>> as they often do on a friday morning, the u.s. house will finish up their work early in the day. our capitol hill producer tweeting that house members will vote early this morning on legislation to consolidate information technology in the federal government and then head home for the weekend. they won't take up the tax bill they had planned to take up. the republican plan, richard ruben reports, republicans are struggling to advance their year-end tax bill. with just a few legislative days to go until they relinquish the majority to the democrats. he wrates the g.o.p. leaders decided late thursday that the measure already mired in partisan disagreements and facing a crowded senate calendar won't get scheduled for a house vote today.

leaving its fate uncertain. we do know the house should be back in about 25 minutes or so. we'll have live coverage when they come in. until then, an update on the latest in the mueller investigation from today's "washington journal." >> washington journal continues. back we want to welcome our guest to talk about the trump administration. what is your reading of the guilty plea yesterday? >> they are more questions than answers. it represents an ominous stage for the white house. how serious it is is an open question. caroline is not your ideal witness for anything. he seems to have achieved this almost perfect record of the accused of lying to everyone on everything at every time until

this point but mueller is saying i think he is telling the truth now. that his mosting damaging to the president is he lied to congress about win negotiations and discussions were going on with regard to this project in moscow. it did so in part to limit the russian investigation. if the president knew he was going to lie or encouraged them to lie that could represent a serious crime. it could be subornation of perjury. those represent serious torpedoes in the water that could hit the white house depending on what he says next. trump allegedly continuing negotiations during the campaign, that is not a crime. saying, critics are supplies for them a possible reason why the president was

solicitous towards the russians. so there is a lot of stuff floating around in the air. we don't have anything concrete that would connect president trump with a clear crime. post reports what you are saying. some argue mueller appears to be person showed trump speaking a financial endorsement on a private project while vladmir putin was offering to say flattering things about drug. >> this is not the first of those allegations. the clintons were criticized because huge amounts, tens of millions were given to the clinton foundation when hillary clinton was secretary of state. the washington post reported a lot of that was an effort to buy influence and access to hillary clinton.

the amount of money being given to the foundation dropped at a huge rate. when you make those types of arguments you have to have a , there.there major of washington -- that is the nature of washington unfortunately. >> what do you think robert mueller is doing here? >> what i find most interesting about this, this is a guy who mueller wanted to plead guilty. over what was essentially the draft plea agreement mueller wanted him to sign. muellerinteresting is is clearly punting for trump. the four there was speculation, is he trying to back trump. i think it is clear the answer

is yes. tose are moves by mueller get a clean shot at trump. they did not succeed. does he have something more than these individuals? >> michael cohen has made many statements to the house and senate. he put out a statement talking , which wasroject more or less of an option we were looking at. it was written about in newspapers. it was a well-known project. it was during the early part of 16. it lasted a short time. i did not do the project. doing aot talking about project. we are talking about not doing a project. convicted, iwas guess. he was convicted with a

long-term sentence on things totally unrelated to the trump organization having to do with the irs. and i don't know exactly. he was convicted of various things unrelated to us. a fairly long jail sentence. he is a weak person. by being weak unlike other to do, what he is trying is get a reduced sentence. he is lying about a project that everybody knew about. we were open with it. >> this is another curious aspect. he shouldn't be talking like this about cases he might be involved with but that is something he clearly is not listening to his own counsel and many people in congress. out, heg that stands

calls this guy a bomb and how unbelievable he is but he was your personal attorney. he was the guy that you kept on sending people to. it really has the striking conflict. when the special counsel investigation began i said publicly, he needs to sever michael cohen. visitation was well known to most of us. who had and lawyer awful reputation. that was my first priority when asked what legal advice would you give the president. ultimately lots of people said that but he didn't listen. brought them to his resort to have a public dinner and embraced him. it doesn't make a lot of sense to most of us. even just retaining someone like michael colin. >> what to make of paul manafort?

