Lawfare Archive: Carrie Cordero and Paul Rosenzweig Weigh in on Comey

-I'm Marissa Wong, intern at Lothar, with an episode from the Lothar archive from May 3rd,

2,026. On April 28th, former FBI director James Komi was indicted a second time by the Trump administration.

In this latest attempt, the Justice Department has accused him of threatening President Trump for an Instagram post that depicted C-shelves laid out in the formation of the number '86-47. For today's archive, I chose an episode from June 9th, 2017, in which Benjamin Wittis sat down with Kerry Cordero and Paul Rosenzweig to discuss Komi's testimony at the Senate Intelligence Committee on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and the role Komi's investigation played in his fight.

[MUSIC] -I'm Quintagersik, and this is the Lothar podcast. Former FBI director James Komi made a lot of news yesterday

“in his long-awaited testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee. But what should we take away from what he said?”

To answer that burning question, we brought in two guests with some serious expertise on the matter. Benjamin Wittis sat down with Kerry Cordero, who formally served in the national security division of the Justice Department, and Paul Rosenzweig, who formally served under independent counsel Kenna Star during the Clinton administration. To talk Komi, what he said, what he didn't and what this means for the Trump administration going forward. It's the Lothar podcast episode

232. Kerry Cordero and Paul Rosenzweig weigh in on Komi. -Let's start with just people's general impressions of what happened yesterday and what it means. Kerry, get us started. We saw the former FBI director give his account of his interactions with the president. What do you make of it? -Well, I'm actually going to start in a place that you might not expect, which is not on the various meetings and conversations between former director Komi

and President elect and then President Trump, but actually, which is what was the most substantive

and actually most important from a national security perspective, fact that Komi reiterated,

which was that they're unequivocally definitively without a doubt was Russian influence

“on the campaign. And I think we just need to keep that point at the foregoing forward that”

that doesn't get lost in all of the other soap opera related dynamics that are captivating everybody's attention. -So, I look at that fact and I say one of the fascinating aspects of that is that in all of the interactions between Komi and the president, one thing he does not report is that the president ever expressed concern or interest in that fact as either a potential criminal matter or as a ongoing counterintelligence problem. What did you make of, I mean, Brian

large Komi's testimony was not about that, it was about these interactions, but you want to read those interactions in light of that underlying fact. What's the interaction between the two?

“-Well, so on that particular angle, so again, they had numerous interactions. I mean, I think”

what was revealed through Komi's testimony aside from the major points that really came out in his written statement and I don't think were that much elaborated during his oral testimony, which was that the president asked for a loyalty oath and that the president insinuated, requested, directed, however one wants to interpret it, that he make the Mike Flynn criminal case go away. Those are the two sort of dynamics between their interactions

that came out, but what it underscores is that in all of these various interactions that they had, Jim Komi was the FBI director. He was the top counterintelligence officer that the president interacted with, with brismet to domestic threats, with respect to FBI domestic counterintelligence and the fact that the substance of this major national security

threat was never discussed is relevant to the president's performance in his role as president

was incredible theater? And so give us the theater review. What would you make of it?

-Well, it was indeed amazing theater. Reminiscent in my mind of the time that Ken Star testified in front of the House Judiciary Committee regarding Bill Clinton's impeachment, that was the last time that we had such a riveting set of testimony. To my mind echoing what Kerry said,

“I think that the testimony made it clear that the key fact for a special council model going forward”

is finding any links if they exist between the obstruction piece of this investigation and the Russian interference piece of this investigation. I was very pleasantly surprised by the generally sober and effective performance of the Senate. There were a couple of exceptions of course as they're

always are. But by and large, they treated this matter with the gravity and seriousness that I think

it deserves. And mostly masked their partisanship in somewhat in the tenor of their questioning, but mostly masked it. And that's a positive for anybody who's actually looking at the article one branches of this country to play an effective role in resolving whatever it is that needs resolving with respect to the specter of Russian interference. This was a pretty darn good day. And last, I would say that Jim Komi, personally, comes across as extremely credible and forthright.

You may not like what he said, but it's pretty hard to think that any neutral finder of fact would discount what he said simply because they disagreed with it. All right. So let's turn to

“the evaluation of the story that he told. How bad a day was it for the president?”

