>> i thought bob mueller is doing exactly what bob mueller does best. he is a subtle communicator around the fact that there is no exoneration on obstruction of justice in this context with volume two of the report. you know, even in terms of volume one when it comes to that trump tower meeting on june 9th. he says in his report that one of the reasons they can't charge a campaign finance conspiracy is because of obstruction. so you also have to read the two volumes together and i think what he's saying is exactly as john said, it's like the evidence is there. i gave it to you. do something with it. do something and read it. >> gene, he was imploring the public to perhaps do more than many of our leaders ask, than certainly people often feel like the level of discourse. and here was a man who obviously feels that he's worked hard. he served his country. does he not want to be drawn into political sniping. he doesn't see the role as political. but he is asking us to do something. take a look at his request. >> beyond these few remarks it is important tha

a shocking new story about robert mueller and the mueller report and what apparently robert mueller believes was the botched handling of his findings and his report on his investigation by trump administration attorney general william barr. now, i say this is shocking. that said, we had seen some rumblings along these lines soon after mueller turned in his report at the end of march, right? newly appointed trump attorney general william barr then started serially releasing multiple statements of his own, that he characterized as summaries of mueller's findings, peppered with his own fulsome musings on the fundamental innocence and good character of president trump, right? but on april 3rd, you might remember that there was some inklings that something like this might be going on behind the scenes. on april 3rd, "the washington post" and "the new york times" both reported that some personnel from the special counsel's office were known to be, were expressing shock and anger at the way barr was presenting mueller's findings. and the way he was substituting his own assertions about mueller's in

mueller is not saying that. mueller is saying what you did is you mischaracterized our findings, our evidence as presented. that's what bill barr is going to have to answer for today. both in the four-page summary and later, remember that press conference that bill barr gave before releasing the full report, it wasn't just about getting the report out there, he very clearly was making an argument in the president's favor as to the findings of that report and what bob mueller is saying, that does not accurately reflect what we put together in this report. you have the right to make the decision on whether to prosecute, but you did not tell the american people in the correct way, in the most full some way what our findings were and barr has to answer that and i think ultimately bob mueller has to be willing to speak in public and answer questions about this. i wonder if bill barr didn't see this coming. he's been around a few decades. he knew that bill barr is sitting in a political position appointed about i this

what did you think of the significance of the way that bob mueller, being vintage mueller came out and basically said, my report speaks for itself, i'm not going beyond it today. i wouldn't go beyond it if i have to go to congress and take my report for what it says. >> i think there were two takeaways for me. one was over to you madam speaker. he's laid out the evidence. he talked about the report. he said that our system based on the olc guidance and the precedence that comes from that, we have other remedies, and the other remedy is the constitutional provisions about impeachment and possible conviction. that seemed self-evident to me. the other i thought it was striking that he said if we believe the president had not committed a crime, we would have said so. there's something slightly orwellen about that. it was pretty clear to me, listening both with the historical hat on and just also as a citizen, this is a serious man. he believes he and his team found serious matters to adjudicate, but he did not feel he had the capacity, the constitutional capacity to adjudicate those. and i

and this was obviously an effort by mueller to document mueller's concerns. i think we all know that bob mueller has been a professional, he doesn't do things lightly. he doesn't contract out his work. and so for the attorney general to call his letter "snitty" just reveals the fact that the attorney general really never gave the mueller report its full due and decided to go on a spin mission. that was what that four-page memo was all about. and mueller called him on it. and now you've got the attorney general misleading congress and the public on both counts. both in the four-page memo and mueller's letter. >> so the attorney general today defended his release of the four-page letter, his four-page memo. he compared it to offering a verdict in a trial, just the bottom line, basically, not guilty of this, not guilty of that. and figured that since he was going to release almost the entire mueller report, the rest of the information would come out eventually. what did you make of that description? >> i thought he did a lousy job justifying why he, the attorney

