president, nor do you serve to please the president. this report, facts stated as they were, should have been released and i repeatedly asked you to do so. more than three weeks later went by before you had barr give a hearing, a conference in front of everyone and then wait an additional 90 minutes before providing it. >> we know barr has been xloelt dismissive of mueller's legal theory of obstruction. he made that very clear in his four-page letter. he said i considered them. i disagreed with them. i'm wondering how much of a surprise it actually came to barr -- i mean to mueller that barr did it this way. >> one thing that might help, how easy it would have been for barr to do the right thing, release the executive summaries, to offer his own opinion, he could have also given his read on whether he thought this was obstruction, but to give that minimal level of transparency to preserve his own credibility and

integrity, it's baffling. >> i want elie to weigh in. let me set the scene, looking at live pictures of the senate judiciary committee right now. the testimony is about to begin. we'll be hearing from the chairman, lindsey graham, with an opening statement, ranking member senator dianne feinstein with an opening statement, we assume, and attorney general of the united states, bill barr, will be sworn in. each senator will then have seven minutes to ask questions. they'll go back and forth between republicans and democrats, and that will be the first round. we don't know if there will be a second round, but this will be intense. >> it will be, wolf. and i think further intensified by this letter. two things jump out at me. first of all even after he got this letter from robert mueller saying please released the summaries. bill barr still sat on those summaries for 3 1/2 weeks and, let's remember how devastating those summaries are. we've now all see them. those summaries lay out the 11

different potentially obstructive acts by the president. imagine if those had come out on march 24th when bob mueller wanted them to come out. those summaries lay out the fact that the trump campaign -- no criminal conspiracy, but knew about and expected to benefit from the russian hack of hillary clinton and the dnc. first impressions are powerful. imagine if they came out in march. >> bill barr is now sitting down. we will listen to this. we are told by kaitlan collins that officials are paying very close attention to the q & a, what unfolds over the next several hours. >> can i raise one question? >> maybe you know the answer to this, jim. why did he wait 3 1/2 weeks before even releasing the summaries that mueller and his team had prepared? brief summaries on both of these issues, conspiracy and obstruction? why not release those? they were ready to go. >> he appeared to want to color the findings before they came out in the public eye. he did it with the summary and the press conference before

releasing the full report. that's a question he should face. this is the question. will congress do its job here now of oversight outside of partisan politics? will it be purely democrats asking hard questions and pushing for consequences and republicans defending or will some be willing to go outside those partisan lines? bob mueller clearly in this letter makes it clear that this is congress' decision. he wants it to go to congress. will congress perform that job of oversight? it's a test. >> i suspect and, jim, you can correct me if i'm wrong, that a lot of republicans will be asking barr about his assertion earlier that there was spying on the trump campaign in 2016 during the obama administration. i suspect we'll be hearing a bunch of questions from republicans along that allegation. >> as we did in prior hearing as well. will any of these members be willing to ask questions outside of that partisan purview? that's a test. is it a constitutional crisis? i don't know. it's a constitutional test.

>> there's difficult substantive questions here as to how barr can justify that this doesn't support a charge of obstruction of justice? robert mueller's report makes quite clear on multiple instances every statutory element of obstruction of justice are met but finds no plausible legal evidence. bill barr said i don't think there's -- i don't agree with his legal theory but he has not articulated any defensible reason as to how any lawyer could read this and conclude there's not the potential for criminal obstruction. >> he was dismissive in his letter. he was completely dismissive of bob mueller's legal theory and that is why bob mueller, in his letter, said that because there is now public confusion about their work that it undermines the special counsel, which is supposed to assure full public -- >> hold on a minute. chairman of the committee, lindsey graham, is speaking. >> the attorney general will be testifying here in a bit about

the mueller report. i want to thank him for coming to the committee and giving us an explanation as to the alcohoalcohol actions he took and here is the good news. here is the mueller report. you can read it for yourself. it's about 400 and something pages. can't say i've read it all but i've read most of it. there's an unredacted version over in the classified section of the senate, a room where you can go look at the unredacted version. i did that and found it not to change anything in terms of an outcome, but a bit about the mueller report. who is mueller? for those of you who may not know -- i don't know where you have been but bob mueller has a reputation in this town and throughout the country as being

