to feed that story. so you're not going to discuss it, not going to give additional information on it, and hopefully the story dies down. >> i've got to go. thank you. it's the end of the broadcast. thank you both. i appreciate it. that's it for us tonight. thank you for watching. see you back here tomorrow night, everyone. and good evening, and what must they be thinking right now at the white house? barely eight day office since the firing of jim comey, and just days after the -- barely hours after financial markets took a nervous dive and republican lawmakers began cautiously demanding answers a development that could change everything, the naming of a special counsel to lead the investigation. his name is robert mueller, he will have sweeping powers and a broad mandate. if he wants to investigate jim comey, he can do that. if he wants to interview the president himself, he can, he

can ask for the president's tax returns. to say this has the potential to reshape the entire story does not overstate where we are tonight. details on all of it on the program starting with chief national security correspondent jim sciutto. what exactly does this mean? he's in charge now? this is the fbi investigation we're talking about? >> in one fell swoop, the deputy attorney general has removed politics from the russia investigation, at least from the attorney general's office, the enormous concern had been, first of all on the hill, politics getting in the way, partisanship, but from the justice department, led by jeff sessions, an appointee of the president, each though he's been recused, still involved. could they without bias pursue this investigation, so you bring somebody from outside who has enormous respect from both sides and broad powers, that takes away concern that republicans in private were starting to express. >> so the fbi agents who have been doing this investigation,

they now report to mueller? >> he's in charge. look at others who have fill ed in this kind of role in the past, they've been very consequential. you look at ken starr, that started under a different rule which has expired, the independent counsel rule, but started with white water and led to impeachment with lewinsky and obstruction of justice. when this has happened in the past, they have enormous powers and it often leads to very consequential events. >> the president himself could be called to be interviewed or testify? >> a special counsel can call whoever he wants right up to and including the president, can demand documents that he wants. i can confirm this because i spoke to smart people like jeff toobin but can also define the bounds of this investigation. this is officially by rosenstein's letter, an

investigation of russian interference into the u.s. election and other matters. it's up to mueller to decide the other matters, to include the firing of the fbi director. michael flynn, a meeting between the fbi director and the president in the white house. >> just to be clear, the fbi investigation that's been going on, that was under director comey, that continues and that is what mueller is overseeing? >> he has oversight over the entire probe as it were. you're not going to stop any activity in the fbi anymore, you've got a whole team there, and that's something you've heard from the acting fbi director, as they search for a new director, that they're continuing their work. i have spoke to people inside the bureau, but this is a very independent-minded mueller. one other thing i'll note. i have been talking to people around washington in reaction to this, yes, comey's out, if you

want to replace comey with somebody who's comey like, it's robert mueller. just a reminder to folks at home. these two were at arms in 2004, that led to that famous standoff at john ashcroft's bed. over domestic surveillance. they both threatened to resign over this, the two tremendous ties going back and similar reputations. >> so whoever the new fbi director is, will they report to mueller on the russian investigation? >> that's a good question. i'm not sure how the reporting goes. i'm sure toobin and dana bash will know. but it strikes me that the most important overseer of this is the special counsel. there's commitment there, but they don't have the power that a special counsel has. special counsel can indict. you can't get that from the senate intelligence committee.

>> huge development today. >> just two days ago, white house press secretary spicer says frankly there's no need for a special prosecutor. so what is their thinking tonight? jim acosta joins us now. so what's the late word from the white house? >> reporter: it's hard to imagine a worse 72 hours in president trump's life. and what you're seeing tonight, anderson, is a very different president trump, a very restrained president trump, he's not talking about so-called judges as he did after the travel ban. he's not threatening the former fbi director james comey as he did last week when he talked about tapes on twitter. consider this very restrained statement coming from the president of the united states tonight on the tapping of bob mueller as special prosecutor, it says as i have stated many times a thorough investigation will confirm what we already know, there was no collusion between my campaign and any foreign entity. i look forward to this matter concluding quickly. in the meantime, i will never stop fighting for the people and issues that matter most to the future of our country.

an incredible turn of events when you consider the last week. remember the white house put out a same that essentially laid some of the responsibility for the firing of comey on rod rosenstein and you see rod rosenstein tapping bob mueller to be the special prosecutor. something that no administration wants to see happen at fi stage, let alone 150 days into a presidency. >> did rosenstein give a heads up to attorney general sessions? >> from what we understand, there was not much of a heads up before this announcement came down, from what i understand from talking to administration officials, rod rosenstein signed this order naming bob mueller as special prosecutor. white house counsel don mcgahn was notified and very soon after that informed the president of the united states that there was a special prosecutor looking

into this, and this also happened with attorney general jeff sessions, that is almost more interesting than the white house not getting much advanced notice. but apparently after that order was signed between that time and when this was all announced to the world was less than an hour, according to administration officials. so that explains why the statement from the white house came fairly long after this rosrose ros rosenstein announcement bombshell. >> they only had less than an hour's heads up? >> they had less than an hour's heads up. president trump had no control over this situation. that was apparent tonight. >> jim acosta, thanks. now perspective from our panel. jeff toobin, let me start off with you.

