let me ask you about the 12 indictments that Rod Rosenstein announces right before Helsinki.Can you tell me about the significance of that announcement?I mean, this is a shoe we’ve been waiting to drop, yeah.

I heard about the 12 indictments of the Russian officials while I was, I want to say, in—let me see, because it was a week before, so I was in Belgium?I was in Belgium.I heard about the 12 indictments of Russian officials while I was covering NATO in Belgium.I'm traveling with the president, and everyone’s gearing up for his meeting with Vladimir Putin, who was going to be—which is going to be on that Monday.And this—I would say almost a bomb drops.There's this idea that Robert Mueller is now saying that, without a doubt, Russian officials meddled in our election, and we’re indicting them, we’re charging them with this, and Vladimir Putin ordered this to happened.The intelligence communities have said the FBI, the CIA, NSA, they all said that Vladimir Putin not just knew about the fact that Russia was interfering in the elections, that he ordered it.

So the President now is in this tough position that Robert Mueller once again puts him in, that he has to go and decide whether or not he’s going to cancel this meeting with Vladimir Putin, which is what Democrats are calling for him to do, or whether or not he’s going to go forward with this meeting, and whether or not he’s going to then maybe try to say, “I'm going to confront him about these 12 officials and try to figure out what's going on here."But it’s an incredible moment when those indictments drop, because it’s not just that they're being indicted, which it would have been a big deal if these people had been indicted, but it’s the fact that it’s happening on the eve of President Trump’s meeting with Vladimir Putin that really gives weight to these 12 indictments.

And the shadow that it casts over the trip?You're there; you're seeing the president’s body language.What's the vibe?

The president really is in his element at NATO and when he’s traveling abroad.While he was in Europe, his whole body language and his whole approach to NATO and to these meetings were that “I am the leader of the free world, and I'm the person who sets the agenda.I'm the person who’s going to tell people how things function here."So he goes to NATO, and he attacks Germany, and he says that these other countries that are the part of the 29 member states, that they need to get it together because we’re paying so much money as America, and that they're not doing enough.

And then these indictments happen, and President Trump seems to still be wanting to talk about the fact that he knows what's best for the world, almost, and that he sees a relationship with Russia as a good thing.At no point does President Trump say: “Well, this is terrible.Vladimir Putin is really going to have to answer for why these 12 officials that have been indicted were meddling in our election."Instead what he does is say, “Well, you know, Vladimir Putin, I'm still looking forward to meeting him, and every time that I've met him, he’s a really good guy."

And now we’re in Helsinki.So can you take us to the room?Can you take us to the press conference and describe the two leaders walking out, and what happens next?

… I'm in Helsinki, Finland, and we’re all waiting to see how this plays out, how this meeting is going to go.… We get the first images of President Trump and Vladimir Putin sitting down next to each other, as all these reporters are gathered in Helsinki, waiting for word on how this meeting is going to happen and how things are going to go.President Trump is sitting up in his chair, arms kind of tented, looking as though he really, really wants to get something out of this meeting, and he’s talking about the fact that there needs to be a really good relationship with Russia, and he’s looking forward to talking about all these things.

And Vladimir Putin is kind of slumped in his chair, not smiling, doesn’t look like he’s having a good time.And then, by the time we get to the press conference, their body language has evolved, and you have Vladimir Putin smiling and standing up straight, and really feeling as though he’s in his element, and almost acting as if he’s the host of this.Even though we’re in Finland, it almost feels like we’re in Russia by the time we get into the press conference room, because Vladimir Putin is just having such a good time.And you see President Trump still standing up straight, still looking like he’s there to do business dealings, but also he’s looking as though he now is going to be trashing some of the very institutions that make up the heart of the American legal system.

It was a striking meeting, because President Trump has been talking about the FBI, the Department of Justice, and tweeting about it.But we’re now on foreign soil, and we’re now standing next to the person who intelligence agencies say ordered the hacking and the meddling of our elections, and President Trump is just attacking Robert Mueller and saying that the U.S. is to blame and that the Mueller investigation is hurting Russian relations.You see him very much siding with Vladimir Putin in this way, and putting Vladimir Putin’s denial that he meddled in the election on the same playing field, and a level playing field, as intelligence services that have concluded, without a doubt, that Russia meddled in the election.

So you have the American president saying: “Well, do I believe America, or do I believe Russia?I don’t know.They're both telling me different things, and I don’t really have loyalty to either one of them."It’s striking, and it’s just a remarkable moment.

There's certainly an incredible response to the press conference, I mean, almost immediate.Former intelligence chiefs are shocked.They're referencing impeachment and treason and all of these words we’re just not used to hearing out of figures like [former CIA Director] John Brennan and [former Director of National Intelligence James] Clapper and others.There's a very dramatic response to this here.Do you feel that there?Tell us a little bit about the response.