an outstanding lawyer and a man of the law who was the fbi director, the deputy attorney general in charge of the criminal division at the department of justice. he was a united states marine, and he has served his country in a variety of circumstances long and well. for those who took time to read the report, i think it was well written, very thorough and let me tell you what went into this report. there were 19 lawyers employed, approximately 40 fbi agents, intel analysts, forensic accountants and other staff, 2800 subpoenas issued, 500 witnesses interviewed, 500 search warrants executed, more than 230 orders for

communication records so records could be obtained. 13 requests to foreign governments for evidence over $25 million spent over two ye s years. we may not agree on much but i hope we can agree he had ample resources, took a lot of time and talked to a lot of people. and you can read for yourself what he found. the attorney general will tell us a bit about what his opinion of the report is. in terms of interacting with the white house, the white house turned over 1.4 million, never asserted executive privilege one time. over 20 white house staffers, including eight from the white house counsel's office were

interviewed voluntarily. don mcghan, chief counsel for the white house, was interviewed over 30 hours. everybody that they wanted to talk to from the trump campaign on the ground, they were able to talk to. the president submitted himself to written interrogates. so to the american people, mr. mueller was the right guy to do this job. i always believed attorney general sessions was conflicted out because he was part of the campaign. he was the right guy with ample resources and the cooperation he needed to find out what happened was given, in my view. but there were two campaigns in 2016 and we'll talk about the second one in a minute. so what have we learned from

this report? after all this time and all this money, mr. mueller and his team concluded there was no conclusion. i didn't know, like many of you here, on the republican side, we all agreed that mr. mueller should be allowed to do his job without interference. i joined with colleagues on the other side on legislation that the special counsel could only be removed for cause. he was never removed. he was allowed to do his job. no collusion, no coordination, no conspiracy between the trump campaign and the russian government regarding the 2016 election. as to obstruction of justice, mr. mueller left it to mr. barr after two years and all this time. he said mr. barr, you decide. mr. barr did.

a bunch of lawyers on this committee, and i will tell you the following. pretty hard to figure out what intent might be if there was never a crime to begin with. the president never did anything to stop mueller from doing his job. the theory goes now, okay, he didn't collude with the russians or do anything to stop mueller but attempt of obstruction of justice apparently is the new standard around here. we'll see if that make necessary sense. to me, it doesn't. there was another campaign, clinton campaign. what did we learn from this report? the russians interfered in this election. can some bipartisanship come out

of this? i hope so. i intend to work with my colleagues on the other side to introduce the deter act and legislation to defend the integrity of the voting system. senator durbin and i have legislation that would deny anyone admit us into the united states a visa that they were involved in interfering in an american election. working with senator blumenthal to ensure that if you hack into an election system that's a crime. i would like to do more to harden our infrastructure because the russians did it. it wasn't some 400-pound guy sitting on a bed somewhere. it was the russians. and they're still doing it. it could be the chinese or somebody next. my take away from this report is that we've got a lot of work to do to defend democracy against the russians and other bad actors, and i promise the

committee we will get on with that work, hopefully in a bipartisan fashion. the other campaign was investigated not by mr. mueller, by people within the department of justice. the accusation against the clinton -- secretary clinton is that she set a private server up somewhere in her house and classified information was on it to avoid the disclosure requirements and the transparency requirements required of being secretary skt. what do we know? we know that the person in charge of investigating hated trump's guts. i don't know how mr. mueller felt about trump but i don't think anybody on our side believes that he had a personal animosity toward the president to the point he couldn't do his

job. this is what strzok said. he is in charge of the clinton investigation. he, trump, is abysmal. i hope the charade will end and people will just dump him, february 12th, 2016. paige, the lawyer assigned to this case march 23rd, 2016, god trump say loathsome human being. strzok. oh, my god, trump's an indiot. page. he's awful. strzok. god hillary should win. i can't believe trump is an actual serious candidate for president. july 1st, 2016, trump is a disaster. have no idea how destabilizing his presidency would be. august 8th, 2016, three days