how important is this? >> it's enormously important, but it's also i think a rare moment of unanimity and relief. because there is literally no more respected person in american law enforcement than bob mueller. when you look at his experience, 12 years as the fbi director. head of the criminal division in the justice department. u.s. attorney in boston. u.s. attorney in san francisco. appointed mostly by republicans, but occasionally by democrats, someone who has a reputation for integrity, for intelligence, for fairness. this is someone that both sides can trust. however it does mean that this is going to be a very serious and almost certainly lengthy investigation which cannot be good news to the white house. >> the president saying he's looking forward to this getting done quickly. it's not going to get done quickly. >> best of luck with that. >> dana you have new reporting on how this decision came about. >> what i'm told from a senior

republican source, rod rosenstein, and i think this is quite obvious based on the decision, and the bombshell we have tonight, the special prosecutor, was more and more agitated with the white house's actions and being put in the position that he had been put in, to the point where he was so angry, according to the source who was in contact with rosenstein, that he was ready to, quote, pack his bags, last week. with this decision, particularly on the heels of yesterday and the comey memo becoming public, and more importantly the content allegedly of the comey memo, this is basically the perspective of this republican source, throwing donald trump overboard. now we're talking about politically, and maybe even legally depending on how this goes. wanting to separate himself, obviously, from this and say, look, you guys are on your own and you're going to have this guy who has an impeccable reputation and impeccable experience and so forth obviously in a bipartisan way to do this investigation.

the one other thing that this source says and we'll see if this source comes to bear, that the next big move on capitol hill and the next big public event was supposed to be james comey going to capitol hill testifying publicly. >> is that going to happen? >> it doesn't look like it. it is possible. but this source says probably what bob mueller will do is shut it down, meaning he will take stock of everything, including james comey's memos, including what james comey has to say, and perhaps prevent him or ask him, his good friend james comey, not to go testify. he's a private citizen now so he can kind of do what he wants. evan perez, who obviously is very steeped in these things, also notes if that happens, if james comey says huh-uh, i'm not going to do it. that's another bad news sign for the white house which means that bob mueller is going to incorporate the comey memo and

the comey conversation with the president into his investigation. >> if i could just add one point to that. comey almost certainly, when receiving a request to testify in front of congress, will go to his friend bob mueller and say look, what do you want me to do? what can i do that will jeopardize your investigation the least? and mueller, starting from scratch is almost certainly going to say, hold on, don't do anything, let me get my hands around this problem and then maybe we'll see if it's okay to testify. >> gloria, what do you make of this development? >> well, i think that it gives a lot of people some breathing room on capitol hill, the democrats have been calling for a special counsel, now they have a special counsel whom they respect and who is respected on both sides of the aisle. i was talking to a senior

seener democratic aide who said to me, it's amazing to watch republicans on the special counsel go from we don't need one to he's amazing. so the republicans are applaud thing to a great degree because now they can go home to their constituents, they can say they are not ducking an investigation. they can say the special counsel is going to handle this and we need to get back to the people's business. i think mueller is an impeccable choice. i think people on the hill believe that he is. i think they are going to want to conduct their own investigations and jeffrey knows a lot about this because he was involved in iran contra and they're not going to be happy if comey doesn't want to testify, to be honest, because they're going to want to continue their investigation, the democrats, that is, and they're going to want to continue to go out on their own so you may see a bit of conflict there. >> in your views, is this a good move? >> first of all it's another self-inflicted wound, when the

president blamed rod rosenstein for the decision to fire comey and rod rosenstein responded the way dana said he did. he made himself unfireable and became the most powerful person in the justice department. i would say this is a mixed blessing. for the american public, it's not such a good thing, we probably won't learn anything from this investigation, it's going to be secret, we will never hear from a witness, in the end we will either hear no indictment or an indictment. to the extent that we want to know what really went on, an independent investigation commission of the kind of 9/11 or the challenger, would have been better for the american public. and i think president trump could have avoided a special prosecutor if he had pressed for an independent commission earlier. >> some democrats still want an independent commission. is that possible? >> absolutely.

