announcer: c-span's washington journal live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. coming up tuesday morning, republican congressman discusses the release of the mueller report and future congressional investigations into president trump's business and political affairs. congresswoman suzan delbene a talks about her legislative responsibilities. representatives on ways to make government more effective, civil and less partisan. be sure to watch washington journal, lived at 7:00 eastern tuesday morning. join the discussion. >> to help us with our conversation this morning, paul is joining us this morning.

works at the institute. he is a cybersecurity senior fellow. part begin with the first of the principal conclusions outlined. it deals with no collusion. what did you make of what he wrote yesterday when it comes to russian interference? >> there are two parts to that question. the first part is he was quite clear that the special counsel had found that russia did 2016 electionhe through the social media effort and hacking of the dnc. of negates a theme that the president has been talking about for some time.

the president said vladimir putin told me it did not happen. if we are going to accept the conclusions, we have to accept all of them. the conspiracy between the trump campaign and russian government, we have to tentatively set those conclusions as well. there was no affirmative collusion between the campaign and the russian government. fundamentally, that is good news for america. it is also very good news for president trump. when it comes to the second part of the letter, he writes that because of difficult issues , the council did not conclude that the president obstructed justice and left it to the attorney general to make that decision.

that is getting critics backed up. that the attorney general would make that decision when a special counsel took 22 months, what do you think? >> i was listening before and one of your callers made the point that it is a bit of an unfair criticism. most of the activity that we have been talking about, that the president's actions are already in the public domain. and the deputy attorney general, rod rosenstein has been fully informed of the premise of the investigations. up until 48 hours ago, rosenstein was a hero for defending the investigation. he cannot be immediately a trader based on evidence that mueller found. i think that laying out the facts on both side as the

special counsel appeared to do is probably the right way to go. for thee decision attorney general and ultimately for congress and the american public when the full scope of his report on this part of the issue comes out. >> i want to get your reaction to the president yesterday. he leaves florida after spending the weekend there. this is what he told reporters. trump: after a long , after so many people have been so badly hurt, after not looking at the other side. , where a lot of bad things happened, horrible things happened. it was just announced that there was no collusion with russia,

the most ridiculous thing i have ever heard. there was no collusion with russia. there was no obstruction, none whatsoever. complete and total exoneration. it is a shame that our country had to go through this. to be honest, it is a shame that your president has had to go i even gots, before elected, it began. it began illegally. hopefully, somebody will look at the other side. this was an illegal takedown that failed. hopefully, somebody will be looking at the other side. it is complete exoneration. no collusion. no obstruction. well, i wish the president

could moderate his behavior. accuratelyat conveys what has happened. that accordingt to william barr, they found okun -- evidence of conspiracy. he is not right that the special counsel found no evidence of obstruction. as the letter says, the special norsel, neither condemns exonerated the president because of the difficult issues we already talked about. returning to the tired trope that this was an illegal investigation or that there was worse on the others is really unfortunate. almost no evidence of any of that at all.

take his victory and move on. i guess it is not in his nature. generalthe attorney writes this about the investigation, after making a thorough investigation into these matters, they considered about whether to evaluate the conduct under department sanders governing prosecution and decisions. ultimately deciding not to make a judgment when it came to obstruction of justice. what is he telling us? >> he is telling us that the president's case is unique, which i think is a fair summary. it is an assessment of whether the evidence gathered be brought to court to prove the case beyond reasonable doubt and whether or not the resources required to do that are worth of time andnt

energy. it isare cases where quite clear that somebody has imported a small amount of drugs, the prosecutor will decline. those are the types of judgments that a prosecutor makes. will deter other people from similar criminal product -- conduct. those are all encompassed in something called the principle of federal prosecution, which are in internal department. what he is telling us is that rather than going through that calculus of assessing the probability of his case and deterrence value, the other factors in the principles, the special counsel shows -- chose to do something different. the evidence that supported a conclusion of obstruction and

what might have negated inclusion of obstruction. to not make a final determination as to whether or not charges should be brought up. reaction withr what you just laid out? the criticism that mr. mueller could not make that determination because he did not get to talk to the president, therefore he could not get to intent and hear the motivations because he did not get to talk to him. he got answers from the president's lawyers. that is the problem with the letter and conclusion that there was no obstruction of justice because neither mueller or william barr talked to the president. >> that is almost certainly one of the factors that led special counsel to affirmatively develop a final view on whether or not

obstruction should could be charged. -- one of the realities that makes investigating a president unique. had he sought the president's testimony, i'm sure that would have engendered a fight, a lengthy delay in the investigation. sure which way it would have come out. so, from his perspective, i think he made a judgment that it was more important to do his job and get as far as he could rather than invest the time and resources in a one year long, 18 month long fight that may not have changed results in the end.