mueller rarely speaks publicly. and has a reputation of choosing his words very carefully and he chose to close his ten-minute statement with these words of warning on russia. >> and i will close by reiterating the central allegation of our indictments, that there were multiple systematic efforts to interfere in our election. and that allegation deserves the attention of every american. >> cnn chief national security correspondent and anchor jim sciutto whose book out now called "the shadow war" takes us inside of the efforts to defeat america. you wrote the book about this and to think that is how mr. mueller chose to end his whole moment today -- >> every american should pay attention. and that is a message to us, frankly also a message to our leaders among them the president, right, who has not been at the forefront of this issue to say the least. because for many years he has denied that this election interference happened or that it was significant enough to matter, right? and it has not made it a priority if t

that scathing rebuke in mueller's letter to barr after mueller did that four-page summary where mueller says, you mischaracterized our report. it failed to capture the nature, contents and substance -- >> will you continue to work with the attorney general going forward if you think he should resign? >> i absolutely have an obligation to work with him. i will continue to work with him and the department of justice. i'm a member of the judiciary committee. i believe in the rule of law not the rule of trump. we'll work together >> i don't think you will get a chance to question robert mueller yourself because lindsey graham said he's done with this. i expect robert mueller to testify before congress. likely the house side, probably the house judiciary committee. we are not sure yet. what i want to know is if you could ask robert mueller one or two questions, what would they be? >> i am still hopeful that we will have the opportunity in the senate judiciary committee to question robert mueller. i still have hope and faith in my republican colleagues that they'll want to do the right thing

do you expect to be bringing in mueller and his team or mueller alone? >> well, mueller alone initially, and then mcgahn, and presumably others from his team, and other witnesses. there are a lot of questions we have to ask a lot of people and find out what's really going on, and to elucidate for the american people what is really going on. the bottom line in this is not a fight between mueller and the trump administration or mueller and barr. the bottom line is does the american people have the right to information with which they can make decisions in governing this as a democratic country. if you can vote but you have no information, if the information is guarded by the administration and you don't know what the administration is doing, you don't know what crimes they're committing, you don't know anything, then the vote becomes very hollow. that's why this is such a crisis for our democracy, and we have to -- we have to prevail here. we have never had a president who instructed people to ignore all subpoenas. and when you ignore a subpoena, you're ig

mueller did that, his team did that. wouldn't that be what they wanted people to understand about their investigation? mueller reportedly even suggested some redactions, going on to say in his letter that the process of making redactions, quote, need not delay the release of the enclosed materials. release at this time would alleviate the misunderstandings that have arisen and would answer congressional and public questions about the nature and outcome of our investigation. and we all know that those introductions and summaries weren't released until the report itself was in spite of rumblings of dissatisfaction from mueller's team. so the four-page barr letter, the letter that claimed to summarize mueller's principal findings, the letter that said mueller had not found that team trump conspired with russia, the letter that said mueller had not reached a conclusion as to whether the president attempted to obstruct justice, mueller says it did not fully capture the context, nature and substance of this office's work and c

mueller's complaint to barr. what was he upset about in that four paige summary. >> he's saying the public doesn't you saunderstand our wo. that's what he says in the letter and in the follow-up phone call with the attorney general. remarkable he felt he had to write a letter about this. that memorializes the issue. the they are far apart on this. the attorney general and the special counsel and that is what the letter shows. >> so mueller's complaint is not about the volume 1 effectively of the mueller report which is on that question of conspiracy. >> correct. >> he could not establish a conspiracy between the trump campaign and the russian government. his complaint was the -- from attorney general barr about obstruction of justice. >> this is about the obstruction issue and mueller's work on obstruction. i've been told there was this no meaningful discussion or damms about the collusion, conspiracy question. the this is all about obstruction and mueller's feeling the public was not understanding what they foun

mueller fired. trump also denied this and today barr seemed to as well. >> the president never directed him to fire and there is a distinction between saying to someone, go fire him, go fire mueller, and saying, have him removed based on conflict. >> in his report, mueller also detailed evidence indicating trump attempted to get rid of the special counsel with the corrupt intent of curtailing the investigation. trump has suggested he could have fired mueller because he believed the investigation to be a witch hunt, which you may have heard. here is what barr told the committee today on that front. >> if the president is being falsely accused and he felt that this investigation was unfair, propelled by his political opponents, and was hampering his ability to govern, that is not a corrupt motive for replacing an independent counsel. >> barr's appearance came just hours after we learned that mueller had, in fact, written the a.g. in late march, suggesting that barr misled the public with his four-page

