captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc >> woodruff: good evening, i'm judy woodruff. on the newshour tonight, there, finally, for all to see. attorney general william barr releases a redacted version of the mueller report to lawmakers and the public. the special counsel finds sweeping election interference by russia, and numerous contacts with the trump campaign, but no criminal conspiracy. a o explores whether the president obstructed justice, but doesn't come down on either side. we will breadown much of what's in the report and ask what it adds up to. all thatn tonight's pbs newshour. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by:

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but the debate over the findings and heir implications is anything but over. the president assertas been exonerated, but democrats insist that's atwhitewash of he report really says. and, they're accusing the g attorneral of trying to spin the findings in the president's favor. the redacted report runs 448 pages, broken into two volumes: on whether the trump campaign conspid with russia to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. ident trump pr obstructed justice during the investigation. g attorneral william barr offered his own summation, before releasing the report to congress and the pubc. first, on russia: >> the special counsel confirmed that the russian government sponsored efforts to illegally interfere with the 2016

umesidential election but did not find that the campaign or other americans colluded in those effort >> woodruff: the report's actual language says the evidence was "not sufficient"o bring criminal charges. but it does outline numerous contacts between trump campaign advisers and russia. it cites ten key episodes that investigators reviewed.th include the president's january 2017 dinner with then f.b.i. director jas comey, in which mr. trump allegedly asked for loyalty, hdis request that comey publicly state thathe as not under any criminal investigation. comey was ultimately fired in may of 2017. outhat same month, specialel robert mueller began his investigation. the report says mr. trump was extremely agitated about the

probe, and complained bitterly: "this is the end of my presidency." it further says the president tried that june to have muellere fired over an d conflict of interest. h but then-whiteouse counsel don mcgahn refused, citing "a fear of being seen as triggering another 'saturday night massacre'," referring to the infamous incident during watergate. in the end, mueller determined that president trump's efforts to influence the russia probe were mostly unsuccessful because his advisers refused to carry out his orders. he went on to say mr. trump declined to be interviewed, and that his written answers to questions, which included dozens of "no memory" answers, were inadequate. but the special counsel says he decided not to subena the president, believing that would igger a long court battle and rlay the investigation.

>> after carefuliewing the facts and legal these are -- >> woodruff: attorney general william barr repeated his own finding there is no basis for a criminal case. >> the deputy att and i concluded that the evidence developed by the special counsel is not sufficient to establish that the president committed an obstruction of justice offense. >> no >> no collusion, no obstruction. >> woodruff: for his part, the present claimed total vindication, and called for an investigation of the investigation. >> we do have to get to the bottom of these things, i will say. this hoax, this should never happen to another president agn. >> woodruff: but in new york, the chair of the house judiciary committee, democrat jerry nadler, said the report is anything but vindication for the president. >> even in its incomplete form, the mueller report outlines sturbing evidence that president trump engaged in obstction of justice and oth misconduct. >> woodruff: nadler said he will now subpoena the entire report,

and he called for mueller to testify beforeis committee by may 23rd. democratic adam schiff chairing the house intelligence committee weighed in today from burbank,ca fornia. >> the facts that are now established by this report are damning. whether they could or should have resulted in the indictment of the president or people around him, ty ardamning, and we should call for better from our elected officials.nd the sd cannot simply be that you can do anything you like as long as youn declare at the end of the day "i am not a crook." >> woodruff: top democrats eyjoined in condeming atto general barr's depiction and handling of the mueller report. on twitter, senate minority leader chuck schumer blasted barr's morningvent as a "campaign press conference the president. and, house speaker nancy pelosi tweeted that barr "confirmed the staggering partisan effort by the trump administration to spin