before strzok was made deputy acting in charge of the counterintelligence division of the fbi. he is never going to become president, right? paige described no, no he won't. we'll stop him. these are the people investigating the clinton email situation and start the counterintelligence investigation of the trump campai campaign. compare them to mueller. august 15th, 2016, strzok, i want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in andy's office that there's no way he gets elected but i'm afraid we can't take that risk. it's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40. august 26th, 2016. just went to the southern

virginia walmart. i could smell the trump support. october 19th, 2016, trump is a [ expletive ] idiot. sorry to the kids out there. that trump didn't do anything wrong and the idea that the trump investigation was warranted. this committee is going to look long and hard in how this all started. we're going to look at the fisa warrant process. did russia provide christopher steele the information about trump that turned out to be garbage, that was used to get a warrant on an american citizen? and if so, how did the system

fail? or is there a real effort between papadoupolos and anyone in russia to steal the clinton emails or was that thought planted in his mind? i don't know but we're going to look. i can tell you this, if you change the names, you're all going to look, too. everything i just said just substitute clinton for trump. see what all these people with cameras would be saying out here about this. as to cooperation in the clinton investigation, i told you what the trump people did. tell you a little bit about what the clinton people did. there was a protected order for the server issued by the house and there was a request by the state department to preserve all the information on the server.

paul cambetta, after having the protective order, used a software program called bleach bit to wipe the email server clean. has anybody ever heard of paul cambetta? no. under protective order from the house to preserve the information, under request from the state department to preserve the information on the server, he used a bleach bit program to wipe it clean. what happened to him? nothing. 18 devices possessed by secretary clinton she used to do business as secretary. how many of them were turned over to the fbi? none. two of them couldn't be turned over because judith casper took a hammer and destroyed two of

them. what happened to her? nothing. so the bottom line is, we're about to hear from mr. barr the results of a two-year investigation into the trump campaign, all things russia, the actions that the president took before and after the campaign, $25 million, 40 fbi agents. i appreciate very much what mr. mueller did for the country. i have read most of the report. for me, it is over. senator feinstein? >> thank you, mr. chairman. and welcome, attorney general. on march 24th, you sent a letter

to chairman graham and the ranking member of this committee providing your summary of the principle conclusions set out in special counsel mueller's report. this letter was widely reported as a win for the president and was characterized as confirming there was no conclusion. following this letter, the white house put out a statement declaring, and i quote, the special counsel did not find any collusion and did not find any obstruction, end quote. and that the report, quote, was a total and complete exoneration, end quote, of the president. however, last night, "the washington post" reported that special counsel mueller sent you a letter in late march, where he said your letter to congress failed to, quote, fully capture the context, nature and

substance of his office's work and conclusions, end quote. and that he spoke with you about the concern that the letter threatened to undermine the public confidence in the outcome of the investigations. that's in quotes as well. then on april 18th, you held a press conference where you announced repeatedly that the mueller report found no collusion and no evidence of a crime. an hour later, a redacted copy of the mueller report was provided to the public and the congress, and we saw why mueller was concerned. contrary to the declarations of the total and complete exoneration, the special counsel's report contained substantial evidence of misconduct. first, special counsel mueller's report confirms that the russian government implemented a social media campaign to mislead

millions of americans and that russian intelligence services hacked into the dnc and the dccc computers, stole emails and memos and systematically released them to impact the presidential election. your march letter stated that there was no evidence that the trump campaign, quote, conspired or coordinated with russia, end quote. however, the report out lined substantial evidence that the trump campaign welcomed, encouraged and expected to benefit electorally from russia's interference in the election. the mueller report also details how time and time again, the trump campaign took steps to gain advantage from russia's unlawful interference. for example, president trump's campaign manager, paul manafort,

passed internal campaign polling data, messaging and strategy updates to constantine klimnick, a russian national with ties to russian influence. on, and i quote, the state of the trump campaign and manafort's plan to win the election, end quote, include in the campaign's focus on the battleground states of michigan, wisconsin, pennsylvania and minnesota. next the mueller report documents the trump campaign's communications regarding secretary clinton's and the dnc's stolen emails.