so bob mueller's job was over. i thought it was inappropriate, candidly, for bob mueller to write a letter to bill barr because bill barr has total discretion as to what -- and you know that is a fact. he has -- let me finish. he has total discretion as to whether to print a summary, to send out pieces of the report, or to send out the entire report. and for him to do that, to me, was grandstanding because he knew this letter would eventually -- >> okay. let him answer. >> this idea that somehow bill barr is doing us a favor by acting in the matter of transparency on a matter of fundamental importance -- >> it's not required by the law. >> lots of things aren't required by the law. but a matter of importance to the american people. it was very important that -- the whole point of mueller's mandate here was ensuring public faith in our investigative system. that's what he was trying to do. that was undermined by a number of the steps the attorney general took. >> okay. let me bring in garrett because if only we had

robert mueller today? >> we, look, i think if mr. deniro said that a few weeks ago, i think that that sentiment makes sense but i think today we did hear from robert mueller and heard from him in a very powerful way. i think the most important thing we heard from him, remember he's deing with a several hundred page report and what does he choose to pluck out in his press conference today? he plucks out the fact he said look, if i could clear the president, i would. i have the raw legal power to do so. if i thought he was innocent. he pointedly does not do that. and then second, he said, i couldn't indict him. i didn't have the power to. and so because of that, he says it would be unfair to do what mr. deniro says which is to label mr. trump a criminal when mr. trump has no way to defend himself and look, i understand it's frustrating for a lot of people. and it's frustrating for for me, too. at least i can understand what mr. mueller is saying here and at the same time, i think what the ultimate implicatio

mueller. then finally we need mr. mueller to testify himself. as you know, the house intelligence committee has also requested his testimony. the fact that the justice department may be standing in the way of his testifying is yet another act of obstruction, in my opinion, and now we need to vindicate our rights to investigate, whether that means going to court or not. >> let's listen to more of william barr's testimony with charl charlie krist. >> did you contemplate having the special counsel's office help you with the preparation of your march 24th letter or did you? >> we offered to have bob review it before putting it out and he declined. >> i didn't ask you about reviewing. i asked if you thought about having them help prepare the march 24th letter. i mean, they did the report, after all. >> no, i didn't think about it. >> why not? >> because it was my letter. >> congressman khanna, when you watch these, these answers take on new meaning. >> well, and he's trying to be so slippery. >> mmm-hmm. >> and trying to obfuscate. but it's not going

mueller report -- >> mueller or barr? >> barr doing that to the report, as i explained and all of these other extraordinary and unprecedented efforts to stop congress from doing its oversight -- >> julian, here's what i don't understand. >> that's politically -- >> you said propagandizing, isn't propaganda a lie, not the truth in some ways? maybe you could be lying but it doesn't rise to the level of perjury. >> the accusation was that he lied yesterday when they asked him about whether he knew that mueller was complaining and mueller's staff was complaining about omissions in his four-page summary. and he kind of danced around that but i don't think it reached perjury grounds. >> okay. >> i think whatever term you want to use, mischaracterize, misrepresented, he clearly left the public with a misimpression, and for what mueller had concluded on obstruction for an attorney general to do something on that as propitious and important as max boot was just talking to, alluding to very eloquently is just outrageous coming from

i think that's what's creating this rift between barr and mueller. >> dana: why do you think mueller decided to speak today? this is the first time you've heard him speak in two years. i understand the office is wrapping up. as we just established, he didn't say anything that wasn't already in the report. do you think he was trying to send a signal to congress? >> i mean clearly there was a signal in there saying constitution has a remedy for this. he didn't say the word impeachment but said, congress, it's your job. if i speculate, that's just what this is. there's probably internal strife between the 17 prosecutors that are working for him on how the report is being absorbed in the public. prosecutor's job is do you have it? go with the case. do you not have it? there is no case. this was no go, but here's what's wrong with all of this. it's sort of jim comey-esque in laying out all of this stuff and tossing it up to congress as opposed to making a declarative statement. >> dana: here's another question for you, which is if the olc opinion, which has been in place for a long time,