[the] public's view of thert #muellerre barr acknowledged today that the president's lawyers reviewed the final redacted version of the re public.re it was made he said the white house decided t t to invoke executive privilege to redacy further information. barr is due to testify before the house and senate judiciary committees, early next month we want to take some time now to walk through the report with our white house correspondent yamiche alcindor, capitohill correspondent lisa desjardins, foreign affairs correspondent nick schifrin, and npr's justice correspondent carrie johnson. hello to all of you. this is a teantthat has spe the entire day working its way through this 450-page report. let's talk about theiggest takeaways and,st lisating with you. >> we're talking about tissues of obstruction of justice, which we know is an open question

going into the report. as suspect, there were no concluons but were striking sentences about the approach here. this one, in prticular. mueller wrote, the president's efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful but largely because the persons surround bid the president declined to carry out dehis orders or o his requests. mueller is saying the president did try to nfluence these investigation bus, in large part, was not able to becausede his were not followed. overall, special counsel mueller laid ouc 11 different idents that he explored, some are said to have substantial evidence of obstruction oobstruction, some . there's a spectrum. >> woodruff: yamiche, what isst ding out? >> essentially special counsel mueller said the president was cetrying to influaf to influence the investigation, but a shield of people around himm stopped rom doing things they considered and described as

crazy. i want to read a tweet the president sent outout moments o, "i had the right to tend whole witch hunt if i wanted. i could have fired everyone including mueller if i wanted. i chose not to. i had the right to e executive privilege, i didn't ." it's important to note the president has been tweeting he was exonerated and vindicated, but in the report the president is n exonerated and robert mueller writes about that. i he sayf we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts, theresident did not clearly commit obstruction of justice, we would so. stat based on facts and lack of standards, we are unable to gmenh that jud while the report does not conclude the president did not commit a criernlings it does not exonerate him. robert mueller talks about the fact that it was very difficult to decide whether or not the president had criminal intent. what we see now is the president really saying i'm exonerated, but robert mueller not fullyg backat claim. >> woodruff: so let's go to the justice department and

carrie johnson. help us undand why, legally, the special counsel made the decisions he did and, if you could work into that what we heard going into all of this from the attorney general. be sure. so it' an open question as to why the special counsel decided not to make call on obstruction. we do now, having read the repo, have an insight in that. the special counsel points out that there is d.o.j. guidance that says you cannot or not indict a sitting president while he or she is in office. there's also an argument that the president cannot struct justice by taking an otherwise lawful action, doing something like hiring or firing the f.b.i. director, which he did to james comey in 2017. but the special counsel evaluated all the arguments and determinedt is, in fact, possible for a president to obstruct justice for some purpose. it's app 07 question as to whether any president can be

charged after leaving office and certainly this special counsel left open the opti for congress to take the ball and run with it, perhaps aatteof impeachment through cie house juy committee commit committeey. we know attorney general william barr said he disagreed with some of the special counsel's finding and analyses, and also before he became attorney general sent a 19-page memo unsolicited to the justice department in the white house arguing mr. trump could not have obstructed justice by firing james comey. >> woodruff: we'll talk about thon as the program goe nick, you have been looking at this from the russiape peive. walks through some of the extensive eefforts by the russianso influence the 2016 campaign. >> yeah, we learned a lot about what the special couesel kal sweeping and systemic effort by russia. rned how successful it w at targeting and contacting trump officials and, as we

talked about, judy, one of th main efforts was the social media campaign, and that was focus from auilding in st. petersburg that i went to a couple of years ago.th there it is, internet research agency full of hundreds of russians pretending to be americans online, and they were creating fake accounts and pok,s, especially on faceboo and these were about divisive issues, trying to royal the unitedstas and trying to convince people president obama was trying to create false claims about president obama. and the trolls targeted the p campaign specifical asking for things like signs,io promand coordination. campaign officials were relying to these russian trolls, but what's important, the special counsel says there's no evidencc that theampaign officials who were replaying knew that they were russian because, remember, these trolls were pretend tock americanan that's whyhose campaign officials aren't guilty of conwispirin russia. the second half, of course, is the hacking that russia did, anr

