this is cnn breaking news. we are following breaking news. we want to welcome our viewers here in the united states and around the world. you are watching cnn live special coverage, truly a remarkable statement in the last hour fraumom the russia special counsel robert mueller after two years of public silence, mueller giving a ten minute summary of his investigation that injects new drama into the big debate over impeachment. mueller restated his core findings. the russian interference in the 2016 presidential election here in the united states was clear and systematic.

two, there was not enough evidence to charge a broader conspiracy between the trump campaign and russian meddlers. and three, if the special counsel could have said no obstruction as the president claims he did, he would have said so. listen to this. >> if we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so. we did not, however, make a determination as to whether the president did commit a crime. the introduction to the volume two of our report explains that decision. it explains that under long standing department policy, a president cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office. that is unconstitutional. even if the charge is kept under seal and hidden from public view, that, too, is proprohibit >> the president says nothing changes from the mueller report,

but the russian special counsel not on the same page as the attorney general william barr who said justice department guidelines did not weigh on mueller's decision not to indict. mueller also indicated how his team thought about that decision. and his words are already stirring new and very significant pressure among democrats in the house of representatives to formally launch an impeachment process against the president of the united states. >> the constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrong doing. and beyond department policy, we regarded by principles of fairness, it would be unfair to potentially accuse somebody of a crime when there can be no court resolution of the actual charge. >> certainly, a lot to consider

and to discuss. let's start with our justice correspondent laura jared at the justice department. she was in the room when robert mueller made that ten-minute statement. the special counsel making it very clear that his hands he believes were essentially tied. >> reporter: essentially tied, wolf, because of that long standing justice department guidance on not indicting a sitting president. and i think that there had been somewhat of a confusion about how much that really weighed on the special counsel's team especially after the press conference from the attorney general bill barr. we remember last month essentially announcing the end of the investigation where he talked about the discussions of mueller around that issue in particular. he said that mueller had told him that it wasn't the case, that he was saying but for the department's guidance he would have found a crime. instead, he didn't reach that decision at all. mueller explained the reason he didn't reach that decision at all today was because of that very guidance saying that in his view it would have been

unconstitutional to try to indict a sitting president. and principles of fairness in favor of simply not reaching that decision. because of the desire to preserve evident and memories and the idea of talking to potential co-conspirators, he thought it was important to carry through with the investigation just as he explained in the report. another key take away or headline of the day was the fact that mueller makes it clear, he is not interested in testifying before members of congress. obviously, pressure has been mounting to hear from him, pressure especially among democrats after hearing from him. the ball is essentially in their court about what they are going to do with this. he made it pretty clear today i hope and expect this will be the only time that i speak about this matter essentially saying case closed. if you want to hear from me you have my testimony essentially in the report. he goes on to say that if congress forces his hand and he is forced to come essentially

that he will keep to the four corners of the report managing expectations that he will not go beyond that report as much as everyone has invested in his findings. >> we are getting more reaction coming in from the white house. let's go to our white house correspondent. >> reporter: the reactions are coming in pretty fast and furious. just minutes ago sarah sanders expanded on what president trump tweeted earlier shortly after mueller finished his statement. the president says nothing changes from the mueller report and sarah sanders says in this statement that his office is closed, the case is closed. mueller explicitly said he has nothing to add beyond the report and therefore does not plan to testify before congress. the report was clear, there was no collusion, no conspiracy and the department of justice confirmed there is no obstruction. special counsel mueller also stated that attorney general bill barr acted in good faith in his handling of the report after

two years the special counsel is moving on with his life and everyone else should do the same. that's sarah sanders doing two things at the same time, both defending bill barr's handling of the report, the summary report, that four-page letter that came out just before the full report was released with redactions. then she is also saying that at the end of the day what mueller was trying to say was that this is all there is to say about this matter. a senior white house official basically described mueller's statement as a nothing burger saying the white house does not believe that he moved the ball forward on any issues discussed in the mueller report even on the matter of whether or not congressional leaders need to take up impeachment. this official said the white house views mueller's statement as basically huing to what he said in the report and not adding anything further. sources are telling our dana bash that the president is eager to have this fight with democrats.