mueller sandwich. like any sandwich, the title comes from the meat, in this case mueller. but team trump figured out a way to blunt what they may view as the bitter taste of mueller's meaty evidence by sandwiching him with a lot of barr. if you remember, there was a lot of barr before any of the mueller report came out. there was more barr during that unusual press conference to upstage the report on the very day it came out. and now that bob mueller has spoken for what he says he hopes to be the last time, well, guess what, mueller sandwich. barr out today again muddying mueller's careful explanation of how the rules prohibit indicting a president because, true to the sandwich, barr is making his own news and he is the attorney general, so what he says matters. he is claiming that mueller could have reached a decision on that very indictment point. >> i personally felt he could have reached a decision. >> in your view he could have reached a conclusion. >> right. he could have reached a conclusion. th

mueller's report then mueller will have a concern about it and put it in a letter. that really surprised me. it indicated that maybe barr thinks that everybody is just sort of overreacting about this and it's not that big a deal. it's a massive deal. it's an investigation of the president. that's why there were two letters sent to memorial ieize create a record. >> you left out one thing and just one second because i thought it might be germane to bloomenthal's question. they were on speaker. a lot of us hate a phone call on speaker and you'll say if it's something sensitive, pick up. there's nothing like being bob mueller knowing you're broadcasting to a -- you think you've been told the list of people in the ag's office. a space you know very well. you're broadcasting to a room full of big ears. >> yeah. the thing that strikes me about this exchange and a few others is that there was an ease with which barr lied. i talked to two former mueller associates who worked alongside him during the time that he was fbi director after 9/11. they said the idea that mueller w

mueller? >> well, was barr's account of his conversations and back and forth with mueller after barr sent his conclusions, his baseline conclusions to congress, after the report was finished, are barr's characterizations of his interactions with mueller accurate? he says that he had a phone conversation which mueller complained about the media coverage. now folks that know bob mueller know that he's not really someone to complain about the media coverage. so was mueller complaining directly about how barr had characterized his findings and not included them in his first letter to congress or was he really just complaining about the media coverage? because that was the way that barr tried to portray it yesterday. and there's been, you know, obviously conflicting accounts that, you know, have, you know, come out about these sort of interactions and how upset the mueller team was about how barr portrayed their work and it would be very interesting to hear directly from mueller about that and abou

supportive of mueller. he could have told us months ago that he wasn't in a position to indict and that would have been clarified. the house of representatives, the politicians over there, were able to say for months now, especially last october, november, it's in the hands of robert mueller and his people, we can wait for that. no, no, the constitution allows the executive branch to do the investigating. the prosecution team, that's their job, not mueller. they were asking for him to be the prosecutor. and i think that was the big mistake everybody made here waiting on him to do the job that the house of representatives has to decide to do or not. now they're going to have to do it. i don't think he will testify because he doesn't wait to face the senate judiciary committee and what they'll do to him. they're going to take him to the roots to this thing and try to destroy his credibility. i watched jerry nadler. he's a good guy. i look at him sweating this thing out. this is really tough. this is a tough o

from robert mueller himself. the three takeaways from mueller today, one if his 22-month-long investigation had found that the president had not committed crimes, mueller would have said so. two from the outset mueller was restrained from recommending criminal charges against trump by a doj policy that holds you cannot indict a sitting president. and three, the special counsel clearly intended for congress, not attorney general william barr, to make the decision on what to do with the findings of his probe, particularly around the incidents of obstruction detailed in the second volume. here is some of that extraordinary statement from robert mueller today. >> if we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so. we did not, however, make a determination as to whether the president did commit a crime. the introduction to volume two of our report explains that decision. it explains that under long-standing department policy a president cannot be charged with a federal crime

mueller's reaction? wednesday morning he said he got this letter and he had not produced the letter, they would be an outcry, that would've been a true television moment. like alexander butterfield in the 1970's saying we have to check the white house tapes. leaked thisiam barr letter because they wanted to be on record. have one did not just publication but the wall street journal, new york times, washington post with the story. guest: the hallmark of the official government leak. guest: there is no doubt about that. host: final thoughts. i am watching for robert mueller to testify on the hell. -- hill. there is a lot of confusion and some doubt about what happened. and how the attorney general and special counsel are working to or not working together, that has to be clarified and hopefully mended with robert mueller coming to testify publicly about what he found and what he did not find, how he interacted with the attorney general. guest: absolutely, robert mueller's testimony will be riveting televis