After the Helsinki summit, after that incredible press conference with Vladimir Putin, there is a loud backlash, and the president hears it very clearly.You feel the White House almost buckling under the pressure of even Republicans who usually have backed the president, of these Republicans coming out and saying, “We cannot back an American president attacking American institutions on foreign soil, standing next to the Russian president."You feel as though the White House—I felt as though, talking to sources, trying to get information as to why the press conference went that way, there are a lot of just non-answers.A lot of the White House officials that I usually talk to were just not talking to me.They didn’t want to call back, or they would just kind of shrug their shoulders and say, “Well, you know, the president said what he said,” because they, I think, were also very confused by the way that the press conference happened and the way that it went.

Then, of course, you have the president come out and say, “Well, what I meant to say was that I couldn’t see a way that Russia wouldn’t have meddled in the election."Of course he’s trying to correct himself, say, “I know I said I couldn’t see that Russia would interfere, but what I really meant was that Russia wouldn’t interfere."That moment is just, you can tell that the president and the White House needed to come up with an excuse for why the press conference went the way that it went.

But it doesn’t do away with the 45 minutes where President Trump attacked American institutions while standing next to Vladimir Putin; the fact that he doesn’t take back the fact that he thinks that Russia’s denial is important and strong; he doesn’t take back the fact that he thinks that the Mueller investigation is a witch hunt, and that it’s hurting U.S.-Russia relations.He doesn’t take back a lot of different things.

To see that press conference—I think was something like 40 minutes.It was 40 minutes of President Trump putting Russia on the same playing field as American institutions, and as a result, changing one word just doesn’t get President Trump out of the criticism that even Republicans are showing him.It’s frustrating for President Trump.He can't really get away from it.

It again reminded me of the child-separation issue, when President Trump, for a couple of days, was really saying, “Oh, I'm separating these immigrant families because they deserve to be separated, and we’re not doing this,” and he got so much backlash, including from Republicans, that he then had to reverse course and change the policy.That tells you that he felt, again, very pressured to do something.It’s very much like that after the Helsinki summit.He feels as though he has to do something, make some sort of course correction, so that people see him as a patriot and not as someone who’s treasonous, and I'm not quite sure it works.

It does seem, though, as though folks are kind of, I don’t know, carrying out decisions and carrying out these public comments in a way in which they’ve learned from the president’s strategy about how to handle politics, how to handle media.It’s wild to see this kind of rule of law establishment figures, D.C. attorneys, really, operate in this new world.

I think President Trump ushered into America a new phase where people are way more explicit about what they believe and are way more willing to tweet about it and put out there what they think is right, mainly because they want to push back on President Trump, and they know that President Trump has millions of people who follow him on Twitter who will believe what he says.As a result, they need to at least try to be on that same playing field, and they need to echo some of the same behaviors that President Trump is exhibiting.

The problem is that President Trump is President Trump.He’s kind of found this secret sauce that worked for him.He was able to be brash and to be bending the norms and still be elected president.For example, Marco Rubio could not do that.He tried to bend the rules and talk about President Trump’s hands, and people ridiculed him and said, “Who is Marco Rubio trying to be?"It’s up in the air whether or not anybody else can actually replicate both President Trump’s behavior, but also the success that comes along with that behavior.

A lot of people look at James Comey and other people and say: “You should be better than this.Why are you kind of being dirty and being explicit on Twitter and being mean to people on Twitter?"Even after James Comey’s book, there were a lot of people who said, “Oh, James Comey demeaned himself, because he was talking about the height of the president and talking about the color of his skin, and that’s not the type of things that we should expect from our FBI director."But we know that President Trump would obviously, if it suited him, talk about someone’s height, or talk about their tan.

Let me ask you about a moment that kind of sums up everything we’ve spoken about, which is, have folks lost faith in some of our democratic institutions?… It seems as though we've now gotten this incredibly partisan perspective on truly independent processes.That seems new.And is that really the tragedy of this moment and this time, is that down the road, we may be able to bounce back, of course, from this time period, but that doubt and that lack of faith and the credibility and the integrity of some of these institutions, in fact, has been sort of whittled away?

Yeah.I would argue that President Trump revealed that people have doubts about the FBI and the Department of Justice that predate President Trump.I think, as someone who has covered race for a long time, African-Americans have always looked at the Department of Justice and the FBI and said, “Are these institutions working for us?"You think of the Department of Justice.There have been so many police shootings and questionable things that people see as hate crimes that the Department of Justice has looked at and said: “We don’t see race being an issue here,” or, “We don’t want to indict this police officer, even if it was an unjustified shooting."

African-Americans have looked at the FBI and thought, this is the same agency that was looking at Martin Luther King and tapping his phone and saying, “Oh, this is someone who, because he wants African-Americans to be treated equally, that he’s a threat to the way that America functions and America’s legal system."