oneanafort is not the first . clearly manafort did not give mueller what mueller wanted. or at least all of what mueller wanted. and hours ins these interviews with mueller. presumably he gave them something. this is the first time he has had a witness blow up on him. you had pop who was the first big lead. he became almost a hostile witness. notably the court refuse. the court gave papadopoulos exceptionally light sentence. it is not clear what he has gotten. so many witnesses seem to have pushed back on mueller. with manafort there is this intriguing question of whether

mueller played manafort whether manafort played mueller. manafort looks now like he had a plan all along to basically switch sides again. this is a wonderful beltway sort of side quarterbacking. mueller got this plea right after manafort was handed his head in virginia. he was not only convicted of multiple counts. he came with the table being swept of all counts that he would have been convicted on everything. he was heading to d.c. where it was a worse trial waiting for him, where he was looking at horrific allegations come all of which seemed supported by the prosecution. mueller,lips with

avoids those convictions. plates to 10 counts and sits there with mueller for months. many people think that mueller was dangling a plea. send him a way she could do that unless trump pardons him. host: we will go to houston, texas. caller: i'm trying to call why everybody links to trump. why is everybody excusing trump of everything? like all these people are not credible. trump.fend

here is not there. all this collusion and stuff with russia, everything. he said russia, if you're listening do this. what he isust ignore doing. what is going on here? man controlling everybody in the united states here now? everybody is looking at the united states and just laughing. this is terrible. guest: the best advice i would give you is don't be played by either side. both sides are throwing stuff into the air. solely at to look what facts have been released in terms of criminal conduct. has been no there

finding directly linking him of a clear crime. that doesn't mean mueller can't do that. more importantly when you talk about apologists for trump or kinde accused of the same of spin ultimately they don't matter. what matters is the special counsel. he is driving hard. the last two weeks has shown he is still trying to back trump. the only reason for these conflicts to come up is they did not give him material on trump. you can rest assured at least one person is not falling for that type of spin. that is robert mueller. host: tony in florida. caller: good morning. a pleasure to speak with you. mr. trump recently declassified documents that the doj and u.k.

particular did not want released. my question is what happens when the declassified documents that show the bad actors of department of justice and fbi all become public, and the truth comes out this investigation was paid for by the clinton gang. fusion gps was involved and possibly british in my six involved as well. what happens when this information comes out? thet: i'm interested in files application. i think there are legitimate questions about what happened. i have been a critic of pfizer. courtt encountered the when i was an intern at the nsa and had to go into that court. i became an opponent of the court which i think is only loosely defined as a court when you consider the standards they use.

every american should be troubled. part onlied in large opposition research by the opposing party of donald trump, and the opposing administration does raise the question. i'm not convinced that is the case but seeing that application would help. there is a lot of overclassification that has occurred. we have had the fbi refused to release information. when that is finally released, it is clear this was not a legitimate argument for classification. some of the material the fbi has been fighting was material that would embarrass the fbi. it would not disclose sources and methods. it would be a good thing to have greater transparency.

>> what about james comey wanting to testify publicly? >> i think comey is dead wrong. i don't even know the basis in which you go to court and say i'm not going to answer a legitimate subpoena because the conditions aren't right for me. most judges would hand your head in the courtroom. that tear counsel and say you don't get to choose. that is the point of a subpoena. -- it is an indication not an invitation to a tea party. they say just come. what he's trying to do here is delay until the democrats come to power. a lot of judges would be miffed saying you are trying to use this to delay. i do not think he will be successful. host: let's go to hot springs, arkansas. surely. caller: good morning. i have watched on c-span2's two

separate times. mr. seymour hearst, a reporter. he made this documentary. i don't know why other people had not watched that. it seems like if they would just show that everybody, especially in the mornings when people are watching, he said this whole thing was started by him. , evene the cia and fbi dick cheney involved in it. if i know that and i'm just an in the country, why is everybody in washington act like they are so crazy and don't know anything. not anfirst of all it is act. they are crazy. that is very helpful. people have to dig into

this on their own. when i said don't be a chomp, voters have been played by both parties and it is not the first time. reporters have to keep their wits about them. they have to look into this on their own. truth there are arguments on both sides of this. i think there is a legitimate are you from trump supporters that how this investigation began is worrisome. that the extent to which the steele dossier was used, the fact the person was targeted was never charged. it is not clear what was there to justify the secret investigation. on the other hand there are legitimate reasons ordering special counsel. i didn't support the special counsel investigation because i was not clear on what the crime