mueller didn't stop there. according to "the post," quote, the letter from mueller to barr made a key request that barr release the 400-page report introduction and executive summaries and made some suggested redactions for doing so. "the washington post" continues here, a day after the letter was sent, barr and mueller spoke by phone for about 15 minutes. mueller said he was concerned that news coverage of the obstruction investigation was misguided and creating public misunderstanding. when barr pressed him whether he thought barr's letter was enaccurate, mueller said he did not. mueller's main worry was that the public was not getting an accurate understanding of the obstruction investigation. "a rift between the men appeared to develop in the intervening months as the special counsel wrapped up his inquiry. mr. barr and senior justice department officials were frustrated with how mr. mueller ended his investigation and crafted his report. they expressed irritation that mr. mueller fell short of his assignme

despite the fact that mueller did know what mueller thought because mueller sent a letter two weeks earlier expressing concern about how the attorney general handled that four-page memo. in testimony yesterday barr was largely seen as evading when trying to explain that issue. back now with our guests. it is pretty incredible that the house speaker is accusing the chief law enforcement officer in the nation of a crime. >> it is unusual, but i think barr's statement is very hard to defend. you know, both congressman crist and senator van hollen asked him in pretty direct ways were you aware that mueller and his team were upset about how you characterized the mueller report, and he said no, he didn't know that they were upset. and we now know that there were two letters and a phone call which are extremely dramatic events. event barr didn't claim that he forgot about these incidents. he claimed that the questions were not phrased in such a way to call for a answer of "of course i'm aware." but boy, i think he is not going to be prosecuted because the justice department is not going to move ag

not mueller's. >> bob mueller is the equivalent of a u.s. attorney. his work concluded when he sent his report to the attorney general. at that point, it was my baby. >> baby. it is now bill versus barr. it is extraordinary. the former colleagues, barr's first tenure as attorney general in the 1990s overlapped with mueller's tenure as assistant attorney general for the criminal division. now he could be playing with fire, mueller earned a purple heart in vietnam and he says the four-page letter caused public confusion. today barr took every opportunity to throw shade at robert mueller. >> a career prosecutor rebuking the attorney general of the united states, memorializing in writing, right? i know of no other instance of that happening. do you? >> i don't consider bob at this staining a career prosecutor. >> the letter is a bit snitty and i think it was probably written by one of his staff people. >> he doesn't consider him a hi career prosecutor. joyce vance from alabama and number from the "new york times." jerry nadler saying they are in talks for

and now he's lost mueller. whatever play he thought he had, he's lost every aspect of. >> i appreciate all of you joining us. we've got lot more to come on the breaking news. jiel yen castro calling for the president to face impeachment. ♪ ♪ applebee's bigger, bolder grill combos. now that's eatin good in the neighborhood. when i had my brother take me places, it was always like, we had to get there early so i could smoke a cigarette before we go inside. we always had to stop for cigarettes... it's true... i decided i needed to find an alternative... so i started looking and then juul came up. i did both for a while. and eventually i just switched over, it's very quick. i remember recently you asking me like did you want to smoke before we go in? and i was like no, i don't need to. menew infallible full weards concealer by l'oreal. with an extra-large applicator and full-coverage formula. it shapes, covers, and contours. so much more than concealer. in 25 shades. new infallible full wear concealer we're fin

robert mueller did 400 pages and laid it all out. the attorney general made his decision based on mueller's information, everybody eats forgetting that. the entire decision was based on mueller's report and the information he laid out. he couldn't make a determination , so it goes to the next step in the process, and they confirmed her was no obstruction. -- there was no obstruction. reporter: was mueller's statement today fair? press sec. sanders: mueller's statement -- whatter: you just laid out this administration has been doing to prevent russian interference at the core of this whole thing in the first place. reporter: why haven't we heard any of that from president trump himself? press sec. sanders: he literally had his entire team that is working on this process. he instructed our team to go out and layout what we are doing to protect from not just russian interference, but any interference from any government or otherwise. he said it a number of times. there was interference and that we are taking steps from it happening agai