Moderately bad. It makes him look like he was trying to influence the investigation. I think that's kind of the ferrous summary. He demanded loyalty. He asked him to put away the Flynn investigation. He asked him to help dissipate the Russian cloud over the over his presidency, all of which are strikingly inappropriate actions, even if they don't rise to the level of obstruction of

justice. We can talk about that in a second. I think that, you know, we're already seeing

the president's response, which is I came here to blow up Washington. I don't care about your norms. I didn't know that that's inappropriate. I'm not even sure it should be inappropriate. You guys are making a mountain out of a molehill and I'm from New York.

“Suck it up, Buttercup. What do you think, Harry? Scale of one to ten. How bad a day is it for the president?”

Maybe an eight. I think it's a, I think it was a bad day for him because it confirms through a very credible witness that he asked a FBI director who was supposed to have an apolitical ten-year term for his personal loyalty, which is frankly offensive to anybody who has served in government and taken the oath to the Constitution and to uphold the laws of the United States. Because let's, let's, let's, let me, you know, I've said this about a dozen times and every time

people say, you know, what's so wrong with loyalty? And so let, let me pause on that and just ask you to flush that out. You're a Republican, you're a former Justice Department official at, at the career level. What's wrong with if you're a holdover official from the prior administration as, as Comi is? The administration changes party. The president doesn't know who you are politically. You know, and doesn't know are you going to be one of these burrowers who's going to

undermine him? So he invites you over to the White House and says, hey, can I count on your loyalty?

government official, even at a, at a low federal civil service level, somebody who is an employee

of the federal government assumes their position, they take an oath that they will uphold

“the laws of the country. We don't, I think there's a historical aspect to this that we don't take”

oaths to a monarch. We don't take oaths to an individual. And so at the end of the day a person's responsibilities is to uphold the laws of the country with respect to the FBI director, there's a heightened distancing because he is, although he does serve at the pleasure of the president and can be lawfully fired. He, by a law of Congress, has a 10-year term which was different than all other political appointees in that the 10-year term was intended to insulate that role, which has a

law enforcement function, which needs to conduct investigations independent of political influence to attend your term. And so I think that there is a special issue with respect to the president's asking loyalty of an FBI director as opposed to sort of asking to some political special assistant, you know, are you going to help me achieve my policy objectives? And I do have one thought with the respect of the argument that the president really doesn't know better and he's a Washington

Neophyte and he really doesn't understand that he wasn't supposed to discuss an ongoing criminal investigation with the FBI director. Where is everybody else in government and his administration who is supposed to be advising him about those rules? There are long-standing traditions, written memorandum that govern contacts between the White House and the Justice Department, which includes the FBI, about discussing ongoing criminal investigations. And that's the White House

Council's job, that is the attorney general's job. Paul, what do you think? Is there you kind of raised your eyebrows when Carrey said it was an eight on a bad day scale? You would

“said it was moderately bad. What's the mitigating factors for the president here?”

Well, there are a couple mitigating factors for the president. The first is

Komi confirmed that he wasn't the subject of a CI investigation. And why is that mitigating? I mean in the sense that it wasn't like Komi had ever said he was. He was. Well, it's mitigating in the same way that it was mitigating for by Hillary Clinton when Komi said she was not no longer the subject. Any time the investigative agent who's in charge of looking at your conduct says he's not currently under investigation for that, that is rightly taken as a partial

vindication of the view that there's no there there. Or if there is a there there, it hasn't

been exposed to the FBI. So that's the first thing. The second piece is that the descriptions

of the discussions with the president while I find them chilling and terrible leave enough ambiguity.

