Priebus: McCabe Told Me the NYT’s Trump/Russia Collusion Story Was B.S.

‘This is the deputy director of the F.B.I.; I didn’t know who he was’

CHUCK TODD: Let me ask you another event in and around that time also which was the report about the Trump Tower meeting between Donald Trump Junior, members of the campaign team at the time and the response to it. What the meeting was. Here's what you said the meeting was the day after the report on Fox News Sunday. Just hang on.

(BEGIN TAPE)

REINCE PRIEBUS: It was a very short meeting. It was a meeting apparently about Russian adoption. And after about 20 minutes the meeting ended. And that was the end of it. I don't know much about it other than it seems to be, on the end of the Trump individuals, a big nothing-burger.

(END TAPE)

CHUCK TODD: All right. You were not on the Air Force One when that statement was dictated. We now learn the next day that it was not about Russian adoptions at the initial meeting. We had the emails from Donald Trump Junior. Who told you, who told you the adoption story?

REINCE PRIEBUS: That's what I've always heard. I mean, I heard that from members of the family. I heard that it was an open meeting.

CHUCK TODD: So when you were preparing to go on that show and you asked, "Okay what should I know about this meeting--"

(OVERTALK)

CHUCK TODD: Members of the family told you Russian adoption?

REINCE PRIEBUS: That's all I ever heard that it was about. And in fact, I still believe what I said in that clip. In that, in fact, it was a meeting about Russian adoption and this thing called the Magnitsky Act that I'd never heard of. I've never heard it was anything but that. But, again, Chuck, I don't know. I wasn't there. I was chairman of--

CHUCK TODD: Did you feel misled reading the next day--

(OVERTALK) --to find out that the email that Donald Trump Junior thought the meeting was going to be about Hillary Clinton--

(OVERTALK)

REINCE PRIEBUS: Well, no not really. Because I think in the end the people involved, at least this is my assertion, that the people involved truly believed that it was a nothing meeting, totally about these issues of Russian adoption. Now I don't know what the motivations were. Okay? So I only know what I know. I wasn't on the plane. I was not involved in that meeting.

CHUCK TODD: Do you know if the president--

(OVERTALK)

CHUCK TODD: --was involved with the drafting of the statement or not?

REINCE PRIEBUS: I do not. I do not.

CHUCK TODD: So it was just other people informing you of this is what you should know about this meeting.

REINCE PRIEBUS: That's right. And when you were on that Sunday show that morning I think it was the only Sunday show that morning that actually talked about that New York Times article.

CHUCK TODD: And had asked you about it.

REINCE PRIEBUS: Right. If you go back and look at every single Sunday show, that was the only one that actually discussed it. But, look, like all of this, Chuck, and I can't get too much into it. And I've allowed some of this to go on just to be fair with you. But I never felt that I was involved in something nefarious. The whole way through from the beginning to the end. So you can understand the frustration of the president when he's told he's not under investigation. I think you know the story of Andrew McCabe that walked into my office, shut my door and basically told me that the New York Times' story that was in the paper that first came out in February that said there are constant contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russians with the door closed-- looked at me and said, "I want you to know that this story right here is total BS. It's overstated and it's not true." This is the deputy director of the F.B.I. I didn't know who he was. It's the middle of February. And so everyone's in this world where we're being told one thing and sort of operating in this other world of constant obsession by the media.

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