mueller read his statement. you see right now it's a wait and see approach inside the white house how congress is going to proceed. giuliani claimed he doesn't think democrats will move forward any time soon and will continue to fight the document request and witness request from capitol hill. >> john, how bad a day was this for donald trump in your view? >> not a great day. not a disastrous day, i don't think. i do think that in a couple of ways it's problematic. trump may be true that trump is trying to bait house democrats into impeaching him. he may think that's good politics for hymn and democrats that think that's true. >> victim hood. >> he can play the card because if he got impeached in the house, he wouldn't get convicted in the senate. i think it's an incredibly risky game to play. i don't see how being impeached, bill clinton came through it. we know that was true. donald trump is not bill clinton. it's -- you know, you open that door you walk down the ally into impeachment land, you don't know what

you said this about mueller. i dare robert mueller to testify.fo i do, too. why did he hire that team, when did he know there is noe collusion, why did he ignore the dirty russian dossier?th i have a lot of questions for him. >> i watched him yesterday for nine minutes. i saw a man read -- he didn't give a statement, he read a statement haltingly with ain little stumbling. >> sean: lot ofst stumbling. >> ran out without answering questions, the press just live for that. i member they didn't let me go without answering questions and i've never been afraid to answer questions because i'm not deceiving them and i'm not afraid of you because i'm not deceiving them. i met with that guy once. once. >> sean: that's it. >> every time i had a problem, somebody else met him.ry once, we had a crisis and we took him to task in the attorney general's office, the deputy attorney general's office, and i blasted him. he didn't show up. i saw him a year and a half ago. one and only time. i called him "the wizard of oz." we would say, you are doing this, you are doing that. it

so the question is, why did mueller speak today? why did mueller speak today? i will tell you why i think he spoke today, because the democrats were unhappy with the report. so they wanted mueller to push the edge of the envelope on collusion, which today he tried to do. ethey wanted him to be more emphatic about the issue of obstruction, where he contradicts the attorney general, the deputy attorney general, which he did today, they have the narrative that they want, and that is why nadler does not want to call him to testify. they have their narrative. let me ask you a question. why doesn't mueller want to testify? reason is simple. there is thousand and one questions to ask this man. who he hired them, why they hired him, the hillary clinton, the dossier comes the real russians. here's a man today who said that he is not going to pass judgment -- i wrote this down -- on the russians who were indicted for their guilt or innocence, but he passes judgment on the president of the united states? his guilt and innocence? it is such a huge abomination. i think this

don mcgahn went on the testify to robert mueller and robert mueller's investigators for dozens of hours. he gave them untold numbers of documents. his top deputies' notes became the libbretto for the whole drama of the mueller report. mcgahn himself was cited more than 150 times in the redacted version of the mueller report that we've been able to see. and now most legal observers believe that there is no way that trump could try now to block don mcgahn from testifying to congress, or even conceivably testifying to a court what he knows from his time in the white house's counsel's office and what he saw working with president trump for nearly two years. most legal observers say the president couldn't try to stop any further testimony from mcgahn because the white house already let him testify about all that stuff to mueller. that means they effectively conceded in that moment that what don mcgahn knew, what don mcgahn had access to because of his white house job, that stuff is not covered by any form of privilege. had it been covered by privilege, he wouldn't have been able to talk to r

mueller. and i can't predict what the american people are going to do and how they're going to process the information. we have a polarized country and so far everything having to do with the mueller report has fit into that pattern of polarization, whether this is going to figure in the same way who knows, but what is clear is that in terms of what the facts a are, that the special prosecutor has taken the extraordinary step saying that the attorney general has misrepresented the nature and context of the most important investigation, federal investigation of the last 40, 45 years. and that is going to stick as part of the national record and presumably americans are going to debate it in a serious way. >> john, i mean, the judiciary committee chairman in the house, jerry nadler obviously democrat, tweeted in light of this reporting mueller must be allowed to testify. do you think that's actually going to happen? do you think congress will get to see the letter? can mueller be stopped from te