“I think that he's going to be able to, you know, make out a culpable place that he was. I mean”

yeah, Mackenzie should have been in the room telling him not to do this, but he he's got some reasonable defenses to make to the charge that he was obstructing justice. Not that, you know, that's a good thing that you're even being considered for the charge. On third, it turns out that Komi made what at least are plausibly some missteps. I'm thinking particularly of the disclosure that he was behind purposefully behind the leak of his memorandum as a means of

trying to influence the appointment of a special counsel. That's, I mean, I certainly don't think that that was a crime or an ethics violation on Komi's part, but it does paint him as more of a manipulator of the process and less of the perfectly straight shooter. I'm just here to tell you the facts. I mean, his, his written statement was G-man, right? You know, just the facts playing

manipulated by the president. And he loses a little bit of the second bit of that, the moral

credibility with with that. I think the third thing or the fourth thing that mitigates this completely is that at least the initial reaction in the Republican elected party is one of, we don't care, we're going to stick with him, Speaker Ryan. You know, some of the senators, you know, for me, this game is going to all be played out in the political sphere and, and Komi's testimony didn't really move the dial and I don't think it probably moved the dial with President Trump's

hardcore of support. They really still are the group that he could go and shoot somebody and

in the middle of Fifth Avenue and they would disregard it and Komi's testimony didn't move that

“needle. So if you want to see a change in the perspectives, you know, we're all, I think rightly”

deeply appalled at what Komi reported, but I didn't move the geopolitical needle that much. So I give it a 4, 5, 6 something in that range. Interesting. That's actually a pretty big gap between the two of you and in terms of that, that's that's very interesting. So let's, let's bracket the

question of what punches were landed on Komi either by himself or by others for now and let's

finish up with the question of the impact for the President and let's talk specifically about the obstruction question. We now have under oath a series of claims about a set of interactions, some of which the President disputed through his counsel last night, one of which the Justice Department disputed in terms of his interactions with the Attorney General, but the disputes, of course, are not under oath and the parameters of the disputes are not clear. So my question for both of you,

let's start with Kerry is how seriously should we take the idea that there may have been an

“obstruction of justice here? Well, one new fact that I think emerged through former director Komi's”

oral testimony was a fairly definitive statement that the issue of obstruction is now under the purview of the special counsel. I'm not sure that before yesterday we had heard that clearly articulated, there have been various reports this week indicating that the special counsel was sort of working on determining how broad his investigation is going to be and so that struck me as a fairly new fact that Komi said specifically obstruction is going to fall under that

investigation. So certainly the special counsel is going to look at it. I think the fact that the Senate Intelligence Committee had the hearing that they had yesterday with Komi testifying specifically primarily on the interactions between himself and the president indicates that the committee is also now open to taking on the issue of obstruction because that was really the purpose of the hearing,

“that was what his statement was geared towards, that's what the bulk of the questions were about,”

so that indicates to me that the committee is also taking the obstruction issue seriously. So I think there's enough indicators that the two major investigations that are taking place right now think it's serious, which means that it's serious. That being said, I think most legal observers agree that the likelihood of a president being charged with obstruction is highly unlikely and that obstruction, if in fact a record were established through the special counsel investigation or the

committee investigation that demonstrate factual support for elements of obstruction that that would have to be resolved through the political process. Paul, what do you think? How strong, how strong a case for obstruction do you think there is here? Both if we consider obstruction as a statutory criminal matter, but also if you consider sort of the more colloquial sense of obstruction of

notoriously easy to bring and hard to prove. And the reason they're difficult to prove in a

“court of law is because the critical component of corrupt intent is often typically only provable”

by inference. Very few people publicly declare their corrupt intent as they act in doing their obstruction and given the high burden of proof that tends any criminal charge and the added political benefit of doubt that will probably attend any trial of President Trump. It'll be a hard charge though. I will say that the prosecutor does have the advantage that the venue for this is if it were to exist would be here in the district of Columbia where the veneir is probably as

anti-Trump as you would ever find. So that's the flip of the Clinton administration where the veneir was in the district and it was pro-democrat and so it was an unlikely place to secure a conviction. So that makes it possible. And then I've also bracketed whether or not a sitting president can

be indicted because that's a theoretical question that has never been answered by the courts.