as gloria was saying earlier, the fact that you have a congressional investigation and a law enforcement investigation at the same time can generate controversy and conflict. the most dramatic example being the issue of immunity. congressional committees want to get people to testify, so they want to give out immunity. law enforcement, they don't want to give immunity, and the most dramatic example of this conflict came involved in the investigation i was involved in iran contra, where john poin decisioner and oliver north were given immunity. we in the lawrence walsh investigation prosecuted them any way. they were convicted but north's conviction was overturned by the appeals court because the immunity was said to trump the conviction. that sort of conflict is very much possible. >> david axelrod, can you envision any scenario in which much or his surrogates criticize

this? >> having embraced rosenstein on the decision to fire the fbi director, i don't think he's going to -- he's boxed, he's boxed. one interesting thing about this, if the president truly believes what he said in his statement that his campaign and his associate also be cleared by such an investigation, then he should welcome this. because if it had been the justice department that issued that statement, i think there would be broad skepticism about it. bob mueller, if he were to conclude that there were no laws broken, that there was no such involvement, carries much greater credibility. but on this point of the commission, there are going to be many, many democrats who are going to continue to push for this independent commission. because as he said, this process is going to be conducted in secret.

and if this is a way of blocking the independent commission, that the country will never get the full picture of what happened. >> there's another important reason too, it's very likely no crimes occurred. if there was contact between the russians and the administration, it might be a terrible, terrible thing, but it wouldn't be a crime. so mueller wouldn't have jurisdiction to look into that. he can't generally look into things that might be politically or moralry bad. he is focused. he is ahab, looking at that white male. he gets the whale or he doesn't, but he looks at the entire sea scape. >> what's going for the country as an independent commission could possibly be, as david axelrod is saying, they want it to happen. republicans right now are running congress and they are breathing the biggest sigh of relief, i think we can hear it

all the way up here in new york, because they feel that this is a big out for them. >> because they're going to take it out of the public eye? >> out of the public eye, and they hope what it means now is when they go home and get beaten up about, you know, what's going on, they can say you know what? it's in the hands of a very well respected prosecutor, bob mueller and i don't know anything about it, i can't talk about it. >> the investigations aren't over, so they are going to continue to investigate and hold hearings, so it's not going to go completely underground. >> it won't go underground, but it won't be broadened. >> one thing about these congressional investigations, they're not very well resourced. you've got on the house side, seven part-time staff, working part-time on this issue, i think it's the same on the senate side. the special counsel will be fully resourced to pursue this investigation and that's one reason why there was a lot of interest in seeing a special counsel appointed.

>> phil mudd, you know robert mueller. what do you make of this appointment? >> boy, on a personal and professional level, this is profound for me, i had an office, director mueller was down the hall, i must have been involved in 1,000, 2,000 meet wgs him. i never saw anybody like him, ever. for any american who looks for integrity judgment, i saw him do personnel, political investigations that involved corruption, i watched him make decisions in thousands of cases, when you had to decide whether to arrest a kid who was a potential suicide bomber or let the investigation go. anderson, i don't know what to say. i never saw anything like it. judgment, character, integrity, humility. if you have a kid and you've

despaired that there's not a hero in america, robert mueller is it. >> jeff, i heard you talk about leaks and this is something the president and republicans have been focusing on. it's not likely that there would be a tremendous amount of leaks coming out of this office. >> despite our best efforts. we will try, and the fbi will still be involved and the fbi is many what leakier organization than anything affiliated with mueller himself. but certainly the odds overwhelmingly are that this investigation will be tight as a drum, and we will not know. you can see who's walking into a grand jury room and who's walking out. you can know who's testifying. defense lawyers whose clients are subpoenaed can talk about it, and they often do. but in terms of knowing what's going on in this investigation -- >> there will be an fbi

director, how do they work together, who oversees who and can the special counsel direct fbi agents to do things? >> the way it works, mueller will be in charge of the investigation. he will go to the fbi and say i need the following resources, i need 10 agents, and the fbi will almost certainly say we'll give you what you want. but the fbi director doesn't work for bob mueller. mueller will be in charge of the investigate shub. -- investigation. but he can draw on the resources of the fbi, and -- >> does he have his own staff? >> the fbi should work for bob mueller, let's be clear. once j. edgar hoover was exposed as the thug that he was, the fbi works for the justice department. yes, he has an independent statue 10-year term. they're not supposed to do investigations generally of potential criminal conduct.

except under the supervision of u.s. attorneys or justice department attorneys and the special counsel is no different from any other prosecutor in the justice department, except he's not in the line of authority, he's been appointed specially, but he uses the same kinds of resources. so i think we can expect the same from him. now remember that ten years ago, if they asked everybody about his predecessor, comey, we would have heard the same praise, he was boy scout, he was fantastic, he was the greatest at this. but he succumbed to power. and i think the difference is that the new director has learned a lesson. he's not going to do what the old director did, although the temptations are there to do it. >> to be clear, he will also hire lawyers who will be the prosecutors and he's already hired two from his firm. all three of them have resigned from the firm. >> here's a question that i have, which is that the congressional committees have a different job.

they want to present this to the american people who are really concerned about whether there was collusion, the russia hack and all the things that we have been writing about and talking about for these past months. the special counsel wants to figure out whether any crimes were committed. he wants to prosecute, and again, to jeffrey, this is what happened with lawrence walsh and the congressional committees on iran contra. so you have people with kind of different goals, because i think what you see, particularly from the democrats in the congress is they want to shine the light on this, one way or another, and a prosecutor really just wants to prosecute and doesn't want to shine the light unless it will help him in his prosecution. >> the special counsel is focusing on the legality, not the moral or doing something political inappropriate or doesn't reach a legal threshold.