mueller two weeks before? >> well, as i said, i talked directly to bob mueller about his letter to me and specifically asked him what exactly are your concerns? are you saying that the march 24th letter was misleading or inaccurate or what? he indicated that it was not, he was not saying that, and that what he was concerned about -- >> that wasn't my question. >> i'm getting to the question which is the question from crist was reports have emerged recently, press reports, that members of the special counsel's team are frustrated at some level with the limited information included in your march 24th letter, in that they don't adequately or accurately portray the report's findings. i don't know what members he's talking about. and i certainly am not aware of any challenge to the accuracy of the findings. >> mr. barr, you seem to have learned the filibuster rules even better than senators do. my question was, why did you say you were not aware of concerns when weeks before your testimony, mr. mueller had expresse

mueller says the opposite. mueller says the constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing, that would be congress and that's where we are this morning. that's a much more clear example of where mueller is splitting from barr. >> no doubt about it. he thinks barr made the wrong call by barr and rosenstein coming in on top of him and saying we're clearing the president of obstruction here. too, mueller clearly believes -- he put ten episodes of evidence of that forward for congress to adjudicate that. that's where presidents are held to account. so that's a clear difference. john, you had mentioned the part of the tweet where the president said for the first time that russia helped him get elected. >> he is just talking about it now. >> he heard john. >> we can't also forget -- you gave a reference to this, but this line in here where the president says no -- mueller didn't find obstruction, either. i mean, that's just flat out false. that is

robert mueller told us why. i want to preserve it because there will be a day when donald trump is no longer president and he also makes reference to not wanting to preempt congress from fulfilling their constitutional duty to impeach. he does not want to prejudge the evidence. he collects it and hands it off to those to make the decision later. >> the house judiciary committee and jerry nadler from new york is trying to work around barr. he didn't even though up for the hearings and not going to give them the un redacted report. the special counsel to appear before the house judiciary. first to barbara. can a president pull robert mueller back into his earlier position as special counsel or can barr say you will not testify? i was amazed by barr's comments. this is my baby. this whole report is my baby. does he control mueller as well as the baby? >> i don't know if robert mueller is still working for the special counsel or the government. it does make a difference. he can stop him from foitestify if he does. i

back to the mueller report. in early 2018 the press reported that the president had directed mcgann to have the special counsel removed in june, 2017, and that mcgann had threatened to resign rather than carry out the order. the president reacted to the news stories by directing white house officials to tell mcgann to dispute the story and to create a record stating that he had not been ordered to have the special counsel removed. mcgann told those officials that the media reports were accurate in stating that the president had directed mcgann to have the special counsel removed. the president then met with mcgann in the oval office and again pressured him to deny the reports. that's the end of that section. now, the president also tried to influence witnesses, like michael flynn and paul manafort while they cooperated with the special counsel. back to the mueller report. quote, with regard to flynn, the president sent private and public messages to flynn encouraging him to stay strong and conveying that the pre

mueller and mr. barr. mr. barf course is the attorney general and how do you summarize in four pages a nearly 500 page report. a couple of points. at the time the summarization taking place bill barr, we know that, from reporting and hits testimony, gave him an opportunity to read the letter. mueller declined. >> that's true. mr. mueller had ordered him four versions written by his own time which barr refused to use. >> this is the report of the attorney general to decide what summary to provide. the executive summaries mr. mueller put forward are going to all be released. this is what infewer i don't remember rates me. morality aside, law inside, to release a misleading summary knowing full one they can't release a full report. >> can i get your point? >> why are we obsessing over 24. >> you have a point. >> he took weeks. >> 3% of the american public have read it. maybe you would put it out because you knew no one would ever read t. if you put out something. >> you sell american public short. >> yes, you sur

confusion about what mueller found and what mueller didn't find. from mule ir's perspective, this was an actual to set the record straight. the statement yesterday also coincided with mueller's resignation from public service. i think from his perspective, the timing is right,right, the circumstances are right for him to come out, to say in his own words what he found, what he didn't find, and then i think impliedly where the next step should be taken. >> the implication seemed pretty heavy-handed to some members of congress, including congressman ro khana who said yeah, he does think mueller was trying to kick the ball into congress' court. no? >> i agree with that. mueller made a reference to the constitutional remedy for presidential misconduct, namely impeachment. mueller also made clear on the obstruction point, he said as he said in the report and reiterated again that if he had evidence that would have cleared the president, he would have said so. but he said he couldn't reach that conclusion, that he has nothing more to say and really the b