within five hours of president trump calling on russia to find secretary clinton's emails, gru officers, quote, targeted for the first time clinton's personal office, end quote. the mueller report also reveals that president trump repeatedly asked individuals affiliated with his campaign, including michael flynn, quote, to find the deleted clinton emails, end quote. these efforts included suggestions to contact foreign intelligence services, russian hackers and individuals on the dark web. the report confirms that trump knew of wikileaks' releases of the stolen emails and received status updates about upcoming releases while his campaign promoted coverage of the leaks.

donald trump jr. communicated directly with wikileaks and, at its request, publicly tweeted a link to emails stolen from clinton's campaign manager. second, in your march letter to congress, you concluded, and i quote, that the evidence is not sufficient to establish that the president committed an obstruction of justice offense, end quote. however, special counsel mueller methodically outlines ten episodes, some continuing multiple actions by the president to mislead the american people and interfere with the investigations into russian interference and obstruction. in one example, the president repeatedly called white house counsel, don mcgahn at home and directed him to fire mueller saying, quote, mueller has to

go. call me back when you do it. then later, the president repeatedly ordered mcgahn to release a press statement and write a letter saying the president did not order mueller fired. the mueller report also influence testimony and deter cooperation with law enforcement. for example, the president's team communicated to witnesses that pardons would be available if they, quote, stayed on message, end quote, and remain, quote, on the team, end quote. in one case, the president sent messages to his personal lawyers to paul manafort that he would be taken care of and just, quote, sit tight, end quote. the president then publicly

affirmed this communication by stating that manafort was, quote, a brave man, end quote, for refusing to break. similarly, the mueller report stated, the president used inducements in the form of positive messages about in an effort to get michael cohen not to cooperate and then turn to attacks and intimidation to deter the provision of information or undermine cohen's credibility. finally, while the march letter to congress and the april press conference left the impression there were no remaining questions to examine, this report notes several limitations mueller faced while gathering the facts that congress needed to examine. more than once, the report documents that legal conditions -- excuse me, conclusions were not drawn

because witnesses refused to answer questions or failed to recall the events. in addition numerous witnesses, including but not limited to jared kushner, sarah sanders, rudolph giuliani, michael flynn, steve bannon and john kelly allstated they could not recall events. the president himself said more than 30 times that he could not recall or remember enough to answer written questions from the special counsel. the special counsel also recounted that, quote, some associated with the trump campaign deleted relevant communications or communicated during the relevant period using applications that featured encryption or do not provide for long-term retention of data, end

quote. based on these gaps, mueller concluded, and i quote again, that the mueller report cannot additional information would have shed additional light or cast a new light on the events subscribe described in the report, end quote. and contrary to the conclusion that the special counsel's report did not find evidence of communication or coordination between the trump campaign and russia, the mueller report explicitly states, and i quote, a statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean this was no evidence of those facts. volume two, page two. let me conclude with this. congress has both the constitution duty and the authority to investigate the serious findings contained in the mueller report.

i strongly believe that this committee needs to hear from special counsel mueller about his views in the report of the march 24th letter and senators should have the opportunity to ask him about these subjects in questions directly. i have requested this to our chairman, to authorize a hearing with special counsel mueller, and i hope that will happen soon. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you. before we receive your testimony, mr. barr, we have the letter that mr. mueller sent to you march 27th, 2019. i'll put that in the record now. the floor is yours. got to start again. sorr sorry.