he is not afraid of impeachment and might view this as something that is politically helpful to him going into 2020. this is a white house who has been talking about impeachment as a real possibility believing that democrats want to go there. i don't think that they view what mueller said as making it more likely or less likely or even changing the facts that might change the minds of the american public, but if they do have to face impeachment, our sources are making it clear, president trump is willing to go there. he thinks that this could be helpful to him as he is going into his reelection fight. >> i know you are working your sources over there at the white house. i want to go up to capitol hill. reaction pouring in from lawmakers. phil mattingly is up on capitol hill are for us. >> reporter: for democrats pressing nancy pelosi to move forward on impeachment proceedings. for house democrats there are two people who matter when it comes to what their next steps will be in any investigation or potential impeachment.

it's the speaker of the house and jerry nadler. he has put out a statement saying given that special counsel mueller was unable to pursue criminal charges against the president, it falls to congress to respond to the crimes, lies and other wrong doing of president trump and we will do so. no one, not even the president of the united states is above the law. he does not weigh in specifically on impeachment. he has been in line with speaker pelosi in terms of letting the investigations play out up to this point. it is worth notice multiple members of his committee, senior members of his committee have been pushing him in that direction. we expect to hear from him a little later today. perhaps he will expand on that. another key element here was robert mueller, the special counsel repeatedly saying that he hoped he would not have to testify in front of congress saying the report spoke for itself. i have been talking to democratic officials about potential public testimony. they have made clear to me that they want to press forward for some type of public statement,

public testimony from the special counsel. obviously, nothing is solidified yet jerry nadler did not weigh in on that yet. the point made to me was they believe the statement from robert mueller today even though from the report was powerful - because people could see it. that is one of the primary reasons they wanted the special counsel to come up and testify. how that all ends up especially given what the special counsel said about his personal views on testifying is still to be determined. in terms of impeachment itself, one other thing, republican who has been very vocal on twitter about his views of the special counsel's report and views on impeachment tweeted out the ball is in our court, congress. keep an eye on that and keep an eye on how that works with the rest of the democratic caucus. if you go back to early last week the numbers pushing forward to have some type of impeachment inquiry action were growing. they were not substantial. they were not a majority, but they were growing t. started to ebb a little bit towards the end of the week. i think the expectation right now expect that growth to

continue. what leadership decides and jerry nadler decides still up in the air. >> it's a very important point. i suspect the pressure will mount on the speaker and chairman of the judiciary committee. i want to bring in former federal prosecutor ellie honig. i guess the key sentence that he made, this is mueller, as set forth in our report after that investigation, if we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said that. we did not, however, make a determination as to whether the president did commit a crime. that's a powerful statement from robert mueller. >> it is, wolf. and i think that mueller's main objective today is to push congress and light a fire and tell them you have a job to do here. mueller went out of his way to say how serious an offense of obstruction of justice is. he said it strikes at the core of the government's ability to

find facts skm to hold people accountable. then he made clear contrary to what bill barr has been saying that the d.o.j. policy was really the primary factor preventing mueller from bringing an indictment. finally, he talked about how there are other processes outside of the criminal justice process meaning congress that are in place in order to get accountability from a sitting president. you throw in the other little things like we got this evidence together so we can preserve it. i think mueller was trying to send a clear message to congress, your turn now. >> i want to bring in cnn legal analyst. what was your bottom line analysis on this point about the president did or did not commit a crime? >> i think one of the important things to remember is that most of the american public hasn't read the report. so to have robert mueller basically stand in front of the television cameras and said if we could have made a call to say that the president didn't commit a crime, we would have, but we couldn't do so. that is incredibly powerful for

the american public to see. we have seen it in the report, but it's an entirely different thing i think for mueller to say it publicly. i don't think it is an accident that bob mueller started on the question of russian interference and said the russian husband launched a concerted attack on the american election and essentially warned us to be on alert that that can happen again very soon. i think it was a powerful statement by mueller. it was short and really critical i think for the american public to see him. >> stand by. the pressure clearly is going to mount on the democrats in the house to do something as a result of what we heard from mueller. >> that was his intention, absolutely his intention. you heard phil ticking off some of the things in the short term what we have heard from the people whose opinions matter most including and especially the house judiciary chairman jerry nadler. leaned really far into the idea that congress wouldn't have much of a choice.