was your supposed to have been articulated crime. collusion is not a crime. that is something i wrote about at the beginning. , andtrump fire james comey said now we need a special counsel, the public has a right to expect an independent investigation. at the end of the day history is going to show there is merit on both sides but both parties have tried to spin this in a grotesque way. which should give the president the most worry? guest: that is an interesting question. it is the biggest torpedo in the water? i would have to say michael cohen. even though he has zero credibility in terms of his loose understanding of the truth. i went has this unethical practice of taping clients

without their knowing it and he has kept all of these records. the greatest threat is probably .n a federal election violation those types of collateral crimes. not dealing with russia. there is no indication he was a key player in the most serious allegations. but he could get the president trouble on those collateral issues. that is not good. manafort there is also not a clear indication manafort was ever that close to trump. he had a her rent a sleep bad reputation in washington before this started. most were flabbergasted the trump administration picked paul manafort. he was perfectly radioactive. he had sleazy associations. i sleazy approach to the law. he parachuted in for a short

his ukrainianinto contexts. if the russians did want to collude and you had to round up the usual suspects, paul manafort would be on top of that list. that is a guy who will collude with anyone at any time if it works for him. that is why mueller looked at manafort. this is the guy if i wanted to do something like that would be on the top of the rolodex. been anybody charged with collusion? host: no. a lot of people were talking at the crime of collusion. there is no crime of collusion in the criminal code. people begin to accept that and they say how about conspiracy to defraud the united states? you get looser and looser in terms of definitions. cautions, you have to

be careful. they are extending these crimes to a point that could come back you ared us, where criminalizing what may be political activity. as of now there is no crime i connected to the president. he issued this statement that he did not know about lake -- wikileaks. that doesn't necessarily mean you can't have obstruction of other crimes. if robert mueller agrees with that, that he doesn't have it evidence on those points it is going to be harder to extend the criminal narrative against the president. be the crimeuld that he would hand over to the house? guest: i would separate two things. it is going to be a target rich environment. once the report gets to the

house, it is going to be damming . the president has made the situation worse for himself by a lot of statements and actions. ,f he had not fire james comey if he fired him at the beginning of the term or weighted to the end and fired him we would never have had the special counsel. fresh investigation would be over. -- a lot of the investigation would be over. a lot of this is self-inflicted wounds. i think the greatest threat to the president has always been collateral crimes. election violations and those things. those may be coming out in the report. they may be able to investigate that further. the issue of state charges, if the president were to fire -- his pardonfort,

doesn't save anyone from state charges including himself. this will continue until the end of his term. hello. one quick comment. this whole special investigation, grand jury, none of it is very good. it doesn't sit well with me. i can be asked about something i did that was not a crime that i do not want to talk about and should not be made to, should .ot be forced into a room i don't call that just is. when i think about the comment about what a bad guy putin is. are we the pot calling the kettle black here? greta, get well soon. host: thank you. , the: what i would say president has every right not to .nswer questions

a president should answer questions. not because it was the smart move as an individual. it is because he is the president of the united states. i thought bill clinton was wrong in creating this narrow scope of questions. i still don't understand why can start agreed to that. he is the president accused of violating federal law. they should investigate those questions. the rightshave all of citizens. bill clinton could have just said i'm going to plead the fifth. i'm not going to answer a question. that would be the end of it. instead he tried to talk himself around perjury and ended up committing perjury. a federal judge said it was perjury.

that is the one thing the president can't do. you are going to refuse to answer and be held in contempt? you can't live. he has not made many statements to investigators. he's only made written answers. vulnerability is actually much limited. the people that are more at risk are those that made a lot of statements. people like michael: and like donald trump, jr. who is on the record with a lot of sworn statements. one of the questions that all of us are looking at is whether robert mueller might go after donald trump, jr.. if he actually did, this would change -- change rapidly. not in a good way. he could get a response from a father, not a president and this could turn ugly.

fire people.could he could hand out pardons. he could take aggressive action. one theory is that if donald trump, jr. did have some vulnerability it would make sense from mueller to do it last because he knows this is a tipping point. things will turn ugly. that does not mean he will. there are a few people watching closely that be the subject of potential indictments. with all of these -- what -- roger stone. maybe oliver st >> "washington journal" live every day at 7:00 a.m. eastern. we'll break away here. the house coming back for the final work of the week. clerk: a chapter