“So I think it carries absolutely right that it will be a significant aspect of Mueller's”

criminal investigation that Trump could possibly worsen by ill-advised tweeting for himself. That we some of which you did this morning. Yeah, it gives greater rise to corrupt intent inferences. But my sense is that this is more likely to be resolved if it's resolved at all as Kerry said as a political obstruction of justice consideration. It is notable that both Clinton and Nixon had articles and impeachment that sounded in obstruction of justice that basically sounded like severe attempts

to manipulate the public perceptions and policy through ill-advised means. Yeah, that means that like Clinton neither Clinton's obstruction charge nor Nixon's referred

specifically to the statutes, right? They were just basically you used your power in a fashion

so as to obstruct the due administration of justice. And if I were advising the House Judiciary Committee assuming that there were members of the House Judiciary Committee who were even interested in the problem, I would say I'm not sure strict violation of the statute is the relevant question. And the relevant question is sort of is this an okay way for the president to behave with respect to the director of the FBI? You're too weak. I would state it affirmatively.

Violation of the statute is not the definition of obstruction of justice in the political context. So how would you define obstruction of justice in the context that we're dealing with here, which is, you know, a, and if you're Mueller, how do you understand the relationship between your investigation, which for this purpose is a simple criminal investigation,

“and that standard, carry? So this is a really important point. And John Carlin”

has an article a piece of analysis out in the Washington Post this morning. And I want to point out that he did not write it for law fair and we're a little bit sore about that. Well, I'm going to commend it to law fair listeners anyway. John Carlin, many of the law fair community knows him as the former assistant attorney general for national security, but he also was the former chief of staff to the FBI under director Mueller.

And John's piece raises a very important point that Congress needs to think about, which is that even if the special counsel considers obstruction as part of its mandate, the current special counsel arrangement is very unclear regarding what is the deliverable if not criminal charges. So in other words, everybody has confidence that to the extent that the special counsel in its broad investigation,

uncover evidence of crime and believes that there are prosecutable offenses, it will pursue those in terms of criminal prosecution, whether that involves activities regarding Michael Flynn, whether that involves potential financial issues that are related to the Russian investigation.

offense, what is the mechanism for the special counsel to be able to provide its findings,

whatever they are to Congress. And John discusses this in his piece today, and it's a really important issue that needs to be thought about and perhaps addressed by Congress before we get to that moment in time. So I just want to say on this, this is a problem that Paul, you worked on specifically during the star investigation, and it's actually an aspect of the star investigation on which I wrote a book, which is the interaction between the investigative prosecutorial function

under the old independent counsel law and the sort of truth commission function, which is embodied

in the old statute in the final report requirement, which of course does not exist for the special

counsel in the same way. And also, at least as star interpreted it, in the impeachment referral language of the old independent counsel statute, which he used to write a quite capacious and

“full document, which I think you would know this better than I, but I think he wrote with no”

particular understanding or expectation that Congress would dump the whole thing in the public's lap, essentially unread. And so I'm interested, Paul, in your, I have some of my own thoughts, but I'm interested in your thoughts on what's the right way for Mueller to understand his reporting function to Congress in reference to its impeachment power, particularly given that he's not operating under the old statute, and it was partly the use of the statute for this purpose

by you people that caused Congress to not renew it, among many other things, of course. My historical sense is that the truth commission investigative report functionality of the independent counsel was the most pernicious aspect of its existence. It authorized an unaccountable prosecutor to lay things before the public in ways that proved to be very corrosive, not, not because they were necessarily right or wrong, but because they occurred outside of the normal

bounds of process, not to say that it was a statutory, because it had a statutory authorization, but that authorization was just a bad idea. If Robert Mueller were listening to this podcast, my recommendation to him on that basis would be you have no reporting requirement at all,

“you should exercise your functions just as you are any other special prosecutor. If you have”

crimes, bring them, if you don't close it. If you want, if you think you need to make a report, you know, there is a mechanism. We can convene a special grand jury, which is a statutory provision that is allowed to conduct investigative reports, but that requires authorization, presumably here from the attorney general. The deputy attorney general, though he's probably going to recuse himself any day now, given that there's an obstruction of justice investigation that involves

him. So, maybe the associate attorney general, so you cannot, and I would certainly be opposed to an exposed action by Congress to retroactively authorize a report from Mueller after he'd been appointed under the regulations. That seems to me like Trump only law, and I mean, I've written about this a number of times. I don't think that we defend norms by creating new, aberrant norms of behavior. If he finds no criminality, that's the end of it.