>> the leak about the israeli spy is almost certainly not a crime. now there is a crime, the people who leaked that information to "the washington post" committed a serious felony. and by the way, they're the ones who told isis that israel has a spy in their midst. that didn't happen from donald trump. he told the russians, but it is the leaker who's being praised all over the place, who is a felon, a criminal and should go to jail, who is the villain of this piece. and i hope that the new prosecutor will look into that leak. that's more serious than the leak that occurred if the oval office. >> i want to bring in laura jared, who was in the room at the justice department when all this came down today. laura, what was it like? >> reporter: it was a pretty fast moving turn of events, the reporters here at the justice department were gathered very swiftly just after 5:00, we were told to meet for a briefing. given about 30 minutes notice,

we were given in that briefing the statements from the attorney general, rod rosenstein, as well the sat -- statute to understand the background. and the order from the deputy attorney general himself. i want to read to you just a little bit from his statement so you can understand the context here. he says in part, my decision is not a finding that crimes have been committed or that any prosecution is warranted. i have made no such determination, what i have determined is that based upon the unique circumstances, the public interest requires me to place this investigation under the authority of a person who exercises a degree of independence from the normal chain of command and obviously it is rod rosenstein making this decision because the attorney general jeff sessions recused from anything related to the russia investigation, the trump campaign, the transition, back in march. so this was up to the deputy attorney general to make this decision. we're also learning a little bit

about the chain of events that went on this afternoon. i'm told by a source that the deputy attorney general's office called the white house counsel's office, did not give them a heads up but called them after this order was signed and attorney general jeff sessions was also informed of this decision after the order was signed, anderson. >> fascinating, david axelrod, one of the panelists earlier was saying this is kind of a situation of trump's making, by basically pointing to rod rosenstein as the reason why the fbi director was fired, then clearly rod rosenstein was angry, whether he threatened to resign or ready to back his bags, he denied that he threatened to resign, but he seemed annoyed by that. then the white house changed their tune. now it's rod rosenstein who is going for the special counsel. >> yeah, and i don't know him. so i'm not going to sit here and say that out of spite he decided

that he would take this step. but he clearly has felt the brunt of this, for a week he's been consulting with, he's been talking to members of congress and hearing from others and reading and he understands the atmospherics, so when he became the deputy attorney general, he was praised by both parties as somebody who was independent. he understands the situation. what he did today was very much about protecting his integrity and the integrity of the justice department. i just, anderson, want to respond to one thing that professor dershowitz said, it struck me as i was listening to him, that had "the washington post" not disclosed the fact of sally yates' meeting with the white house counsel over general flynn, we don't know if he would have ever have been removed as national security advisor. it was only after it became

public that the president took action on it. apparently it was only after it became public that the vice president knew he had been lied to. so i understand the sensitivity of leaks and the administration i worked for was tough on leaks for sure. but there's no doubt that some of these leaks have shown a bright light in places where light was very much needed. >> i have no problem with "the washington post" publishing it or the times publishing it. i do have problems with the people who work for the national security agencies leaking confidential information that may cost lives, that may make it much more difficult to detect laptops. remember the only way isis got this information is through the leak. and you have to be very careful when you leak, because you're taking the law into your own hands. you may not have all the information and know everything, we are still a country of laws and we have to make -- >> you can't say definitively what russia would have done with the information.

>> they're not giving it to isis. they're not on talking terms. >> what about iran? >> they have done things that are actually helpful to syria. it's not as if bashar al assad is fighting a war against isis. he released -- >> david is saying he's allied with iran. >> that's very speculative. we know the first public disclosure of it came from the leaks from within the national security agencies and those leaks should be plugged. >> can we just come back to the broader question of the president and his actions and how his actions have consequences? i am not defending the leak or anything of the sort. i just want to point out what many people inside the white house and outside think caused this, which is the original donald trump attack of the intelligence community way back when, that really stuck in their craw, and he was warned, i can

tell you, i know somebody who told this, you don't mess with the intense communities, because they have ways of getting back to you. it got back to intelligence committees that was then leaked to "the washington post." >> can i answer one question? can bob mueller as special counsel be fired? the answer is yes, by president trump. that's different from the independent counsel law which has since expired and it's a parallel situation to what happened under watergate. which is when president reagan wound up demanding the firing of archibald cox, i'm sorry, nixon. what did i say? >> reagan. >> when nixon demanded the firing of cox, that became the saturday night massacre. >> but he couldn't fire him, only the attorney general could fire him and the attorney general quit, the deputy quit and robert bourke came to the rescue of the president.

