it only includes one page on russian interference without much detail and there's one page on obstruction and the page on russian let me also say one bigger thing you're about the in the report to the bar letter surely the bar the the muller report would include some kind of executive summary the starr report from the clinton era from from the whitewater and lewinsky investigation had short introductions or overviews like an executive summary it seems surprising to me here or at least questionable here that bar only quoted from mahler's report with three sentences so if bar was going to summarize muller's report why not offer more quotations from miller's a summary so the bigger point here is we really need to see more of we need to see mehlis report but to really know how these conclusions were reached discraft legal point for me please if i will

a felt that his report was being misrepresented and doesn't have legal recourse to it to say anything about it. well if we if we lined this up with how muller's handled the rest of this investigation he's been remarkably leak free and he was going to use this report he used a series of indictments known as it in a style known as speaking indictments to lay out a bigger picture of the story he was pretty forthcoming in those speaking indictments with the additional documents so he hasn't had that chance here because he chose not to bring any new indictments but i presume that he's going by the book and he's probably acknowledging that he'll have a chance in the future if subpoenaed and if the d.o.j. permits him to testify to congress he'll have that chance in the future so i would not expect him or his team to run a counter letter or come out to the media to dispute barres summaries i also am not suggesting the bar is misquoting muller's report i just am struck by how little bar

is using from miller's own language. and i guess that's one of the reasons one of the many reasons why democrats for example will want to see the full report and not just want to base their conclusions on the four page summary took us through what the legal steps are for that and whether you think it's inevitable that actually the full report will come out. well it's not inevitable so the next steps would be that the house demo the house because it's run by the democrats the house judiciary committee or other committees could subpoena the report and at that point only once the subpoena is issued does that trigger a series of legal steps because then the. d.o.j. and bill barr could resist and reject the call for the subpoena by saying that either they need more time to review it there's a national security concern or this executive privilege if once that path starts

then you're going to go to court and what is quite possible is that this might take as long if not longer then during the nixon era under watergate to resolve the subpoena for the white house tapes that took about four or five months so we could see a fight for four or five months in court for the house to be able to get the full report. she wrote jed sugarman i'm sure that you and i will be talking about this again very soon or certainly hope so jed sugarman professor of law fordham fordham university sir thank you so much for your time and expertise thank you it's. now a recap of our breaking news this hour the report from special counsel robert mueller has concluded that neither donald trump nor any of his officials knowingly conspired with russia during the two thousand and sixteen election campaign the report however declined to exonerate president trump of attempts to obstruct the course of justice this was an illegal takedown that.

and hopefully somebody is going to be looking at the other side george complete. exoneration no collusion no obstruction thank you very much. for let's cross the heidi show castro she's outside the white house for us and we just heard president trump making that statement just before he got on a plane on to air force one heading back to the white house from florida you know and surprisingly sounds completely vindicated he's been saying this since the start of the of the investigation of there was no collusion he called it an illegal takedown that failed and he also really focused on the issue of now having to look at the other side what did you make of his statement that he made just before boarding the plane. well none of the what he said was really a surprise it is a good day for donald trump for the white house on this conclusion that he did not conclude with russia and of course that is the point the president is emphasizing

and his reelection campaign just released a statement further supporting that and read a little bit of it it says today marks the day that president trump has been completely and fully vindicated by special counsel robert muller exposing the russia collusion conspiracy theory for the sham that it always was and catching democrats in an elaborate web of lies and deceit so again trump his reelection campaign his spokes person have all been doing this and have all been communicating the same message with these forceful words that the president in their words has been completely exonerated however that ignores the fact that within this report from miller that was summarized by web it states in black and white that while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime it also does not exonerate him so what we have now with is very confusing

read that are completely in contrast with each other of the same words in this report and it really shouldn't be a surprise given the partisanship that's been dominating washington and what this allows is democrats in congress who have been champing at the bit to have some sort of. true evidence to further their investigations of trump gives them that little bit of leeway to do so and certainly i'm sure they will explore this question of obstruction of justice which although the tourney general said he is not going to be indicting the president on the person who investigated or the special counsel said that he was unable to make a conclusion and it is very important to make that distinction that. on this question of structure of justice robert mueller who spent twenty two months combing through this evidence who had the great investment of faith from the american