on the campaign trail, we are seeing more democrats whose voices are loud and can contribute to the pressure on the house speaker, take steps further than they have before. cory booker had not said he is for impeachment. one thing i want to tell you about the other side of this equation which is the trump political equation. communicating with a source familiar with the president's thinking on this who said explicitly that basically bring it on, that they would be happy to have impeachment proceedings because they think that this will emboldin their base and help them on the campaign trail in 2020. >> it's a difficult decision these democrats now have to make because the majority in the house of representatives presumably could have the preemt process begin in the house. and they have the majority if they want to impeach the president they can, but they don't have the majority in the

u.s. senate. you need two thirds majority. 67 senators. they clearly don't have that. that is probably one of the major reasons that nancy pelosi has been reluctant to move forward. >> one of the things more clearly that sort of describes what her thinking is her view that you have to bring the public along. you can't just do this. you have to have the public with you before you do something like this. i think their whole plan, the plan for the democrats has been to start with robert mueller. get him up there and have him say with his unimpeachable reputation to say what exactly was going on between the lines of this report. so that's what democrats want and robert mueller in his own words says i would not provide information beyond that which is already public in any appearance before congress. he is trying to say i will stick to these words. here is the thing. today you saw words that were

slightly different. i think those words provided clarity for those of us who are trying to under what he meant in that report. and i think that that's the reason why it is important to get that testimony. i know he doesn't want to do it publically perhaps because of the political spectacle of it. i think it is important for members of congress to hear from him. so there is some way for perhaps to be private testimony and then of course that would be released in transcript form. i think it is incumbent upon members of congress to hear that. >> he made it clear he doesn't even want to do that. >> i think he understands it is more useful to democrats for there to be public testimony because every television screen will be tuned to what robert mueller has to say. >> one of the reasons you are seeing things that will break the fact check machine. most public statements from the president's tweet and sarah sanders are much more measured.

jay seccialo saying the attorney general decided no obstruction. much more measured, if you will, they understand today is not a good day for them. robert mueller saying what he said is quite damning to the president. to the pelosi question, we covered the white house during the last impeachment. she lived through that. there was a back lash against the republicans in the end. she knows how unpredictable these things are. she knows 2016 was all about trump. 2018 was about issues, health care, the economy and the under current was how the president conducts his business, the temperament and tweets and the democrats won big. she thinks that's a much better terrain for democrats to be on. to dana's point, the speaker worries, the president's only path to victory they believe is a repeat of 2016. they think on this day speaker pelosi thinks that's the risk of

impeachment. >> we shouldn't act like democrats are sitting on their hands and waiting to flip the impeachment switch and not doing anything to investigate the president, his actions, this white house. they have already subpoenaed a number of people that they want to testify before their committee. mcgahn said no. now they are going after hope hicks. they are trying to get the president's financial records. a number of committees have gone before the judge and made the case for why to have access to those records. i think it does open it up to political back lash. to the point wanting to bring the public along they are taking the steps and trying to say let's try to get more witnesses to speak about what they witnessed. and maybe you will start to see the ground shift further. mueller maybe was the first step in that today.

>> i think she also would like to see more republicans in addition to justin amash the only one saying go hade and begin the impeachment process. >> to move that ball forward, one thing mueller said today invites them to keep trying to get those underlying documents what he referred to as the work product. we are not vauchbinvolved in th fight. some of those materials could be helpful towards moving that ball forward. >> if the democrats in the judiciary committee or other committees for that matter, but let's say the judiciary committee what robert mueller to appear, can they force him to do so? >> they can issue a subpoena to him. he will soon no longer be a d.o.j. employee. he is subject to mandatory process by these committees and he can be required to testify.

he said if you do that essentially i'm going to read you my report. and that's not so bad because most people including lindsey graham by his own admission, haven't finished reading this report. so it's important as in the water gate investigation for these witnesses to come forward publically so we can hear and make evaluations about what they have to say. mueller cast himself sort of lig lightly. he gave his little road map and left it to congress. kent star on the other hand testified full throttle for 14 hours. ethics adviser quit over that testimony. mueller doesn't want to go that way. if you want me there, i'll say it again. let's get the other witnesses there so america can hear and make informed decisions because right now they are not making that. >> it was important to public

opinion and to members of congress to see john dean, to see people go before congress and offer their own accounts and speak in public before a camera. that had a huge impact on public opinion and maybe things have changed since then. >> you had senior members of the president's incumbent party saying it is important. that is the significance of today. there is more pressure from the 2020 candidates and more pressure from chairman nadler saying we have to air this out. speaker pelosi wants to do it slowly and methodically. take it into 2020 from an investigative standpoint. but if no republican but justin amash breaks from the president, he can try to contain this. all the statements you have seen so far, haven't seen a statement from a leading republican saying what bob mueller said today is terrible. you see mostly stick your head in the ground. >> you had howard baker all republicans basically saying to the president it's over o.