and he fired him. >> but mueller can be fired by trump. so that's just something -- >> he could be fired but that would be a catastrophic decision that would have made the firing of the fbi director look like a small event. >> you would hope the president would learn something. he benefited nothing at all from the firing of comey. no benefit came. >> dplo >> if you're sitting in the white house tonight and you want to think about the things donald trump has done to himself, you can talk about the firing of comey and start with that and you can talk about his tweets where he threatened comey with the existence of so-called tapes. and reporting at cnn has said that as of last friday, rosenstein was not inclined to appoint a special counsel. so what happened between last friday and tonight?

what happened is donald trump. and we have seen him be quiet on twitter, because perhaps on the advice of counsel. and i'm assuming now that he's getting lawyered up, if he isn't already, that after donald trump started talking about the tapes, after we learned about, you know, and then we learned about the comey memo, et cetera, i think that you read that, if you're rod rosenstein and you think this is getting out of control. and at a certain point, you decide there is nothing else you can do, other than the big thing that you really didn't want to do, because we know how long and wieldy these investigations can get, but he did do what he didn't want to do which is appoint a special counsel. >> there are a lot of people who would like to hear from director comey about the notes he was taking about president trump, we

may not have that opportunity unless he is willing to testify and come forward. >> i do think he should testify, but i think congress is going to blow this. gloria pointed this out, people are not focusing on the criticali criticality, the difference of what director mueller will do. he's looking backwards whether someone committed a crime that merits indictment by the justice department. the congress should be looking forwards, how do we protect the next elections, how do we talk about russia's cyber intrusions, how that implicated moscow in the previous election and look forward to protecting ourselves in the next election. i think he will be a fine witness. i think if he goes down with the congress, they're going to enmesh themselves into what happened in director mueller's investigation. they can't separate out -- >> we just lost the satellite link up. i want to expand on something dana talk about earlier about hearing a giant sigh of relief on capitol hill as lawmakers

reacted to the naming of robert mueller. a lot of republicans have been saying there was no need for a special counsel or a prosecutor, what are you hearing tonight? >> reporter: anderson it's getting harder and harder for republicans to defend president trump in light of all of these revelations that continue to come up. particularly in light of the james comey memo suggesting the president tried to interfere in that michael flynn investigation. today, there was a softening among some republicans in their opposition to a special prosecutor. and a lot even the members of the leadership are raising concerns about the comey memo, say thing needs to be some investigation to get to the facts. so tonight there is a bit of a sigh of relief, take a listen. >> do you think the president was trying to obstruct justice in any way? >> it's hard for me to say anything on that, we want to gets more information, that's obviously a pretty brazen and big charge, but we deserve the answers to this and i think through an investigation, people need to understand it's going to

take some time to get this set up, but we need answers, i look forward to comey's testimony and any other information we can get. >> are you concerned about this latest comey memo? >> of course. i want to get the facts. that's what we need to do. >> reporter: anderson, cornyn also praising the appointment of robert mueller as special prosecutor. he thinks that a joe lieberman were to get the nomination, he would get 100 votes. democrats are not there yet, but i am told by democratic sources tonight that it's increasingly likely that they'll allow an fbi director nominee to go along without a major fight, depending on who that person is, because they had said they wanted a special prosecutor named before they agreed to move forward on an fbi director nominee. so perhaps one fight averted. >> there are multiple investigations that we have been talking about in congress on russian interference, what

happens to them on the special counsel, do they continue on? because there's a number of them. >> reporter: they will continue on but the question is what happens, because there is a fair amount of information sharing between the intelligence community and these committees on capitol hill in order to move forward. how will the new special counsel deal with these investigations on capitol hill. we don't know that yet, the senate intelligence committee leaders issued a statement tonight saying they expect to have a back and forth with robert mueller. i think we'll get an indication tomorrow when rod rosenstein briefs the senate about what happened here, and i'm told that democrats had planned in a strategy session to pressure rosenstein to name a special prosecutor. now that he has, that session tomorrow could be a little less contentious. >> the appointment of former fbi director and respected lawyer robert mueller as a special counsel is a positive

development and will provide some certainty for the american people that the investigation will proceed fairly. they go on to say -- >> after the bombshell reporting last night that the president had told director comey or suggested director comey couldn't give michael flynn a break, many will want to know, did that in fact happen? and the only way they will know if that in fact happened, unless it is so egregious and it was obstruction of justice and there's criminality there, the only way they would know it happened would be open hearings. >> that's right. and i'm still struggling with the word deconflick shun. i've never heard that word before in my life.