>> do you solemnly swear that the testimony you're about to give this committee is the truth, the whole truth and so you swear to god? >> yes. >> sorry about that. >> thank you, mr. chairman, senator feinstein and members of the committee. during my confirmation process, two concerns dominated, which i think you will all agree. the first is whether i would, in any way, impede or curtail special counsel mueller's investigation and second whether i would make public his final report. as you see, bob mueller was allowed to complete his work as he saw fit and as to the report, even though the applicable regulations require that the report is to be made to the ag and is to remain confidential and not be made public, i told this committee that i intended to exercise whatever discretion i had to make as much of the

report available to the public and to congressional leaders as i could, consistent with the law. this has been done. i arrived at the department february 14th. and shortly thereafter i asked it to be communicated to bob mueller's team that in preparing the report, we requested that they make it so we could readily identify 6e material, so we could quickly process the report. >> did you tell the public what 6e is? >> grand jury material that cannot be made public. it's prohibited by statute. we wanted to be able to redact that material and prepare it for public release as soon as we could. when i arrived at the department and was briefed in on the investigation, the deputy attorney general and his

principle associate deputy o'callahan were in regular discussions with the counsel's office, had been and they communicated requests about the timing and nature of the report. i met with bob at the suggestion of the deputy and associate deputy. i met with bob mueller to get a readout on what his conclusions would be. and at that meeting i reiterated to special counsel mueller that in order to have the shortest possible time before i was in a position to release the report, i asked that they identify 6e

material. when i received the report march 22nd, and we were hoping to easily identify the 6e material. unfortunately it did not come in that form and quickly became apparent it would take three or four weeks to identify that material and other material that had to be redacted. so there was necessarily going to be a gap between the receipt of the report and getting the full report out publicly. the deputy and i identified four categories of information that we believe required redaction. and i think you will know of them but they were the grand jury material, 6e material, information that the intelligence community advised would reveal sensitive sources and methods, information that if revealed at this stage would impinge on the investigation or prosecution of related cases and information that would unfairly affect the privacy and

reputational interests of peripheral third parties. we went about redacting this material with the special counsel's office. we needed their assistance to identify 6e material in particular. the redactions were all carried out by doj lawyers with special counsel lawyers in consultation with intelligence community. the report contained a substantial amount of material over which the president could have asserted executive privilege but the president made the decision not to assert executive privilege and to make public as much of the report as we could, subject to the redactions that we thought were required. as you see, the report has been lightly redacted. the public version has been estimated to have only 10% redactions, almost -- the vast bulk of those redactions relate

to volume one, which is the volume that deals with collusion and it relates to existing, ongoing cases. volume two has only about 2% redactions for the public version. so 98% of volume two dealing with obstruction is available to the public. we have made a version of the report available to congressional leaders that only contains redactions of grand jury material. for this version, overall redactions are less than 2% for the whole report. volume two, dealing with obstruction, they are less than one-tenth of 1%. given the limited amount of redactions, i believe the publicly released report will allow every american to understand the special counsel's work. by now, everyone is familiar with the special counsel's

bottom line conclusions about the russian's attempt to interfere in the election n volume one, special counsel found that the russians engaged in two distinct schemes. first, the internet research agency, a russian entity with close ties to the russian government, conducted a disinformation and social media operation to sow discord among americans. second, the gru, russian military intelligence, hacked into computers and stole emails from individuals affiliated with the democratic party and hillary clinton's campaign. the special counsel investigated whether anyone affiliated with president trump's campaign conspired or coordinated with these criminal schemes. they concluded that there was not sufficient evidence to establish that there had been any conspiracy or coordination with the russian government or the ira. as you know, volume two of his

report dealt with obstruction and the special counsel considered whether certain actions of the president could amount to obstruction. he decided not to reach a conclusion. instead the report recounts ten episodes and discusses potential legal theories for connecting the president's actions to elements of obstruction offenses. now we first heard that the special counsel's decision not to decide the obstruction issue and to meet at the march 5th meeting when he came over to the department. we were, frankly, surprised by that they were not going to reach a decision on obstruction. and we asked them a lot about the reasoning behind this and the basis for this. special counsel mueller stated three times to us in that meeting in response to our questioning that he emphatically was not saying that but for the olc opinion, he would have found obstruction. he said that in the future, the

facts of the case against a president might be such that a special counsel would recommend abdomening the olc opinion but this is not such a case. we did not understand exactly why the special counsel was not reaching a decision and when we pressed him on it, he said that his team was still formulating the explanation. once we heard that the special counsel was not reaching a conclusion on obstruction, the deputy and i discussed and disagr agreed that the department had to reach a decision. i say this because special counsel was appointed to carry out the investigative and prosecutorial functions of the department and to do it as part of the department of justice. the powers he was using, including the power of using the grand jury and using compulsory