in the end he was forced to resign. >> which was in the end. that's the important point that everybody is making here. f baby steps. especially in a twitter universe where things are supposed to happen very fast, it didn't happen fast during water gate. that is why -- it took a lot of time. maybe robert mueller doesn't want to be that guy to be the one to testify to help the democrats bring the public along. given the situation that there is nobody inside the president's orbit, maybe don mcgahn, but obviously he is being kept from testifying, he is the only show in town. he has the credibility. >> the pressure clearly will mount on mueller to make an appearance. democrats want him to show up. >> they do. as we pointed out earlier, there is no mention of it in chairman nadler's statement. i heard from a senior democratic strategist who appeared pretty outraged that mueller is saying

i hope this will be my last appearance. let me quote to dwrouyou. he said he should be subpoenaed the day he leaves the department of justice. he has no basis in which to resist a subpoena to testify. there are dozens of legitimate questions and goes on to list them. these are the questions we all know which is why didn't you interview the president? why did you decide not to do that? what did you think of these campaign law violations? what do you think of the legal ruling that kept you from indicting the president? and on and on and on. and he believes, the strategist believes, that it is the democrats' responsibility, in fact, to not let mueller go and just say you spoke in your piece and you said you are not going to go beyond the report. and this strategist clearly indicates that there is going to be a big discussion among democrats about next steps and

how they respond to mueller which is probably why nadler didn't mention it in his first statement. >> very important point, indeed. everybody stand by. there is a lot more we are following. our special live coverage will continue right after a quick break. plants capture co2. what if other kinds of plants captured it too? if these industrial plants had technology that captured carbon like trees we could help lower emissions.

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cnn just spoke with senator kamala harris who sits on the senate judiciary committee. >> reporter: she is in the middle of her town hall in anderson, south carolina. just before this began, she pulled a couple of reporters aside. it was a news conference just very brief because she wanted to talk about bob mueller. and what she essentially said is that bob mueller may have been having a press conference, but the way she read it as a member of the judiciary committee is that he was sent satellite edino congress that congress has a constitutional duty to move forward with impeachment proceedings. i want to play a little bit of the q&a she had with us just a few minutes ago. >> it was a message that mr. mueller was sending to you, a sitting member of congress. and do you have a reaction to the president's tweets saying the case is closed and nothing has changed? >> i try not to respond to those

tweets. i will say what i think is clear is that a fair inference that bob mueller was essentially referring impeachment to the united states congress. >> reporter: she followed that up with a tweet saying it was a constitutional duty. she also in that brief gaggle with reporters did say that she felt that the u.s. attorney barr did mislead the public. and as she speaks now, i do want to separate what's happening with the calls for impeachment proceedings to what we are hearing on the campaign trail. you are not really hearing her talk about mueller with this crowd. she is talking about more the kitchen table issues, more about the economy and what she wants to do if she were to be elected president. certainly hanging over all of this is everything happening in washington. >> dramatic developments unfolding. i want to bring in jeff zeleny also getting reaction from some

of the other democratic presidential candidates. >> we are indeed. senator harris sits on that judiciary committee. some other senators and others running for president don't have as much jurisdiction. everyone is indeed weighing in. cory booker is weighing in for the first time. let's take a look at what he sent out. he said robert mueller's statement made it clear congress has a legal and moral obligation to begin impeachment proceedings immediately. that is the first time that senator booker has gone this far. by day's end, it is hard to imagine that most democratic presidential candidates will not be in a similar position. elizabeth warren who is not on the committee has been out front on this talking about the need for impeachment inquiry for about a month or so. she says this mueller's statement made clear it is an impeachment referral and it is up to congress to act. they should.