public information will be disclosed, i don't think is quite as settled as alan does. it is possible that at the conclusion of mueller's investigation, he could file a public report. the independent counsel law, which kenneth starr filed a report, lawrence welch filed a report on iran contra. it is possible that he could file a report based on his investigation. >> u.s. attorneys have been much criticized for doing that. the job is to indict or not to indict. and what i'm concerned about, is that mueller has so much credibility, he may actually tell some of these congressional committees, please, limit your investigation, don't mess around with our investigation. >> don't people have the right to know if the president of the united states tried to stop an investigation? >> i think they do.

and that is why even though it has the potential to really hurt a president in their own party, republicans, who run these key committees on capitol hill, particularly in the senate, were trying to get james comey and still are trying to get james comey to testify in public, and the one thing we should underscore is how close james comey is to robert mueller, and the fact that people like lindsey graham and the judiciary committee were not able to set a date with james comey. and then suddenly poof, here's robert mueller as a special counsel. makes you wonder if there was a connection. >> this date back in 1973, was the first public hearing of the senate hearing on the president yalt -- presidential campaign hearings. joining me now, 44 years later

to the day, two people who were major figures in watergate, carl burnstein and john dean. as someone who worked in a white house that was under siege and investigated by special counsel, what do you imagine the mood is like in the west wing? >> i would imagine it's not a very happy mood tonight. during watergate, that nixon white house was highly compartmentalized, need to know, and work went on when other sections were more obsessed than those directly affected by investigations. so it probably in the trump white house isn't quite that smooth. they're still working out their staffing and it's -- this has happened very early in their presidency, so i'm sure it's a real ripple going through the operation. >> people in the white house, do they now see the special counsel as the enemy? i mean is that how he was viewed back in watergate? >> he wasn't to me. he probably was to some.

because while nixon didn't want a special counsel, he actually threw some names out and tried to influence it. i left before the special counsel was appointed and so i wasn't really there. carl actually covered the final days pretty well in his book. >> so carl, a, what about that, and also you heard the response from the white house, kind of measured although defined statement from president trump tonight. has this whole thing been put back on the rails for the time being? >> what's happened is that this country has gotten through a moment of intense danger and pulled back from a precipice, because the president of the united states has been out of control and talking in a way of defying and demeaning the rule of law. and he's now constrained by the rule of law. so this is an immense event, and it occurred because rod rosenstein, who had been

manipulated by the president, said enough. this cannot be. he tried to manipulate me in a statement that used me to justify the firing of comey. perhaps the attorney general of the united states was also complicit in that, jeff sessions. and therefore wasn't informed until about an hour after this occurred. we have a whole new set of circumstances here and it includes, as dana has pointed out, the republican party, but the republicans especially, not only can they breathe a sigh of relief, but they have been in a position of having to defend a president who many of them believe is not fit for office. that's what these four months have been about. the president of the united states through his tweets, through his public remarks, through his defiance of the rule of law has shown himself unfit for office and they have had to defend him and they no longer do.

there's whole new rule of law mechanism in place, and that's what happened in watergate, is that the rule of law prevailed. we now have a structure this which that might happen here. >> it will be interesting to see if president trump resists the impulse to criticize the special counsel, to tweet about it late at night or early in the morning. what do you think would have happened back in the '70s if president nixon would have loved twitter? >> i think richard nixon would have had trouble operating twitter. he had trouble with his desk drawer, and those bottles that you had to push down to turn medicine bottles, he would fight those, so i'm not sure he would be skilled at twitter. i have trouble going there actually. but can i add a footnote about what was reported through independent counsel. you go all the way back to jaworski, as special counsel, same status as mueller will

have, he did send a report to congress, went to the judge, got permission to provide the information to the house judiciary committee, and the judge granted it. the grand jury information was sent up. so there's a long precedent for this material going up to congress. >> as jeff pointed out earlier, this won't take months, this will possibly take years, just like watergate took years to finish. what impact does that have on the administration and the country in the meantime? will the republicans be able to move forward with their legislative agenda? >> first of all, the president of the united states, with what's been going on by his own making, has been unsuccessful in governing the country from the white house. this should be an opportunity for him, if he's really interested in the truth. if he's really interested in governing, let him go ahead and do what the president of the united states does. i don't think that's a very likely event here.