mueller. he recalled a telephone conversation with the president in which the president asked what christie thought about the president firing, not removing, the special counsel. christie advised against doing so because there was no basis and the president would lose support from republicans in congress. i'm going to disagree with his testimony. here's mcgahn. again, from the footnote in the obstruction report. although mcgahn recalled receiving multiple calls from the president on the same day, he was not specific about the dates but he was confident he had two phone conversations with the president in which the president directed him to call the acting attorney general and have the special counsel removed. it's also the colorful reporting from this report where don mcgahn says to reince priebus the president asked me to do some crazy shit. i'm sorry to swell. but i think we've got an attorney general lying about what the mueller report around what was the most investigated flashpoints in th

remember the day after barr's summary of the mueller report was released, the president said mueller acted honorably. why wouldn't you want mueller to testify? to tell the world his conclusions? for weeks he's been cheering the report. >> there was no obstruction, and none whatsoever. it was a complete and total exoneration. the mueller report was great. it could not have been better. it said no obstruction, no collusion, it could not have been better. the finding was very, very strong, no collusion, no obstruction. the special counsel completed its report and found no collusion and no obstruction. i could have told you that two and a half years ago, total exoneration. beautiful conclusion. i haven't seen the report. but there was no collusion at all, there never was. they said no obstruction. and so there's no collusion, there's no obstruction. >> so why wouldn't you want him to say that out loud? what are you afraid of? maybe the fact that what you've been saying for weeks is not actually the truth. i know, shocker. in a statement today more than 500 former federal prosecutors said

jerry nadler said if he had to subpoena robert mueller he would subpoena robert mueller but jerry nadler after robert mueller's comments yesterday did not weigh in on that specifically. we do know that democrats want him to come still. the speaker nnandi pelosi said it yesterday and adam schiff, stenny heuer, the majority leader said it yesterday and the reason it was put into context by pelosi herself saying it would be useful. i was texting back and forth with a member of the house democratic caucus says the power of these images, even if it's just robert mueller reading verbatim from the report carries so much more weight in the democrat's views than just the 440-page report in and of itself. democrats want that. they want that testimony. they want it to be public. that's what they are going form. the question is how far are they willing to go to get there? we don't know the teens that just yet. brianna? >> phil mattingly on the hill. thank you so much. >> the host of "the lead kwnd "and "state of the union" is here to discuss. first of all, let's talk broadly about what we saw this m

mueller discussed whether or not mueller thought barr's letter was inaccurate and mueller said he did not think it was inaccurate. that's from the call. we don't have a record of that. in the letter and what is excerpted from the letter it doesn't make barr look complete, accurate, and honest in his answer before congress. >> when you're mueller up on the hill, let me give you two questions. number one, can you characterize precisely the differences between what you wrote and what mr. barr wrote that became public knowledge? let me give you the question i would ask, director mueller, a former marine, do not ask him political questions. do not try to game him. i want precise yes or no questions for a career prosecutor. here's the one i would have. director mueller, former u.s. attorney in san francisco, if you saw this kind of obstruction in a case that did not involve the oval office, would you have brought charges? yes or no? that's the kind of precision i want to see from the congress. i don't know if they'll do it. >> he can handle that pretty easily. it's on page one of part two o

mueller is a never trumper. he dislikes donald trump. >> that was president trump tearing in to robert mueller. saying he should have never gotten the job in the first place. michael cohen's person attorney saying he got it right. lanny davis writing this in an op-ed. he said "mueller was adhering to due process principles. he properly passed the bat on this to where it belongs to the u.s. congress." lisa boothe, to you first. when a prosecutor has one job, you indict or not. if you don't indict, you shut up. so how is this due process? >> it's not. great point. i think the irony is this lanny davis wrote a book called the unmaking of the president, 2016. how james comey caused hillary clinton the presidency. and what mueller did is the same thing that james comey did by flouting doj guidelines. if you're not going to charge someone and still naming them and shaming them, leaving the doubt to fuel the political firestorm. i find it ironic that he wrote a book about this but he has no problem with what robert mue