criticism and he is accurate. it is unfortunate that it did not happen. i am not sure i know what else mueller should have done. i'm not sure how anybody would have been able to secure the president's testimony when he was unwilling to give it. >> calls are waiting for you. charlie, your question or comment? collusion.y found no let's move on. it is over with. let's get it over with. >> ok. we will leave it there. what do you think? it is over and move on? or do you believe that congress should continue the investigation or get access to this mueller report? there is a greater

transparency as to what is in the report. especially with respect to the obstruction piece we have been talking about because the evidence. with respect to the russian conspiracy allegations, i think if i were is at all accurate, over two years with hundreds of subpoenas, thousands of interviews has probably done as good a job as he could. continuing to follow that trail risks going after the great whale. >> good morning. caller: good morning. there had to be for this investigation to start some kind of baseline support of the american people.

survey of some a of my friends and facebook friends. i got a bunch of people who supported the mueller report. there was broad support among the american populace. if it needs to continue, i still support it. >> any thoughts? mueller was very narrow. it was about russian interference in the 2016 election and any connections between that and the trump campaign. i think we probably should draw a line under that. aspects of the

areident's behavior that worthy of continued examination by congress in its oversight ongoing criminal investigations in the southern district of new york into the president's pre-presidential behavior as a businessman. given what we know on the record of that. >> given that mr. mueller found no collusion and that the ag has ruled no obstruction of justice, was this worth it? >> absolutely. thing, it was useful in a systematic way by demonstrating america's adherence to the rule of law. i believe that everybody is subject to the law and can be investigated.

lesson great procedural to the public and the rest of the world that we mean what we say. and equally importantly, on the fundamental question of there werenot problems with the 2016 election, , and whenry gave us it becomes more public, it will give us greater confidence in the conclusions that first, the president did not conspire, which is good news. really is a there fundamental weakness in the way in which we conduct our elections that the russian didrnment attempted to and exploit to some degree. if we are going to maintain a functional democracy in which americans are masters of their own choices and not subject to

outside influences, we are going to have to do some hard work over the next 18 to 24 months and over the next two or three years to fix that. that is a good message that was worth learning as well. nichols writes a piece in usa today where he says still unsolved. mystery of trump in russia. mr. barrhat when writes terms like knowingly government, -- when mueller writes that, he is potentially doing a lot of work in the letter. communicatede about hillary's email, does this pest -- passed the test? knowingly working with russian government? for a lawyer, perhaps not.

for everyone following the bread breadcrumbs, it is in easy call. and whatwyer can prove an analyst might believe are not the same thing. your reaction to that. are not the same thing. your reaction to that. think tom is accurate. in his depiction of the difference between a criminal and a counterintelligence investigation. mr. mueller's criminal investigation needed ultimately to determine whether or not there was proof beyond a reasonable doubt that would satisfy an unbiased jury. he has concluded that there is not. in the counterintelligence world where tom works and where are used to work, we act on suppositions, circumstantial evidence and concatenation of aincidences but we impute muslim nation all of which are impute anvalid -- we

explanation to. it is really ask the c.i.a. to do every day, they make conclusions with low, medium and high degrees of confidence. but those conclusions are not provable in a court of law and typically are also not provable in the court of public opinion. since the fact that undermine them are often gathered through covert sources and methods that can't be publicly disclosed. that theres view is a lot of reason to be concerned, that some in trump's orbit were under the influence of or in communication with the russian government. and it may be that congress chooses to look further into that. at it may also be that counterintelligence investigation of that sort ought

see too much light of day for reasons of national security instance.st instance host: what would happen if for those people that have been or were in contact with russian officials, maybe not russian government officials, but, what happens to those people then? >> there is a number of things happens. some, like roger stone, get indicted for lying about their connections. others should assuredly be removed from positions of trust, should lose their security thinking of the possibility that some of the counterintelligence conclusions might bear upon the continued service of jared kushner and ivanka trump in the administration. those will work their way out as counterintelligence conclusions get processed through the system. that is a legitimate concern.

but criminal law is reserved for crimes that can be proven. it doesn't do us too much good to hope that we can do more with criminal law than it actually is capable of achieving. it is a limited, narrow set of facts and questions. that is the way our system is .uilt >> coming up tonight on c-span, speeches from the aipac annual conference. we hear from vice president mike pence, new york city mayor, mike de blasio, former u.s. ambassador to the united nations company key haley, and secretary pompeo., mike >> the american israel public affairs committee is holding its annual conference in washington week. vice president mike pence spoke to the group about the trump administration's commitment to israel and its security. his remarks are 30 minutes. ♪