Trump tweets of witch hunt amid Russian Federation probe

The special counsel appointed to investigate Russian influence in the 2016 presidential campaign is now examining whether President Donald Trump tried to obstruct justice, The Washington Post reported Wednesday evening.

Five people briefed on the requests, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said Daniel Coats, the current director of national intelligence, Adm. Mike Rogers, head of the National Security Agency, and Rogers' recently departed deputy, Richard Ledgett, agreed to be interviewed by Mueller's investigators as early as this week.

But in a statement issued shortly after the Post report, a spokesman for Kasowitz, Mark Corallo, said: "The FBI leak of information regarding the President is outrageous, inexcusable and illegal". The contents of alleged transcripts of alleged conversations between Mr. Flynn and Mr. Kislyak, the contents of President Trump's phone calls with Australian and Mexican leaders, the content of Mr. Trump's meetings with the Russian foreign minister and the ambassador, the leak of Manchester bombing - the Manchester bombing suspect's identity and crime scene photos and last week within 20 minutes of this committee meeting in a classified setting is with Jim Comey, the basis of Mr. Comey's innuendo was.

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Trump's legal team quickly denounced the report on Wednesday. (That doesn't mean they won't do exactly that, of course.) We are now talking about the President of the United States being investigated for possibly obstructing justice in relation to a criminal probe about a foreign government meddling in our elections for the goal of defeating his Democratic opponent.

SHAPIRO: You also report that investigators are looking into whether financial crimes might have been committed by Trump associates.

A spokesman for the DNI declined to comment to CNN.

Sessions also elaborated on why he concurred with Rod Rosenstein's recommendation that Comey be fired as FBI Director.

Comey told the intelligence committee in a closed session that Sessions may have had a third, undisclosed interaction with Russia's ambassador to the USA, according to people familiar with the briefing. No longer is he merely focused on Moscow's efforts to interfere in the 2016 election, meaning Mueller appears also to be zeroing in on Trump's actions since taking office on January 20.

He also said Comey should have shared his concerns about the Trump conversation with another Justice Department official, Dana Boente, who was then acting deputy attorney general, and would have been Comey's direct supervisor. Grassley's office said the letter is in response to a recent letter from Feinstein requesting that the committee seek details from senior Federal Bureau of Investigation leadership about Comey's interactions with President Donald Trump before he was sacked.

Comey testified last week that as of February 14, he still believed Sessions had not recused himself - but that he nearly certainly would.

Second, it suggests that not only is the special counsel's investigation reaching upward in the White House but that is also broadening out from simply an attempt to answer the question of the breadth of Russia's hacking and whether it caught up any Trump officials in it.

In a February meeting, Comey said, Trump told Sessions and other administration officials to leave the room before asking him to drop a probe into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's contacts with Russian Federation.

If Comey had information that Sessions would need to recuse himself, he said, that would have been "double reason" to talk to Boente.

Senate Democrats have raised the possibility that Sessions and Kislyak could have met there, though Justice Department officials say there were no private encounters or side meetings.

Maybe it's because multiple Democrats on this committee have stated they have seen no evidence thus far after six months of our investigation and ten months or 11 months of an FBI investigation of any such collusion. Devlin Barrett is one of The Post reporters on the story and joins us now.

SESSIONS: Thank you for saying that, Senator Cotton.