we need to get back to the central principle of what is occurring here, we have an ongoing investigation of whether or not the president of the united states and his associates have colluded with a hostile foreign power, that's what's at the bottom of this. and the other thing is the president of the united states has failed and resisted making his finances known and his dealings with russians, ethno russians, people in the former soviet empire, he's done an awful lot of business with them. that is going to be part of this investigation, in all likelihood. his sons have said, how much russian money has poured into their family coffers? i would be amazed if this is not a road that the special counsel is not going to go down. so now the president is in a position he has tried to resist and he no longer can effectively

as he has until now. >> let me tell you why it would be wrong to issue a report. remember what a prosecutor does. he has a play thing, it's called a grand jury. he can put anything in front of the grand jury. the grand jury hears only one side of the story, it's secret. no lawyers are allowed into that grand jury room, it is a fundamental denial of basic due process for the prosecutor to come to any conclusion about what happened. the only thing he has the right to do is to decide, based on his evidence, that there is probable cause to continue to have an indictment. anything he does beyond that is ultravirus and every civil libertarian should be appalled at it because there is no fairness in the way the prosecutor gathers evidence. it's one sided, he doesn't gather exculpatory evidence, he doesn't hear from the defense lawyer, he doesn't have objections from the defense lawyer, it is a kangaroo court.

it's an insult to kangaroo courts. >> i think that's an overstatement. but i do think there are other interests at play beside -- >> fairness and due process? >> actually the public's interest in this result that are -- >> we'll come back to you guys in a moment. joining us from the senate judiciary committee, democratic senator chris coons from delaware. robert mueller named as a special counsel. your reaction? >> anderson, i'm encouraged. his long record of service as a senior federal prosecutor and as former fbi director, suggests that he's exactly the sort of person that many of us hoped would be named for special counsel. he has previous experience stepping up to an overreach, an exercise of power by an administration and with standing them, under the bush administration, when he and a number of other law enforcement

officials threatened to resign if the president didn't respect their concerns about civil liberties. he's also a decorated marine vet ran and someone who i think will enjoy the respect of a wide range of members of congress. this is a positive and important step, anderson. >> to those americans who want to know, did the president try to get director comey to stop the investigation into general flynn, they may never get that information unless robert mueller determines that a law was broken. is there any concern that the other investigations going on in the senate, going on in the house, which have public hearings will not be able to inform the american people as much as they would like? >> as your panel has been discussing, anderson, that is a possible path. there will be prompt conversations between special counsel mueller and the senate intelligence committee. i think they need to coordinate. i would hope that the senate

intelligence committee hearings will move forward. the entire senate has in front of them rod rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, and there's a number of important questions that will still be asked of him about the role that attorney general sessions played in directing him to write the memo that led to comey's firing and whether or not he exceeded the scope of his recusal, and about what the president's role was in the firing of fbi director comey. as you just heard from carl bernstein, there's a number of other issues that have not yet been brought in front of either the senate judiciary committee or the intelligence committee, that i think are also going to be of concern to us. it is my hope, anderson, that at the end of this, there will be a public accounting of whether or not there was collusion between the trump campaign and russia. and it's important for public confidence in the rule of law

and in congress that that result be reached. >> do you have any sense of what kind of a timeline we're looking at in terms of the special counsel investigation? >> it's my expectation that the special counsel investigation will be fully staffed and resourced and the odds are that that will allow them to reach a conclusion sooner than they might have on the current trajectory, but it could take several months or several areas, because the current fbi investigation has a counterintelligence component and a possible criminal component. there's a lot of details to go through here, a lot of individuals to interview, and a lot of documents to review. because of former fbi director mueller's senior experience, i don't think it will take him long to get up to speed and to be engaged and to be an effective leader on this investigation, but the result may be a year or two away. >> chairman, senator grassley, who was appointing a special

prosecutor, said it doesn't matter if he thinks it's the right move. does it matter? >> i think what was striking was the number of my colleagues, republicans, who did not step forward and said we needed a special prosecutor, who did not step forward and say particularly after last night's alarming allegations in the press, that we need to get to the bottom of this and we need to understand whether or not our president has been inappropriately sharing highly and pressure the fbi director to drop an investigation of his national security adviser. i think it's striking. and i think in the end, the general public wants to know whether or not senators, both republicans and democrat, are going to work together in a responsible and bipartisan way to get to the bottom of this. >> i appreciate your time. thank you. just ahead, more reaction to all of tonight's big developments. it's our first commercial break in an hour. we'll be right back.

