[King:] Welcome back. When you're faced with conflicting information, which source do you trust often becomes the question. Yesterday's testimony from the former acting attorney general and the former director of national intelligence put that question front and center here in Washington, repeatedly. President Trump paid attention to the hearing and twitted this reaction. "Director Clapper reiterated what everybody including the fake media already knows. There is no evidence of collusion with Russia and Trump." But the testimony on the collusion question, sorry Mr. President was hardly so clear cut.
[Sally Yates, Former Acting Attorney General:] My answer to that question would require me to reveal classified information and so I can't answer that.
[Sen. Lindsey Graham , South Carolina:] Well, I don't get that because he just said he issued the report. And he said he doesn't know of any. So how would you know that's not in the report?
[James Clapper, Former United States Director Of National Intelligence:] Are you asking me or?
[Graham:] No, her.
[Yates:] Well, I think that Director Clapper also said that he was unaware of the FBI counterintelligence investigation.
[Graham:] Would it be fair to say that the counterintelligence investigation was not mature enough to come to his to get in the report? Is that fair Mr. Clapper?
[Clapper:] That's a possibility.
[King:] That's one important point. And listen here, the president back in February describing his take on the Sally Yates warning.
[Donald Trump, President Of The United States:] As far as the general's concerned, when I first heard about it, I said, huh, that doesn't sound wrong. My counsel came, Don McGahn, White House Counsel and he told me, and I asked him. And he can speak very well for himself. He said, he doesn't think anything is wrong. He really didn't think
[King:] Doesn't sound wrong, the president said. But McGahn listened yesterday. Yates repeatedly said, her message to the White House was it was beyond wrong.
[Yates:] The Russians also knew about what General Flynn had done. And the Russians also knew that General Flynn had misled the vice president and others. Not only did we believe that the Russians knew this, but that they likely had proof of this information. And that created a compromise situation, a situation where the national security adviser essentially could be blackmailed by the Russians.
[King:] You can't square these circles. What the testimony is very different from what the president and his team have repeatedly tried to say. They say this is clear cut. Those two public servants say no, it isn't.
[Philip:] Yes. I mean, to Jeff's point earlier it's important for us to find out in some way what was the president actually told about what Sally Yates told Don McGahn. That seems to be an increasingly important question because Trump has ever since that day that Easter press conference defended Michael Flynn and repeatedly suggested that he did nothing wrong even in the face of all of this talk about the risks of blackmail. So, there's that problem and I think in general on the collusion question, the folks who are looking at this situation fairly need to be more comfortable with the idea that we don't know what the answer to the collusion question is. It is not as the president says that there was no collusion. The answer is unsatisfying we don't know. And I think that's what James Clapper and Sally Yates put out there was that there is no definitive yes or no answer to that right at this moment. And even folks on the left I think need to be a little bit more comfortable with that.
[King:] I think the Democrats have gone beyond at least the public information some of the things they say. But when you have it look, I understand people work for the president and the president himself is a politician. But he's also the commander-in-chief, he's a politician. I understand the idea that they want to shape things in a favorable lights. But there's a difference between shaping things in a favorable light and saying things that are factually untrue.
[Viser:] And Sean Spicer yesterday too said, you know, President Trump did the right thing. He believes he did the right thing at that time and he stands by that decision to stick with Flynn, you know, for those things he did.
[King:] Eighteen days after being told he could be blackmailed by the Russians and an hour long call with the Russian president.
[Viser:] So, I think no you have I mean, put aside for a minute the Russian collusion question. But you have a sort of a mismanagement standpoint of the president keeping somebody despite repeated warnings from top officials that this guy's compromised.
[King:] And part of his brand was he hires the best people. Before you jump in I just want to put in one more example here. When this first came up, the Washington Post story that Sally Yates had warned the White House that General Flynn possibly could be subject to blackmail by the Russians, here is how the press secretary described it.
[Sean Spicer, White House Press Secretary:] The acting attorney general informed the White House counsel that they wanted to give, quote, a heads up to us on some comments that may have seemed in conflict with what the he had sent the vice president out in particular. The White House counsel informed the president immediately
[King:] Now, the immediately there is important to the question you raised early. We don't know what Don McGahn told the president. But the immediately if it's true matters there. But again, gave us a heads up, sounds pretty casual. Listen to Sally Yates.
[Yates:] I had two in-person meetings and one phone call with the White House counsel about Mr. Flynn. We told them that we were giving them all of this information so that they could take action. The action that they deemed appropriate. I remember that Mr. McGahn asked me whether or not General Flynn should be fired. And I told him that that really wasn't our call, that was up to them. But that we were giving them this information so that they could take action.
[King:] That's not a heads up. A, it's a big deal when the attorney general actually turns up goes to meet with the White House counsel about somebody on the White House staff who's under FBI investigation. That is a big deal in its own right. I mean, if you say nothing, just to even but the idea that and again, Sean Spicer is a political appointee, works for the president, but like it's not a heads up. It wasn't a heads up, it was a warning.
[Henderson:] Yes, this was sounding the alar.
[Kings:] In triplicate.
[Henderson:] Yes, in a major way. Her saying that some sort of action needed to be taken. They obviously didn't fire him for 18 days or accept his resignation, unclear of whether or not they did anything, right. Did they bar him from meetings or did they bar him from briefings or anything? And, you know, everyone talks sort of about loyalty and Donald Trump being loyal to people around him. He's sort of also loyal to whatever set of information he has. He's not very curious in terms of finding, you know, other information and processing that information. So this seems to be another of those instances when President Obama said listen, Flynn, this might be a problem. He seem to sort of
[Zeleny:] I can see how he wouldn't sort of accept that advice. So all he did say we had great meetings with President Obama at that moment. He was saying, you know he was locking arms with him. But why did they invite her back to the White House? The point you made earlier today that they invited her back to the White House but then by that evening she was fired because she refused to enforce the travel ban. To me, why did they invite her back? You know, there are more questions here. And it's OK right now to not have the answers. These things take a long time to develop.
[King:] We don't have the investigative answers. But I do think you might you're right there are fundamental questions about judgment and management style and who did what? We want the answer to so we don't have the answer to get to right conclusion probably about those. But those are additional questions now put on the table as the investigations continue. Everybody sit tight. We'll be right back.