so we are also seeing similar comments come in from beto o'rourke, mayor pete buttigieg and others. we are waiting for reaction from former vice president joe biden. he is campaigning in dallas today. we expect him to have a comment on this, as well. one thing i think the bigger picture politics, there is no question now speaker pelosi is backed into a corner, if you will, by some of this tlmpt are going to be many democrats running for president and not who are going to be sounding the alarm and beating the drum for impeachment inquiry. we do not know politically how this will end. we should point that out. even though the president says he does welcome an impeachment fight, he believes it would rally his base, we have no idea what that dynamic would do. either bob mueller is handing president trump a life line today or he is not. but at this early stage, we have a significant shift today in this conversation here about the speed of an impeachment inquiry. >> things are beginning to move

pretty quickly. thank you very much. i know you will get more reaction. john king, what's going to happen? >> there is pressure on the speaker now. you see the democratic candidates who are competing in a contested primary with 23 candidates who are understanding activist base. people most angry at the president and most energized in the democratic electorate, it's not universal across the democratic party. that's why you see these candidates, the shifts started several weeks ago and today with cory booker and kamala harris. if you are speaker pelosi and facing pressure, is the country ready for this? and would it hurt the democrats? she is the top democratic elected official in the country. so you are watching the republicans. having justin amash on your side is great. that's one lonely republican who is normally an outliar. lindsey graham issued a statement. he is the chairman of the senate

judiciary committee. he said move on. the number two in the house leadership steve scalise saying it is time to end the madness. if you read the mueller report, should the president have picked up and called his former campaign adviser to ask him to get involved. what about the russian interference? should there be a law or policy about this question? can don jr. be direct messaging with wiki leaks? republicans don't want to touch any of this. they don't want to talk about any of this. they want to put their head in the ground and pretend it never happened. >> staying on the politics of this about the fact that robert mueller leaned more into the notion that congress needs to start impeachment proceedings than he has before and that is what kamala harris took from it but robert mueller's statement was incredibly nuanced. he does nuance. and for the public to come along

with nancy pelosi, with these democrats who are saying you need to start this, they do need a robert mueller type to be less nuanced and more black and white because that's the world in which we are living. the hope was that he would do that and would be pulled into that via questioning and public testimony on capitol hill. what he was trying to say is i'm who i am and i'm not going to change that so don't bother. >> he could accomplish that for the democrats even sticking to his report. in his report he said i investigated ten areas of obstructive conduct. as to at least three of them, i found substantial evidence of that. i'm not charging him, but i found that. if he were able to testify as to those findings of substantial evidence of obstructive conduct, then you have mcgahn and priebus and the note takers and hope hicks. then maybe people who are reading this report get a flavor

of what really was at the heart of what mueller was saying in part two of that report. >> i do think that the other side of this speaking of moving on, you know who is not moving on, bill barr. he has launched an investigation of the investigation. i think it's also important to go back to what mueller was talking about in his comments today because a lot has been said about the president that this is a coup. we know bill barr has deep skepticism about the origins of the investigation. didn't think it was really something that deserved what we have had for the last two years. and what you saw mueller say specifically, there were members of the russian military that launched a concerted attack on our political system. he also says that they attacked the clinton campaign. he says the releases were designed and timed to interfere with our election and to damage a presidential candidate. he is talking about hillary

clinton. he mentioned hillary clinton in here. i think it helps to remember where this began because mueller is telling us that this is not a coup. this is a real thing. it was an important thing. i think it's a message to congress. read volume one. don't just focus on volume two. read volume one because even though we didn't find sufficient evidence to charge conspiracy, there is evidence here, there is plenty of evident of the members of the trump campaign, people associated with the campaign knowingly encouraging help from the russians, expecting it, even, and never calling the fbi to say there is something weird happening here, we think you should know about it. never does that happen. so mueller was speaking loud and clear here today. don't just focus on volume two. volume one is also important. >> i agree. as you are both saying, there is enough evidence that he has uncovered to give congress the

road map. but most importantly, in terms of moving the political ball, i think they need to stop looking back at their historical precedence and be so timid about it. this is not like water gate. this is not like clinton. it's not a sex scandal. it's a different scenario. they need to use the evidence they have to begin to talk about it, to get more of it and to educate the american people rather than just being guided by this went wrong in the past. we don't have this. we don't have somebody. john dean isn't around for us. we don't have those things. they have other things, though. >> you are seeing a very distinct clear difference between the democrat party and the republican party in the sense if we flip tables here the proceedings would have started already just as we saw a supreme court justice blocked in the final year of a presidential election. the republicans have a story of plowing into these things. democrats are much more cautious. that's not a criticism.