process exists for that purpose, the function of the department of justice in this arena, which is to determine whether or not there has been criminal conduct. it's a binary decision. is there enough evidence to show a crime? and do we believe a crime has been committed? we don't conduct criminal investigations to collect information and put it out to the public. we do it to gain information. and this was a very public investigation and we had made cle clear. the deputy and i felt that the evidence developed by the special counsel was not sufficient to establish that the president commit aid crime and, therefore, it would be irresponsible and unfair for the department to release a report without stating the department's conclusions and thus leave it hanging as to whether the department considered there had been criminal conduct. so the deputy attorney general and i conducted a careful review

of the report. and that it would not constitute obstruction as a matter of law, we took each of the ten episodes and we assessed them against the analytical framework that had been set forth by the special counsel and we concluded that the evidence developed during the special counsel's investigation was not sufficient to establish that the president committed an obstruction of justice offense. let me talk a little bit about this march 24th letter and bob mueller's letter, i think, which i received on the 28th. when the report came in on the 22nd and we saw it would take a great deal of time to get it out to the public, i made the

determination that we had to put out some information about the bottom line. the body politic was in a high state of agitation. there was massive interest in learning what the bottom line results of bob mueller's investigation was, particularly as to collusion. former government officials were confidently predict iing there were people suggesting if it would take time to turn around the report and get it out, it would mean that the president was in legal jeopardy. so i didn't feel that it was in the public interest to allow this to go on for several weeks without saying anything. and so i decided to simply state what the bottom line conclusions were, which is what the department normally does, make a binary determination. is there a crime or isn't there a crime? we prepared the letter for that

purpose. to state the bottom line conclusions. we used the language from the report to state those bottom line conclusions. i analogize it after an extended verdict what the verdict is, pending the release of the full transcript. that's what we were trying to do, notify the people as to the bottom line conclusion. we were not trying to summarize the 410-page report. so i offered bob mueller the opportunity to review that letter before it went out and he declined. thursday morning i received the

letter and called bob and said what's the issue here? are you -- i asked him if he was suggesting that the march 24th letter was inaccurate and he said no, but that the press reporting had been inaccurate. and that the press was reading too much into it. i asked him specifically what his concern was and he said that his concern focused on his explanation as to why he did not reach a conclusion on obstruction. and he wanted more put out on that issue. he wanted -- he argued for putting out summaries of each volume, the executive summaries that had been written by his office and if not that, then other material that focused on the issue of why he didn't reach the obstruction question. but he was very clear with me that he was not suggesting that

we had misrepresented his report. i told bob that i was not interested in putting out summaries and i wasn't going to put out the report piecemeal. i wanted to get the whole report out. and summaries by the very definition no matter who prepared them, we would have a series of different debates and public discord over each traunch of information that went out and i wanted to get everything out at once and we should start working on that. and so the following day, i put out a letter, explaining the process we were following and stressing that the march 24th letter was not a summary of the report but a statement of the principle conclusions, and that people would be able to see bob

mueller's entire thinking when the report was made public so questions. >> thank you very much. as to the actual report itself, was there ever an occasion where you wanted to -- something was redacted from the report that mr. mueller objected to? >> i wouldn't say objected to. my understanding is the categories were defined by me and the deputy. i don't think that -- i have no -- >> did you work with him to redact the report? >> right. those categories were executed by doj lawyers working with his lawyers. i think there may be a few judgment calls, very few, as to whether or not something as a prudential matter should be

treated as a reputational interest or something. there may have been some occasions of that. >> as i understand it, you did not want to hurt somebody's reputation unless it really affected the outcome. is that correct? >> right. >> so was there any disagreement about 6e material? >> not that i'm aware of. >> any disagreement about classified information? >> not that i'm aware of. >> okay. so, the conclusions in your four-page summary, you think, accurately reflect his bottom line on collusion, is that correct? >> yes. >> you can read it for yourself if you've got any doubt. as to obstruction of justice, were you surprised he was going to let you decide? >> yes, i was surprised. i think the very purpose -- the function he was carrying out, the prosecutive, investigative and prosecutive function is performed for the purpose of -- >> how many people did he actually indict, do you know? >> i can't remember off the top