And, you know, that's his job. Congress has to do its job. So, Jewarsky did an impeachment referral

in the Nixon administration in the Watergate investigation. That document has interestingly never

“become public because it contains a whole lot of grand jury information. I think it is still”

underseal, but it has been characterized in some depth, both in Jewarsky's memoir and in the memoir of his, I forget the name of the fellow to a wonderful book, the memoir of his spokesman. And he characterizes it as a very spare report that simply lists statutory

violations of those statutes. So, here's my question. I agree with you that Mueller is a prosecutor

“and the right way for him to behave as a prosecutor. But if we hypothesize that you guys are right,”

and I suspect based on the current record, you're right, which is that there's a serious, there's a serious criminal obstruction of justice question. But when you actually get down to analyzing what you could prove in court beyond a reasonable doubt about the specific elements of specific offenses under Title 18, it's going to be a very hard case to make. And so, in your prosecutorial hat, you say, okay, we've gone through all of it. We've checked all the boxes,

we're not going to bring a case here, especially because he's the president of the United States,

and there's this question about whether we can. But boy, there's a rip-roaring question that the House Judiciary Committee should consider under its impeachment authorities based on the evidence that we've collected in front of the grand jury that we've convened. So, do you, I agree with you,

“you don't follow the star model. But do you do nothing or do you follow the Jewish model?”

What's to stop, what's to stop the House Judiciary from conducting that investigation itself, right? Now, if Mueller does even a Jewarsky and your characterization of his report is I think an

accurate one. Even if he, you do a Jewarsky, that's the prosecutor, putting his thumb on the

scales and trying to push, you know, Congress, there's no secret out there. If he uncovers something that is completely not in the public record, you know, some connection between Trump and the Chinese that nobody is, this is a hypothetical podcast listeners, but something that is not in the public record, then he has a problem because the Congress can't even bring itself around to investigating that of which it is unaware. But there's no mystery here for the House Judiciary Committee,

the enough of the facts out there that if they're interested in this, they can conduct their own investigation. Okay, so that's a, but that's a really interesting question. There is no talk of they're doing that. So my question is, you are, you are now talking to Bob Goodlat, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Your view is that we have two entirely independent tracks here that should be minimally, if at all, communicating with one another. Does that mean that Bob Goodlat

based on the facts that are now public and Komi's testimony yesterday has a affirmative obligation to be conducting an investigation of these events because they could in some theoretical or factual constructions raise an issue under the impeachment clauses. So Bob English is a former congressman from South Carolina. He was in the, on the House Judiciary Committee

“during the clean, clean impeachment times. I think he was even, there was one of the managers,”

I think he was even one of the managers. And he was on CNN this morning saying, if this were Democrat president, the Republicans in Congress would have started an obstruction of justice impeachment inquiry already and they should do so as well here. Kerry, what do you think does the House Judiciary Committee have an independent obligation to open an impeachment inquiry now? There certainly are a number of facts.

I think Paul, I agree with Paul that there's a number of facts in the public domain that would justify it. I would think that they would want to do so in a way that simultaneously respects whatever investigation the Senate Intelligence Committee is doing. So I think there's a small risk of investigations kind of stepping on. One another, if in fact the Senate Intelligence Committee is now as it appears to be taking testimony on the obstruction issue. So there's sort

of, so maybe there's a timing question, maybe there's a coordination question and substantively on obstruction. If the House Judiciary or other members of Congress, if they're waiting for there to be some definitive fact, in other words, one event or act that they think is the bombshell for obstruction, I would suggest that there's a different way to think about the potential obstruction issue, which is that there may not be one specific act by the president. There may not

be one specific event that makes the case for obstruction, but instead what they might be looking at

that form the basis of the obstruction case. Yeah, I think if there's an obstruction case here,

either as a criminal matter or as an impeachment matter, it's fundamentally about an aggregation of activity, not about any single act. Kerry, I want to, before we turn to the what blows were landed on Komi question, I want to ask you specifically about an issue, Paul raised, because you are one of the very few people who ever speaks publicly who really has hands-on experience with counter-intelligence