public and political to close on both sides of the aisle believing that he would do an impartial and professional job he said he could not make a conclusion about whether or not the president struck to justice and to take that he passed the buck in a sense down to the attorney general who over the last the course of just two days since receiving this report from muller determined that there would be no further charges filed against on obstruction of justice but william barr is not the one that had this investment of trust from the american public william barr is an appointee of donald trump who is a recent appointee and who is thinking has already been questioned by democrats and also pointed out that democrats in a sense may have anticipated this scenario in fact the chairman of the house judiciary committee who would be the person to initiate any impeachment proceedings were that to happen he has pointed out that while mohler is investigation looks at

criminal questions the role of congress in the words of jerry nadler of the chairman is much wider and more broad than that congress is in charge of investigating whether there was abuse of power and abuse of power is not directly alluded to in this summary of miller's report and that is still an open question barbara. with the latest from the white house heidi thank you. well muller's investigation. may have i guess not found a smoking gun when it comes to president trump but he didn't stay or six members of trump's inner circle and twenty eight foreign nationals let's take a look at some of the key players the president's former personal lawyer michael cohen pleaded guilty to lying to congress and has been sentenced of a hush money payments that he made on trump's behalf former campaign chair paul man of ford has been convicted of financial fraud he also shared private polling data

with a man connected to russian intelligence trumps first national security advisor michael flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the f.b.i. about his conversations with the russian ambassador during the presidential transition and times close friend roger stone has been indicted for lying about his efforts to contact weiqi he allegedly wanted to know how hacked democratic emails could help terms campaign twelve russian intelligence officers were also charged over that hacking which targeted the chairman of hillary clinton's presidential campaign and thirteen russians were charged with manipulating social media to help trump's election campaign joining me now from washington d.c. is jeff hauser from the center for economic policy and research and we were just listening to that list of the people that have been indicted i mean just some of them in total i think it's thirty four during the investigation so basically is the conclusion that the spy all these people being indicted there was no direct link to

trump himself. i mean the conclusion is that there is nothing that is a provable conspiracy that there was no agreement tacit or express to cheat in the election there may have been four taishan xin fact even bar summary indicates that there were forty sions that the russians offered assistance on multiple occasions to members of the trump team obviously at no point in the trump team alert hillary clinton or the f.b.i. that a foreign country was contemplating assisting them in the election which you might think an innocent political campaign would do in fact al gore was sent george w. bush's briefing book for a debate in two thousand and their entire campaign decided to make sure it was in a hermetically sealed box and were the federal government in the bush campaign and mediately because that's what you know people with basic integrity do so that doesn't really vindicate trump almost at all but obviously it's better for trump to

not have there be indictments on conspiracy than for their you know it's better than they could have been for trump but i don't think it's a great story for trump that there's a lot of republicans i mean you hinted there at trump's lack of integrity there's a lot of republicans that perhaps of felt quite uneasy about the president the way he communicates some of the things he says the language that he uses and of course a lot of them were worried about the results of this report do you think that now we're going to see a republican party that's more compact behind the president even more than it has been. it's a very interesting question the first sort of crack in republican support we saw a couple weeks ago with a large number of senate republicans joining a unified democratic party in the u.s. senate to oppose trump's declaration of a national emergency that was encouraging i think that it is possible that we'll

see the republic that will crack in support between senate republicans and tromp be filled in by the fact that there are no additional indictments coming down alleging a conspiracy that all being said i think that gerry natwar in the house democrats are going to be avidly pursuing new information that information could be quite damaging to the president that information could indicate close ties between trump and russia they have nothing to do with election interference no that bars report is soley on the topic of trump and russia and the election there's nothing about trump russia and a trump tower in moscow there is nothing about trump russia and potential money laundering in the past or recently so there are a lot of questions that are left unanswered by this extremely enigmatic and well crafted very war really three and a half page letter and i think that the predictions by the republican party that their guy is now a free and clear non-criminal president is far from proven

a chore but at the same time if there had been proof then certainly robert mueller would have found that i'm not saying that the president is completely exonerated but i think this the support you know the theory that all to me that he didn't know or certainly it wasn't to a grand scale. it proves that there was not proof of an agreement i agree that if more had proof their agreement this letter would have been written differently and i trust that muller did the best job possible. your way into a conspiracy often in the case of prosecutors is for a cooperating witness and paul metaphor chose to not cooperate with this investigation and i think that failure the fifth they put enormous pressure on paul metaphor he's nearly seventy he's going to spend the next seven years of his life in jail he has decided that is his best course of action which may or may not be