of my head. >> it was a lot. >> yeah. >> he actually has the ability to indict if he wants to. he has used that power during the investigation. is that correct? >> that's correct. and the other thing that was confusing to me is that the investigation carried on for a while as additional episodes were looked into. >> right. >> episodes involving the president. and so my question is or was, why were those investigated if, at the end of the day, you weren't going to reach a decision on them? >> so did you consult deputy attorney general rosenstein about the obstruction matter? >> constantly. >> so was he in agreement what? >> not to proceed forward with obstruction. >> right. >> okay. so very quickly, give us your reasoning why you think it would be inappropriate to proceed forward on obstruction of justice in this case.

>> well, um, generally speaking, an obstruction case typically has two aspects to it. one, there's usually an underlying criminality aspect to it. >> let's stop right there. >> yeah. >> was there an underlying crime there? >> no. >> usually there is. >> usually. but it's not necessary. sort of the paradigmatic case is there's an underlying crime and the person or people indicated concerned about that criminality being discovered take an inherently malignant act, such as destroying documents. >> he fired comey, people were concerned, to stop the investigation.

comy, i do not have confidence in him, comey, any longer. that was chuck schumer november 2nd, 2016. i think he, comey, should take a hard look at what he has done and i think it would not be a bad thing for the american people if he did step down. bernie sanders, january 15th, 2017. the president ought to fire comey immediately. and he ought to initiate an investigation. that is congressman nadler november 14th, 2016. did you have a problem with the way comey handled the clinton email investigation? >> yes. i said so at the time. >> okay. so given the fact that a lot of people think comey should be fired, did you find that to be a persuasive act of obstructing justice? >> no. i think even the report at the end of the day came to the conclusion, if you read the

analysis, that a reason that loomed large was his refusal to tell the public what he was continuously telling the president, that the president was not under investigation. >> as for how we go forward, would you recommend that this committee and every other committee of congress harden our infrastructure against future russian attacks? >> absolutely. >> do you think russia is still up to it? >> yes. >> do you think other countries may get involved in our elections in 2020? >> yes. >> you would support an effort by congress working with the administration to harden our electoral infrastructure? >> yes. >> is that one of the takeaways of the mueller report? >> yes. >> do you share my concerns about the fisa warrant process? >> yes. >> do you share my concerns about the investigation and how and why it was opened?

>> yes. >> do you share my concerns that the lack of professionalism in the clinton email investigation is something we should all look at? >> yes. >> do you expect to change your mind about the bottom line conclusions of the mueller report? >> no. >> do you know bob mueller? >> yes. >> do you trust him? >> yes. >> how long have you known him? >> 30 years roughly. >> do you think he had the time he needed? >> yes. >> do you think he had the money he needed? >> yes. >> do you think he had the resources he needed? >> yes. >> do you think he did a thorough job? >> yes, and i think he feels he did a thorough job and had the evidence to make the calls. >> do you think the president's campaign in 2016 was thoroughly looked at in terms of whether or not they colluded with the russians? >> yes. >> and the answer is no, according to bob mueller? >> that's right. >> he couldn't decide about

obstruction. you did. is that correct? >> that's right. >> do you feel good about your decision? >> absolutely. thank you very much. senator feinstein? >> chairman, mr. attorney general, the special counsel's report describes how the president directed white house counsel don mcgahn to fire special counsel mueller and later told mcgahn to write a letter, quote, for our records, end quote, stating that the president had not ordered him to fire mueller. the report also recounts how the president made repeated efforts to get mcgahn to change his story. knowing that mcgahn believed the president's version of events was false, the special counsel found, and i quote, substantial evidence, end quote, that the president tried to change mcgahn's account in order to prevent further scrutiny of the president toward the investigation. special counsel also found that