“investigations, and Paul made the point, I think, quite correctly, that one of the good things about”

the day for the president was that it really became quite clear that at least as of May 13th or May 9th,

when Komi was dismissed, there was not an open counterintelligence file on Trump personally. And so my question to you is, how much good news is that for the president? Is that a, should we understand that as his conduct is not an issue in these investigations? Or should we understand that in a much more limited kind of good news? So former director Komi in his testimony yesterday described an internal FBI leadership debate that took place on this particular point,

which was that he was, I guess, deliberating over whether or not to tell the president that he was not

“the technical subject of a counterintelligence investigation. And the way that the former director”

described it yesterday was that there was at least one individual on his leadership team who disagreed with his decision to tell the president that he was not the subject of an investigation. And that was because as he described it yesterday, that individual believed that because the FBI was conducting a more comprehensive investigation into Russian influence and potential involvement by the Trump campaign writ large that that arguably could, whether it did

X number of days or months ago or not, that could involve the president because it was his campaign. And I have to say that I found myself during his testimony yesterday aligning with the judgment of that individual who advised him. In other words, you think it was ill-advised of Komi to tell the president that he was not under investigation. I understand the reasons as he has articulated them and and I can respect them, but I find myself

in more agreement with the advice that he was given by whoever was that member of his leadership team. I agree with you. That the broad scope of the investigation as it relates to his campaign potentially had the potential to involve him and therefore it was not necessarily an advisable formulation for him to inform the president. So if you were advising the president right now, which is admittedly a not an admirable position to be in, do you also have to assume he would take

it right? I mean, if you were whispering in his ear, he is claiming vindication as a result of this. How much vindication should the president be claiming according to the by in the counterintelligence context and limited to that that his campaigning, his underlings, his family may all be subject to counterintelligence investigation, but he personally at least as of May 9th is not. How should we understand that

“as to what Trump's exposure is to this counterintelligence investigation or do we just not know?”

Well, that's the difficulty of a counterintelligence investigation being conducted under the daily public eye. I mean, this is an investigation that should be should have been conducted behind closed doors and not in the daily public lie. And so really for someone advising the president, the advice should be he shouldn't be talking about it at all. He shouldn't be making any claims. He shouldn't be claiming vindication. He shouldn't be talking about it. He shouldn't be tweeting

be insulating himself from any ongoing investigation because counterintelligence investigations

traditionally take a while to conduct and to reach their conclusions. Okay. Let's turn to Jim Komi. Paul, you said he came off as earnest and likely telling the truth. You also say he punctured his own veneer of apolitical g-man straight shooterness with the disclosure that he called Dan Richmond and asked him to give a document one of the memos to the New York Times. On a scale of 1 to 10,

“how bad a day for Jim Komi? I think it was a good day for Jim. He came across as straight and”

credible and to some degree his own acknowledgment that he's imperfect, his straightness is

credibility. He didn't try and hide the connections with the New York Times. No, he actively volunteered and ignored hide his motivation. But at the same time, the fact that he chose that course of conduct back in May when he did so does make you think that he sort of has some peak or dismay or anger at the lies being told about him that drove him to somewhat politicize his response. It was I think, Jack Kingston, another former Republican who said the frame in which we should

read Komi's testimony is that he's just a disgruntled fire employee. And that contributes,

that contributes somewhat to that storyline. I mean, I don't buy it, but if you're building things to say that mitigate the damage of his testimony or that quality, call it's ferracity and question, you know, everybody knows about the idea that that people who get fired lie about why they were fired. And you know, this is kind of plays into that a little bit. It was a two on the damage scale of Mr. But he, but since it was his own goal, you know, he could have had it made it as zero.

What do you think, Carrie? How, how big a problem is the Komi leaked to the New York Times through

“Dan Richmond, Meem, and what other, what other vulnerabilities emerge from that from the day for him?”

Well, it gives his opponents and the president who are now going on attack against the former director, a talking point. I don't think there's much more damage beyond that. These allegations that are out there in the last 24 hours that somehow he committed a crime by doing that are just unfounded in law. There's no allegation at all that he released any classified information. He needs specifically said that he wrote up his notes specifically and deliberately in an unclassified

way. So I think the damage done is that he gave his opponents a talking point and not much beyond that.

