From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily.

Today, James Comey says he took it as a command. President Trump says he never even said it.

The one word that an obstruction of justice case could turn on.

And the U.S. military has waged cyber attacks on Iran's nuclear program and North Korea's

missile systems. So why is it struggling to hack into the low tech computers of ISIS? It's Monday,

June 12th. Let's go to the Flynn issue. When former FBI director James Comey testified in front

of the Senate Intelligence Committee last week, he clearly stated under oath that he believed President

Trump had asked him to shut down an FBI investigation into his former national security adviser,

Michael Flynn. And so that's why I understood him to be saying that what he wanted me to do was drop

any investigation connected to Flynn's account of his conversations with the Russians.

That testimony reignited questions about whether the president has obstructed justice.

Some of that could hinge on word choice, one word in particular. Michael, I think the word is hope.

There's 28 words there that are in quotes and it says quote, I hope this is the president speaking.

I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope

you can let this go. Adam Littak, why did the word hope come up in this testimony?

Well, there was questioning about whether anyone had ever been convicted of obstruction of justice

merely because they'd hoped for an outcome. Right. Do you know of any case where a person

has been charged for obstruction of justice or for that matter any other criminal offense

where this they said or thought they hoped for an outcome?

I don't know well enough to answer and the reason I keep saying his words is

I took it as a direction. So there's two things to say about this. One is it's perfectly possible

to convey using the word I hope to a subordinate who's maybe hoping to keep his job.

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