a rational decision but i think it's a very important decision and i think when man a fourth decided to not slip that kind of undermined the ability of mahler to prove that there was an agreement with criminal intent so paul metaphor is really the most valuable player of the republican party right now. jeff houser from the center of economic and policy research speaking to us from washington d.c. sir thank you and here in the studio with me is james boies political historian specializing in u.s. politics a lot of to of stuff to look into today i mean you know we've been talking about it for the past hour and a half or so from when it first broke what's your analysis of the situation now because it does seem we're getting two separate opposing narratives that both you know find substance in the report we are and i think to be honest we could have probably of forecasts that several hours before the report was pray say and released to their words by the attorney general very clearly the democrats are

seeing what they want to see any. concerns there about the idea of the president isn't exonerated and clearly the white house pushing back quite to exuberance suggesting that this is a complete examination of the president and that he's home scot free effectively i was taken with something the president said when he was addressing the nation and indeed the world from the steps of air force one before he took off from florida i thought his tone was was fascinating self pitying saying the president should have been put through this has been a vast think perhaps not so well is what i thought was fascinating was here is a man who's been a step in his view vindicated he could have thanks robert mueller he could have started the healing process and instead he's actually opening up a whole new can of worms he is now saying well now we got to go after the other side he said let it go after the democrats you know that means more chance of lock her up he's talked about the fact that a lot of people have suffered through this does this open up the way now for him to consider pardoning those people such as jefferson pointing out poor man and for

roger stone these people who have not played ball and you've argued he made it very very difficult for. her to make that connection if it's been demonstrated that he can't make obstruction of justice because people have not been playing ball and cooperating with his investigation could be people not be pardoned. we've seen what president trump has referred to people who have played ball is called them rats it enough people have said this is are all the hallmarks of a math field there's also but there's also other legal avenues by which some of these men could be prosecuted and indeed have been what is fascinating is that if you look at what's going on with. with the investigation for example love poor man of four there was a whole host of crimes are being held back and haven't been prosecuted yet at the non federal level just in case president trump does come around and try to pardon him and really just to confirm the president can't pardon kenny at nonfederal absolutely the president has the ability to pardon at the federal level but not at

the state level which is exactly why the threats coming from the southern district of new york are so dangerous to the president certainly to get romantic for to talk they sickening to cooperate indeed as well as other members of the entourage and of course as soon as you start putting people in front of a jury if they lie or a. vague with the truth they can be brought up on perjury charges and as we've seen many times in many trials very often it's a the obstruction of justice the attempt to subvert the truth which get you into more trouble than the original act itself i mean it i totally agree with what you're saying but you could see how to present this would seem even more of a witch hunt which not only plays well with his base pretty much support him no matter what but would also play well with a lot of republicans that perhaps have been waiting for the more investigation and now kind of feel that their president is exonerated well there's always been two avenues here there has been the political threat to the president which came mainly from the moeller investigation but there's also the legal threat and the legal

threat doesn't go away at all quite frankly indeed the legal threat wouldn't go away if president were no longer presidents at the moment the d.o.j. guidelines say that no sitting president can be indicted for example well that says nothing about a former president of course it was a situation richard nixon found himself in after he resigned the op. before he was pardoned by president ford so the great question here is well if there's no ability to exonerate the president for example on obstruction of justice does this summit which could potentially carry on throughout donald trump presidency in one form or another at a lower legal level and awaits donald trump as private citizen when he leaves office potentially james boies as always thank you and let's just remind you of our breaking news here on al-jazeera a summary of robert rollers report has concluded that neither donald trump there any of his officials knowingly conspired with russia during the two thousand and sixteen election campaign but the special counsel's report that claimed to

exonerate president trump of attempts to obstruct the course of justice in the last hour the us president himself gave this reaction. this was an illegal takedown that failed and hopefully somebody is going to be looking at the other side george complete. exoneration no collusion no obstruction thank you very much thank you it's got more from practical aim in washington d.c. patty i guess if we were expecting a conciliatory tone and i don't know why i would have been but in case if we had been from the president we kind of didn't get it there he called it an illegal takedown that failed and really focused on now looking at the other side as he put it so what kind of reaction to both the military port and his statement from members of congress. that's right barbara i'm sure most people are expecting to see president donald trump come out and say hey look we looked at this let's all get