that's an observation. in the context of speaker pelosi, she lived through this last time. and she saw the unexpected, the unpredictability of it. so her word is caution. slow down. think about everything. in her case, think particularly about the 20 or so most vulnerable members of her conference who have to go home to districts the president carried or districts hillary clinton just barely carried. she has a complicated argument to make. she has been successful with holding out. how long can she hold that? >> the white house statement frau from sarah sanders concluded by saying the special counsel is moving on with his life and everyone else should do the same. but the white house is still applauding the attorney general bill barr for launching a new investigation of the investigation. >> and the special counsel is moving on with his life because he is saying there is nothing else i can do here. this is now up to you, congress. i have done everything within my

power. so it is up to you to move the ball forward. and they are moving on in the sense that they think the case is closed against the president. >> they want the other investigation to begin. >> they want it investigated. i think to john's point about if the rules were reversed, the other thing that sits with me on this is republicans would be lighting their hair on fire if this were a democratic candidate. the party of national security. that's how the g.o.p. sees themselves. there was some kind of foreign interference in our election. if you want to move forward then let the white house take that part seriously, the part about election interference and they are not stable, they are continuing to be these attempts to influence them by foreign governments. we have not seen the republican party championing those efforts. we don't see the white house talk about it. and it's the democrats who are running in 2020 who have introduced these bills that are calling for paper ballots. i think we are going to hear more of that on the trail.

the other thing you can talk about is we are for securing our elections. that is something that president trump won't talk about because he is so scared that it makes his victory look illegitimate. >> it is across the board. you said the president days ago saying it is no big deal that north korea is lobbing missiles and you get two or three republicans who will speak out against that. most hope nobody calls me because they don't want to have to give an honest answer. >> as the new investigation is launched by the attorney general bill par into the origins of the investigation, we just heard the special counsel robert mueller make it clear this was not a witch hunt. this was not a hoax. he says at the very end of his ten minute statement before i step away i want to thank the attorneys, the fbi agents, analysts and professional staff who helped us conduct this investigation in a fair and independent manner. these individuals spent nearly two years with the special

counsel's office were of the highest integrity. he is telling the president stop saying what you're saying about these 13 angry democrats who wanted to remove him in a koup. >> the president may rue the day that he asked bill barr to investigate this. if bill barr is an honest broker which i think he is more than he is not, then i think he will find what general baker of the fbi said and what james comey said and what everyone else said there was a proper predicate for the opening of this investigation from foreign service calling us. as to foreign intelligence court surveillance act, there may be improvements that could have been done back a year ago when that was up for consideration, could be done going forward. but it's not going to undermine

the legitimacy of the origins of this investigation. >> i spoke to some republicans who agree that in the end bill barr and the white house may rue the day that they decided to launch this new investigation. >> what a damning statement that is about the times we live in and you think the attorney general is more of an honest broker than not. think about that. this is the top law enforcement official of the united states of america and we are having a conversation we think he is more of an honest broker than he is not as opposed to thank god we have an independent attorney general who will read the constitution and make the right call. that is a legitimate question because if you read his letter to congress about the mueller report and read the special counsel's letter or read the 400 pages of the mueller report, what the attorney general has said and written publicly is inconsistent with what robert mueller said. the fact that we have to have this conversation is a damning indictment of the time. >> it is 448 pages to be

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it's me. me, me, me. hey guys! you're gonna want to get in on this. i know how to those guys in here. let's pause the internet on their devices. wohhh? huhhhh? [ grumbling ] all: sausages! mmm, mmmm. bon appetite. make time for what matters. pause your wifi with xfinity xfi and see the secret life of pets 2 in theaters. welcome back to our breaking news, the special coverage, special counsel robert mueller breaking the silence on the

russia investigation on the mueller report saying it speaks for itself and if they found the president of the united states did not commit a crime, they would have said so, but they did not find that. that is clearly in contrast to what the attorney general william barr has said about all of this. here is what barr said back in april. >> we specifically asked him about the olc opinion and whether or not he was taking a position that he would have found a crime but for the existence of the olc opinion. he made it very clear several times that that was not his position. he was not saying that but for the olc opinion he would have found a crime. he made it clear that he had not made the determination that there was a crime. >> let's bring in our cnn contributor who is joining us right now as the author of the threat matrix. what do you think?

you're an expert in this area. >> well, obviously, we weren't in the room with the conversation between barr and mueller. it seems unlikely that barr is accurately representing that conversation because mueller said quite the opposite which is that he was never in a position to charge the president and knew that up front and was never going to. and then he had the incredibly pointed statement that if he could have cleared the president, he would have, but at the conclusion of their investigation, they couldn't do so. >> it was a very significant statement. let me read it one more time. if we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said that. we did not however make a determination as to whether the president did commit a crime. you have covered robert mueller for many years. were you surprised to hear him make that specific statement as bluntly as he did?