“Actually, if you want to know what I think was the most kind of penetrating set of questions that”

were on the what about this Komi side, it was really the series of questions that suggested that he was too calculating in not actually being more forthcoming earlier about his perception that the president was improperly trying to influence him. He did say that we gave some thought to whether or not we should expose this more widely, go to the attorney general, and talk not just don't leave me alone with him, but expose what he had said and there is some fairness to the argument that

you know, if at the time you really thought it was so bad that you had to write memos about it, you perhaps should have been sending up a bigger red flare. And again, that doesn't mean that what he said is on true, but it's one of those things that any defense lawyer would say is indicative that at least at the time you didn't think it was important enough to mention to the attorney general, now you think it's important enough to tell the whole world. Right, so I actually think that's the

the reason for firing, he doesn't consider himself bound to confidentiality to the president and shares a personal memo that he wrote or even an unclassified government document,

I'm not even sure which it is to be honest, but he describes it as his own memo to file basically.

I don't think that that's, I think that's kind of a trivial suggestion that there's something in proper about giving that to the New York Times. That said, I do think there's a more substantial question why didn't you ask the president, hey, this is really, why didn't you say to the president, this is really inappropriate, why didn't you do more at the time? And I think the subtextual answer to that question. First of all, I thought his response to that was really interesting that he

seemed, you know, cautious but very amenable to the idea that he was insufficiently bold at the time.

And I thought that was interesting that he said, you know, if I'd been more courageous,

“I might have done X, Y, and Z. But the second element that I think is really a key factor here”

is that all of this looks different in the light of the fact that he was fired, right? And in light of the statements, the president made about why he was fired. And I think the analogy I keep coming back to about this is if you have a pattern of bad conduct that may be suggestive in a sexual harassment context in a workplace and that somebody's getting the feeling that, you know, there's some, you know, if you don't do the following, you might have your job might be on the line.

And there's some suggestion of that, but it's not dispositive. There's no great or direct order, right? But then you fire her, right? It all looks very different. And I think there's a, I think there's a bit of that that all of this looks very different in fact because we know what the outcome was. But who was he going to tell? Yeah. He was conducting an investigation that involved at the time the attorney general who he knew was going to have to refuse himself.

And this is a rudderless administration. Right. No, I think he was going to tell when the very investigation that he is conducting is about the campaign and individuals who served on the transition of that campaign who then assumed senior government positions. I mean, I, I think if, if, if I had been counseling him at the time, which, I was not for the record, and I had known about this, the question that I might have raised, although I might not have had the presence of mine to do, it is,

should you tell the intelligence committee leadership, right? Should you sit down with Mark Warner and Richard Orchard? Or the judiciary committee leadership. Right. And where you respond. And say, I just had an incredibly disturbing conversation with the president that has implications for the

“counterintelligence investigations and some criminal investigations, and you need to know about it.”

And it's not a direct remedy, but it is at least telling somebody and doing something. So, let, we got to close out. But, but, but thoughts on that, is that what Komi should have done? I would have sent it, I would have sent it to the attorney general, who had not yet recused, and then acting with a CC to the then acting deputy attorney general. So, you know that it actually made it to an official who was not necessarily implicated in this. I mean, you do understand

the inconsistency. You know, this was so extraordinary a meeting that he felt the need to write

a memo about it. Something he'd never done for Obama. So, it's more than just kind of that,

I'm feeling uncomfortable. It's, I'm feeling so uncomfortable that I'm making a memo for the file.

“But, I'm not going to tell anybody. It's a little bit of a weak spot for him. And I honestly”

think his answer was was the accurate one that he was overly cautious. He lacked the courage of his convictions. He was being a little bit CYA. That's okay. Humans are humans, you know. That's the nature of the beast. What do you think, Kari? I think that we need to remain open to the idea that there are still, despite as much information as there is in the public domain. There are still aspects of this

investigation that have not been revealed publicly. Some of those facts, perhaps were

after his public testimony, but there perhaps are reasons that are contained in those facts

“that are still classified that might explain more his behavior at the time.”

We're going to leave it there. Kari Cordero, Paul Rosenzweig. Thanks for joining us. Thank you.

Always a pleasure.

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