along now let's move on that's not president trump style he came out and said i've been vindicated this is an investigation that he has called a winch a witch hunt a hoax and a legal operation for pretty much every single day since it started so he is claiming to be completely vindicated that when it comes to the idea and the question that robert mueller was looking into as to whether there was collusion between the term campaign in russia the special counsel or at least according to the attorney general the special counsel says it didn't find any evidence of that when it comes to the obstruction of justice the president's not telling the truth again he has not been vindicated robert mueller said that he couldn't he basically wasn't going to decide if the president should be charged with a crime the attorney general and rosenstein his deputy they say that over the last two days they looked at it and there was not enough evidence to charge the president but there's this really interesting little line in there and says it does not conclude that the president committed a crime it also does not exonerate him so we've already seen members of congress

specially the democrats who are in charge of the committees and who have subpoena power say what does that mean what does that evidence why isn't he exonerated and does that rise to a different level because we're talk about two different basically bars prosecutors have to make and the politicians have to make prosecutors especially at the federal level if you're going to go after anyone if you're new after me or much less the president states they want to be able to have basically eighty five to ninety percent belief that they are going to get a conviction they don't file charges unless they feel like they've got it nailed down the political implications that that is a much lower bar especially because the democrats are going to want to see what muller has and by all accounts by this letter it's an enormous amount of information twenty eight hundred subpoenas five hundred search warrants they've got phone records e-mails they've got five hundred. they've interviewed five hundred witnesses so now the question is what exactly did that line mean why can't the

president be exonerated of obstruction of justice the democrats are going to say we think the answer to that is in all of these documents we want to see them they were to do their best to get them and soon i'm focusing also what he said when he addressed to the press just before getting on the plane back to washington when he says look at the other side what exactly easy threatening there and where how could that evolve. this is it gets a little bit in the weeds and i don't think we've covered it very much just because there's no precedent for a pup for a u.s. president going after the opposition candidate that he that he basically won in the electoral college all of this goes back to the far right wing conspiracy and some of it that's gone from the fringes to the right wing media basically saying that hillary clinton committed crimes and that she needs to be investigated he is saying that this investigation was illegal from the beginning because it goes back to something called the steel dossier there was republican opposition hired

a firm to basically look into into trumpet his russia connections eventually that firm started working for the hillary clinton campaign there's no evidence that the campaign was given this dossier because you could assume that they would have actually used it to try and turn the election still they the president has tried to say well this person's married that person who works at this firm so therefore it's illegal it was a witch hunt and they shouldn't come after me and we should go after hillary clinton there's no evidence that the justice department is going to listen to the right wing politicians who want to see hillary clinton investigated again he's trying to say that the steel dossier has been discredited some aspects of the cia have been called into question but i think it's important to remember although it is very salacious at times it is also rather specific and the dust ca as it's known has not actually been completely discredited so he's trying to conflate the two i think that that's probably not where we need to go with this well if the miller

report was meant to end divisions in washington in the u.s. sure it's going to achieve that goal here in with the latest there from washington thank you. now in other news a pro-military party has unexpectedly taken the lead in thailand's first election since a military takeover nearly five years ago with almost ninety percent of votes counted preliminary results given the following package chad at the party more than seven point five million votes votes the pale thai party regarded as loyal to the ousted prime minister thaksin shinawatra is close behind on seven point one million while a new party appealing to young people its called future forward is on five point one million critics though say the gintas new electoral system gives the military a built in advantage the election is only for the lower house of parliament the

senate is entirely appointed by the military leadership the new government is also blige to follow a twenty year national strategy aimed at economic development that was pushed through parliament under the military's watch it's called hydra reports from bangkok. thailand an elected leader for the last five years voting early on election day. is looking to keep his job through the ballot box he became prime minister after the military coup in two thousand and fourteen he's the candidate of the military backed party. i hope everyone who was in the election today to exercise your rights everyone wants democracy therefore everyone should exercise their rights in the transparency the opposition party put thai linked to exiled former prime minister talks and has won every election since two thousand and one in early counting it's neck and neck with falling. and a new political party in this election a future forward which targeted young and first time voters is also enjoying

stronger than expected results. thailand's oldest political party the democrats which has had a strong base in bangkok suffer disappointing results its leader and former prime minister obviously it awaits resigned a few hours after the polls closed the military government had a big head start going into election day the constitution gives military leaders the power to appoint the two hundred fifty member senate voters elect the five hundred seat lower house the number needed to form a government is three hundred seventy six some see this election as a building process back to democracy after five years of military rule why i said this election is not just about choosing a candidate but it's also about really creating the foundation for democracy from my feeling. very difficult for me to shoot. my living entity i've seen almost the same i do people many people in thailand i see maybe i've also seen the fifty percent who did not make the decision the election commission says