>> not inso far as we have already seen that statement almost word for word in the report itself, but i do think it was remarkable that mueller came out and stressed that single point in his statement today. this again is the only time he has spoken publicly about the investigation in two years. he was somber. he was brave. there was sort of none of the light that you see in his private interactions. this was mueller at his most serious standing probably for the last time at the podium of the justice department where he has given the better part of 50 years of his life. and he went out of his way to say at the conclusion of his investigation i cannot conclude that the president didn't commit a crime. >> knowing mueller as you do, was he effectively saying it's now up to you, members of congress? >> yeah. i think that's been -- that was

one of the things that surprised us when we got the original mueller report was that was much more of a referral for impeachment than any of us were expecting given barr's summary up until that point. mueller again today in pretty pointed words for bob mueller went out of his way to say the criminal justice system is not the solution for accusing the president of a crime, that the constitution lays out a different process to adjudicate that. that's a message that very clearly he is intending to send to capitol hill to say guys, i went out, i gathered the evidence. i gathered the facts. i preserved the evident, another choice phrase he used. now it's up to congress to consider whether this rises to the level of a high crime or misdemeanor. >> the pressure is clearly on congress right now.

josh campbell is with us, cnn law enforcement analyst who worked for robert mueller and james comey. what skood out to you? >> i think we are seeing the reason why the president and his allies have engaged in this nonstop campaign of attack against robert mueller, his character, his team. robert mueller stood in front of the cameras today and all but said the president of the united states committed a crime. that is jarring to the ear, but that appears to be his recommendation. also we know that the president and his team, they have lied about the investigation while it was underway so it is not surprising they would lie now that it is concluded. no matter how many times the president says there is no obstruction robert mueller does not appear to agree with him. the claim by mueller that this will likely be the last we hear from him which i don't this go will fly on capitol hill. i know that he rejects the limelight. he is not someone that seeks it out. this is a collision between an

institutionalist and people willing to attack an institution and lie about it. i think we can see a congressional subpoena in his future. the american people need to hear from him. he needs to be questioned furger. >> and the pressure will be on the house democrats if he doesn't come voluntarily to go ahead and issue that kind of subpoena. >> as i told you earlier, i heard from a senior democratic strategist who said mueller can't get away with this and they should subpoena him the day he leaves the d.o.j. and that he needs to answer questions. one of the questions, wolf, that you were talking about with garret earlier is this completely different stories we are hearing now from the attorney general and from bob mueller about how important this office of legal counsel opinion was in his decision not to indict the president of the united states or not to come to any conclusion about it because

he said today charging the president with a crime is not an option we could consider. and barr in april, as you played in that clip, said that rosenstein and i asked mueller when we met with him on march 5 whether he would have made obstruction a crime but for that office of legal counsel opinion. he made it clear that was not his position. so which is it? is it that the reason he didn't move on the president is because he knew from day one he could not move on the president? or is it as barr says that the reason that he didn't come to a decision on indictment is because there wasn't anything to indict. if you listen to the white house, rudy giuliani saying deck lination is deck lination.

whether he will cooperate or not remains to be seen, but i would not be surprised if they did subpoena him. >> what did you think of the relatively tame reaction coming from the white house? >> whenever anything is tame coming from the president you know it has been lawyered. so i think that there was a different tone coming from the president. he didn't talk about the treasonist investigators as he always does. he didn't say no collusion, no obstruction. he did say there was insufficient evident which is different from the words we heard in the past. when you hear a president who is low key it is because somebody is saying to him keep it a little quieter and he might have been listening. >> let's see if he continues to listen to that advice. stand by. everybody stand by. our special coverage will continue right after a quick break. hey! it's me! your dry skin!

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robert mueller has broken his silence speaking directly to the american people for the first time since his probe began. he defended his team. he defended his investigation. he defended his findings, but perhaps most important is what he did not do. he did not clear the president. he did the opposite. essentially mueller told the country that the president is not innocent and suggested that