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we're drowning in information. where, in all of this, is the stuff that matters? the stakes are so high, your finances, your future. how do you solve this? you don't. you partner with a firm that advises governments and the fortune 500, and, can deliver insight person to person, on what matters to you. morgan stanley. in the hours before the justice department named robert mueller as special prosecutor in the russia investigation, many republicans were resisting that step and urged caution over the allegations. here is what paul ryan said earlier today. >> there are a lot of unanswered questions. what i told our members is now is the time to gather all the pertinent information. we can't deal with speculation and innuendo. and there's clearly a lot of

politics being played. >> democrats were having none of it. here is elijah cummings. >> speaker ryan has shown he has zero -- zero, zero appetite for any investigation of president trump. >> two different points of view, both represented here with the panel. kelly, what's your reaction to the naming of mueller? >> many of us had full faith in the justice department and rod who proved himself tonight when he did appoint a special prosecutor. he thought it was in the best interest for everyone. i think he was correct in that. this is good for the trump administration for two reasons. many of us have been saying there's no evidence of collusion, no evidence. this is going to force the democratic -- the democratic hand when in fact you have an independent prosecutor coming out and saying there's no evidence of russian collusion. they cannot attack the messenger

here. >> the prosecutor would just say there's evidence of illegality, not whether there's collusion. >> when he says there's no charges put forth, that will be a good thing for the trump administration. number two, the last eight years we have seen his trust in american institutions demolished at the justice department when bill klepten meet with loretta lynch. this will restore the american people's trust in institutions amid a partisan environment. good all the way around. >> wait a minute. hasn't president trump gone after american institutions more than any president in recent memory? the intelligence community, the justice department. he goes after it all the time. >> that's what he came to washington to do. burn it to the ground, destroy the so-called deep state who is out there to attack him and leaking left and right. >> can we cut through the crap here? donald trump will be held accountable.

what will hold the republicans accountable who enabled this man to go this far? we knew from day one what kind of person donald trump was. we knew that he had no respect for anyone let alone the rule of law. i want to know what's going to happen to people like reince priebus who demanded everyone in the gop pledge loyalty to this guy and now all these republicans are handcuffed to donald trump. where has this gotten us? where are the surrogates that barked and claps like circus seals? investigates as far as the eye can see. >> don't interrupt. let her finish. >> are you feeling good about that? >> how about letting her finish? >> i want to know. i think republicans like you who have given your loyalty to donald trump, what has he done for you? he dragged you into a terrible place. >> actually, if i look at what donald trump has done for me and middle class america, he has brought down the illegal border crossing by 60%. he has renegotiated trade agreements. >> is it worth it? >> he brought unemployment down to a low level.

he is restoring american confidence in jobs. he pulled out of tpp. he is doing all -- give him credit where there has been credit. >> i'm not giving him credit. he is dragging down -- >> okay. hold on. let's focus on the actual news tonight, mueller. paul, i mean for those -- >> can i -- >> for those americans -- >> that doesn't mean -- >> for those americans who want to know, did the president of the united states try to stop director comey from investigating michael flynn, they may never get that answer because maybe there was not enough evidence to bring a case against it in which case we won't hear anything from director mueller. >> we don't flow that. getting back to the debate that the professor had. many independent councils feel a need for the public interest to report. that's controversial. you are supposed to speak with an indictment. that might prompt a report.

i would say, donald trump ran on a pledge of law and order and god help him he is going to get it. mr. mueller is a credible law enforcement official. he is going to get to the bottom of it. he may be pristinely innocent. and i will accept that if that's what we find. he is sweating bullets now. the next big story is the president has to lawyer up. he needs to lawyer up. right away. the white house counsel doesn't represent donald trump. he represents -- >> they were saying he should do that now. >> yesterday. >> by the way, he may well have. >> probably already has. >> we don't know. he has had a lawyer in the past in new york city. he is a civil lawyer. whether he retained a criminal lawyer, i don't know. >> but he's the lawyer also representing the russian company. >> what a coincidence. >> let me point out something. we have had independent prosecutors or special counsels going back to 1875. grant named the first one because of the whiskey ring or

something going on there. there have been 20 since 1983. this isn't something unusual. jimmy carter had to deal, ronald reagan, bill clinton. >> ronald reagan never had -- >> but let me say this. >> let him finish. >> let me say this. as somebody who was involved with the campaign, i absolutely do believe they're going to show there's no collusion. what's going to happen then is some of the partisans aren't going to be as satisfied or as kind as paul. are they going to say he didn't have the resources he needed, he didn't have the right lawyers, are the republicans -- >> mr. mueller will tell us. will you be of good faith? i believe he will let justice department know, maybe congress know. senator franken raised about it, he needs to be resourced. >> he wouldn't have agreed to do

this knowing him. >> the idea that -- is it a done deal that this will answer everybody's questions? to the point that our panelists were making, it could end with mueller determining there's no actual law that was broken. democrats could still say, what about there are -- seems like there's acts of collusion. whether they are illegal or not, it's a question of are they appropriate. answer to that is i don't know at this point. i'm not sure that answer is knowable at this point. mueller is in addition to being an accomplished prosecutor, he is expressed in washington and in the world. he understands the importance of the larger questions here, independent of the criminal culpability of any individual. he will be aware of the need for some sort of public disclosure. whether he files a report, how