sixty five percent of registered voters have made their way to the polls a practice to show transparency each ballot is read aloud before it's being recorded now this process is being replicated it more than ninety two thousand polling stations across thailand volatility after the election and it's very possible because the numbers you know the rules are stacked in the military governments favor but the numbers the electoral number stacked on the opposition's favor so we have some kind of some tension there some some deadlock and that deadlock could do more than frustrate many ties it could also make it difficult for the government to run the country it's got harder al-jazeera bangkok. let's talk about this in more detail with justin wintle who's a southeast asia historian thank you so much for joining us here on out there are so obviously not all the votes have been counted yet but it does seem that the most votes have gone to the polling a patch up the party which is pro-military party explain to us why it's

a surprise that they've done so well it's a surprise because for several reasons i think first of all you would expect people given the opportunity to vote against the military junta which has been impossible two thousand and fourteen would grab the chance but in a way that's not a surprise now come back to that it's a surprise because although it's not it's not an opinion poll sort of culture and the talk was that it wasn't going to do very well on that tax and shinawatra party put i was going to do well and that seems not to have happened the talk there is i'm tired of the conservatism i've been going out there for donkey's yes exactly how low but there's always a saying amongst the kind of traders i knew that always say it doesn't matter who holds the head of the cow as long as we get to milk it and that's an old chinese saying and that isn't an attitude and i'm not pro you general prayuth his knowledge civilian of course has actually been rather clean and compared to

a lot of. the he instigated the fourteenth military coup in thailand and a lot of the previous military taters were rather unclean and those procedures been rather good he's kept it steady he's kept it very tight been big problems about press freedom etc so it doesn't altogether surprise me that he's been able to magnet the conservative democrat because there are no allegations are there are of any kind of interfering significant or not not yet there will be of course because in thailand if you lose the new you start allocated but that doesn't mean to say that but there'd be no obvious significant. electra foods you know where i would expect that of of prayuth it's a do you expect to mean you know we've seen a few surprises while this new party appealing to young people doing a very beautiful five point one million votes so far so do you expect the situation

to sort of you know calm itself in thailand and have a solid governor yes it depends on this new new party future afford it it's called . the rather severe young guy who's not like much common front. is not quite known where he is how he's going to line up within the house there's been a suggestion that he he leans towards tax in the fact that he has got some of the secret a lot of those new young voters millions of them or is he going to is probably going to be able to do a deal with them to say to get the country running smoothly let's go into a coalition in the house we don't know about that yet ok all right well i guess you know first of all we have to get the official results and then see how the government is formed for the moment just in wintle southeast asia historian thank you so much thank you yes thank you. now polls have closed after a presidential election this time in the kumara silence which some opposition

parties are calling a power grab by any opposition candidates were banned from running in the indian ocean archipelago which has seen several coups since independence in one nine hundred seventy five president as early as so many is widely expected to win a second term after winning a referendum last year to extend the term limits but the opposition has reported irregularities a several polling stations and has called on the people to mobilize against the government. mollies armed forces chief and several top commanders have been sacked after more than one hundred thirty four people including women and children were killed in an attack on a village a local mayor says the gunmen dressed as traditional dons a hunter is raided aug sugru a village in full on the of the cattle herders in central mali they also attacked another funny village nearby ethnic violence has flared up in mali's the regions

particularly since groups like al qaida and eisel began operating there the prime minister announced the sacking of the military commanders after an emergency cabinet meeting. kenya's government has warned that up to a million people are at risk of starvation as a severe drought grips the northern half of the country rainfall has been more from low for months affecting crops and leaving people struggling to feed themselves catherine so reports now from can a county one of the worse the fact that in areas. it's weltering in the more i village as from this dry desolate land here to the sea food aid from the humanitarian agency wald vision is a drought in kenya and the government says up to a million people in thirteen of the country's forty seven counties need argent help hiders in the northwest region of two cana a some of the worst affected here they receive saugor rice bins and cooking oil to

last them at least a few weeks i'm a little but i want to go i'm very happy to see this food and make sure it lasts longer for my four children of father you go away from community centers the more desperate the situation gets as he can loria bond says how fourteen year old son long narrow died last month from my new tradition. we didn't have food so we just ate a world fruit my son grew weak by the day until he died that's once a well wishers brought us food. the only volunteer health worker in the village shows as well long hours buried the government denies others have also died of hunger and then i'll go with you was just bones he had never come to the health center for any treatment of any other ailment he had just been eating wild fruits and nothing else. wild food which grows near reavers is what you can as return to when they can't find other food at accounts has found is doing his best to feed.