mcgahn is a credible witness with no motive to lie or exaggerate, given the position he held in the white house. here is the question. does existing law prohibit efforts to get a witness to lie, to say something the witness believes is false? >> yes. lie to the government, yes. >> and what law is that? >> obstruction statutes. >> the obstructions statute. and you don't have it before you? >> i'm not sure what you were referring to. it was probably 1512-c-2. >> so these things, in effect, constitute obstruction? >> you're talking in general terms. you're not talking -- >> i'm talking about specifically, yes, you're correct in a sense. its substantial -- the special

counsel in his report found substantial evidence that the president tried to change mcgahn's account in order to prevent, and this is the quote, further scrutiny of the president toward the investigation, end quote. special counsel also found mcfwchltm mcgahn is a credible witness with no motive to lie or exaggerate. what i'm asking you then, is that a credible charge under the obstruction statute? >> we felt that that episode, the government would not be able to establish obstruction. if you go back and you look at the episode where the president gave mcgahn an instruction, mcgahn's version of that is quite clear and each time he gave it, which is that the instruction said go to

rosenstein, raise the issue of conflict of interest and mueller has to go because of this conflict of interest. so there's no question that that -- that whatever instruction was given mcgahn had to do with mueller's conflict of interest. now, the president later said that what he meant was that the conflict of interest should be raised with rosenstein but the decision should be left with rosenstein. on the other end of the spectrum, it appears that mcgahn felt it was more directive and that the president was essentially saying push rosenstein to invoke a conflict of interest to push mueller out. wherever it fell on that spectrum of interest, "the new york times" story was very different.

"the new york times" story said flat out that the president directed the firing of mueller. he told mcgahn, fire mueller. now there's something very different between firing a special counsel outright, which suggests ending the investigation and having a special counsel removed for conflict, which suggests you're going to have another special counsel. so the fact is that even under mcgahn's -- and then as the report says, and recognizes, there is evidence the president truly felt that "the times" article was inaccurate and wanted mcgahn to correct t we believe it would be impossible for the government to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that the president understood that he was instructing mcgahn to say something false because it wasn't necessarily false. moreover, mcgahn had, weeks before, already given testimony

to the special counsel and the president was aware of that. and as the report indicates, it could also have been the case that he was primarily concerned about press reports and making it clear that he never outright directed the firing of mueller. so, in terms of the request to ask mcgahn to memorialize that fact, we do not think in this case that the government could show corrupt intent beyond a reasonable doubt. >> just to finish this, but you still have a situation where a president essentially tries to change the lawyer's account in order to prevent further criticism of himself. >> that's not a crime.

>> so you can, in this situation, instruct someone to lie? >> no. it has to be -- well, to be obstruction of justice, the lie has to be tied to impairing the evidence in a particular proceeding. mcgahn had already given his evidence, and i think it would be plausible that the purpose of mcgahn memorializing what the president was asking was to make the record that the president never directed him to fire. there is a distinction between saying to someone go fire him. go fire mueller and saying, have him removed based on conflict. >> and what would -- >> different results. >> what would that conflict be? >> well, the difference between them is if you remove someone for a conflict of interest, then there would be presumably another person appointed. >> but you have to have it in

this kind of situation an identifiable conflict that made sensor else doesn't it just become a fabrication? >> well, this -- now we're going to shift from the issue of writing the memo or somehow putting out a release later on and the issue of the actual direction to mcgahn. so the question on the direction to mcgahn has a number of different levels to it. and first, as a matter of law, i think the department's position would be that the president can direct the termination or the replacement of a special counsel. and as a matter of law, the obstruction statute does not reach that conduct. putting that aside, the next question would be, even if it reached the conduct, could you here establish corrupt intent

beyond a reasonable doubt? what makes this case very interesting is that when you take away the fact that no underlying criminal conduct and you take away the fact that there was no inherently maligned instructive act, that is that the president was carrying out his constitutional duties, what is the impact of taking away the underlying crime? and it's not as -- the report suggests one impact is that we have to find some other reason why the president would obstruct the investigation. but there's another impact, which is if the president is being falsely accused, which the evidence now suggests that the accusations against him were false, and he knew they were false, and he felt that this investigation was unfair,