I think that for a long time, Americans have looked at the Justice Department and the FBI and questioned whether or not these are institutions that are working for them.I think what President Trump did was maybe further that and make it a partisan issue, so that now Republicans, as a whole, which is a party that was very much about law and order and very much about backing authorities, that they are now looking at the Department of Justice in the same way that African-Americans maybe have been looking at it for a long time.

I think Democrats also look at the FBI and the Department of Justice with caution.They … do believe that Robert Mueller’s investigation is proceeding in a way that’s independent.But I've talked to some very progressive people that say, “Even if we think that Robert Mueller’s investigation is something that's good for the country, overall, we can't say that we trust the FBI."

I think more than anything, President Trump revealed that there are people who worry about the FBI and the DOJ and the legal system in general.Mass incarceration, all of the things that work to police America, a lot of people have wondered whether or not they are acting in a way that’s fair.

The only thing I would ask about is a little more about Helsinki.When you're there, what is the energy in that room, especially afterward?There's Russian media.There's American media.What's the thought about what is happening or what you’ve all just seen?

The energy after the Helsinki press conference where President Trump and Vladimir Putin spoke was one of shock and surprise.I think that so many people were taken aback by what they saw.I’ll say on the American-journalist side, there was a sense that we as journalists were witnessing a historic moment, a moment that was not just going to be important because two presidents of leading nations met, but because this was a moment where President Trump’s loyalty to America was going to be questioned in a real and new way.

After the press conference, I definitely literally jumped over this barrier that was sitting next to me, because I felt this energy to just run out and write about what I had just witnessed, because it felt urgent, and it felt as though the world needed to understand all that happened during that press conference.

Reporters were scattering, and really, I think, scattering in shock, because people didn’t understand what happened.… I don’t speak Russian, so I can't say on the Russian side what their feeling was, frankly.… Before the press conference started, there was a reporter who was a reporter/columnist who had been dragged out of the room because he was going to have a sign that was going to say something about nuclear treaties during the press conference.That person had been pulled out of the room.So they had already kind of amped up people.People were in this mood that was kind of cautious…..

There was already an energy in the room before the press conference started, where reporters were on their toes and feeling like this was something that really needed to be paid attention to.But afterward, it just felt as though the world had shifted and that this was going to be a press conference that was going to be something that we were talking about for weeks, if not months.

And pretty remarkable that we still don’t have a readout of the meeting.

It’s remarkable that President Trump and Vladimir Putin went into a room with some interpreters, spoke for two hours, which is 30 minutes longer than they were originally supposed to speak for, and that we don’t actually know what was said.The experts I've talked to say that they think Russia definitely has a transcript of the meeting, definitely was recording the meeting.But on the American side, it’s unclear what was said.And the director of national security, Dan Coats, has said on record that he doesn’t know what was said and that he expects to learn dribs and drabs as time goes on, which is remarkable, because he’s the director of national intelligence.He’s the person who’s supposed to be in charge of making sure that the midterms and future elections are not hacked or meddled with.Instead, he is now grasping at straws and trying to figure out what agreements we might have made with Russia.That’s pretty remarkable, and it goes to the idea that President Trump can't get this Russia cloud [off of] him, because even if he’s not actually guilty of anything, even if he’s just a president that wants to operate on his own and wants to make deals and doesn’t think that he has to tell people that he sees as subordinates what his decisions with Russia are, it makes it look bad that he does this.

And it doesn’t help his case when he says that this is a complete hoax and that everything is a witch hunt.It makes it look like he was up to no good when he was talking to Putin, even if that’s not true.For all we know, he could have been in there yelling at Putin about election meddling.He could have been in there saying: “We have to stop this; that we indicted 12 people just a couple days ago; that I'm serious about this."He could have been in there advocating for American strategies, advocating for American needs.

However, we won't know.We might not ever know, because he’s not telling us that.And the press conference afterward made everyone feel as though he was not advocating for America, or the majority of the people feel like he’s not advocating for America.But I will say, when we go back to the idea of Trump’s supporters, and the idea that people believe the truth that President Trump gives them, polls show that something like 70 percent of Republicans approve of the way that the president handled Helsinki, approve of his relationship with Russia.

Again, there's this idea that there's a red view of things and a blue view of things.Republicans look at the performance in Helsinki and all the things that have followed and say, “We need to give the president the benefit of the doubt.We need to look at the resident and say, ‘He’s a leader, and we need to give him space to do what he needs to do to negotiate deals with Russia.’” Republicans see people criticizing President Trump’s meeting with the Russian president as them, again, just wanting to beat up on a president that they don’t like.

And then, of course, you have a Democratic view that says it was almost treasonous the way that he went in and talked to Putin.So if we really look at things, Republicans are happy, and Democrats aren’t.

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