were three main elements to that. they really targeted the d.n.c., as we've talked about, targeted the democratic congressional campaign committee, they targeted individuals and entities and elections, administrations and states, and they disseminated everything they targeted -- they hacked through wikileaks andouts others. lk heard trump campaign officials were g to then candidate donald trump about wikileaks and cooiinating withkileaks. but the attorney general said today wikileaks was not part of the original hack, therefore, it did not commit a crime. therefore, talking to wikileaks is not a crime. but it was part of a re effo by the trump campaign that was consistent interest in hacked materials, and that interest culminated in a speech that candidate trump made on july 27 2016. >> russia, if you're listening, i hope youe able to find the

30,000 e-mai that are missing. >> and we learned, five hours after trump made that statement, lilitary intelligence in moscow targeted hillarynton's personal campaign. up until then, they'd targeted another aspect, so they were apparently listening. >> woodruff: so many threads with regard to russia. lisa, let's come back to obstruction and what the president was doing to stop or slow dowthis investigation. what do we see? >> i mentioned the eleven things special counsel mueller looked at. if you think of theas being on a large dart board, some farther away and some closer to obstruction, one closest to the bullseye represent the president's attempts to influence the special counsel'sg inveion himself. it accuses him of trying to fire special counsel mueller directly, also trying to block the investigation of himself by saying -- trying to limit

special counsel mueller eels gating to not inves trump or his campaign and also asking the white house council to lie. there is a lot in this report, and these areas, judy, are th ones in which special counsel mueller says there isen substantial ev that the president acted with the intent to use his power but he also in these cases we not able to carry out the powers for a variety of reasons, mostlye becas orders were not followed. >> woodruff: but they documented time and again how he was trying, in conversation with the people around him, to get him to do things. >> to protect himself against this investigation. >> woodruff: yamiche, let's talk aboutethe specifics that learned about the former whitco housnsel, his role and in the role of the attorney general in all of this. >> well, there are times when the muelleror rereads like a novel and you have a president calling people and tweeting and trying his best to influence the ueller investigation in any way he can. here are three examples that deal with e white house

counsel don mcghan and former attorney general jeff sessions. the first is that the president wanted corey leandowski, the former campaign manager, to actually havjeff sessions liver a speech where he would call the mueller investigation unfair and where he would say that robert mueller was actually trng to sbvert the constitution. the dresident din't say that tweet specifically but corey lewandowski passed it off to a dite house aid who felt uncomfortable andn't it, so we have an example of the president wanting something to ppen and it dn't happen. second, he pressured jeff sessions, former attorney general, to recuse himselfly repeat he called him at home, spoke to him in the oval office, tweeted about it. over and ov again, the president did that. the third is the president basically tried to geton mcghan to say that the president never tried to fire jeff ssions. he actually called don mcghan at home when he was angryje wit sessions and said you need to get rid of the special counsel and you need to get rid of tis

problem. so, in this case, he was trying to get don mcghan to fire the special counsel and reauly trying tse his power as the president to do that. it's important to note that attorney general william barr this morning said the issue of obstruction is something the special counsel did not leave the congress. in the report over and over again robert mueller writes about congress, and i mention th because the three instances i laid out could become a road map congress might use to start ying to get information from people like special counsel robert mueller who we know the house judiciary committee and house judiciary chairman has asked to come and testify before congress. >> woodruff: a lot of new information there in threport, especially about the the efforts to get don mcghan to step in.m lecome back to you, carrie johnson, at the justice department, and ask you about the meeumting at tower in june of 2016. n at did we learabout that meeting? and also about the statement that was mdsde afterwy the

president's son? >> yeah. not in only in termsf o both conspiracy and collusion as the president calls it butct obstn. >> with respect to conspiracy, the special counsel seems to t have evaluat meeting which seems to be about russian sanctions not adoptions and determine that theru campaign was willing to accept something of value from russme, ing of value being dirt, opposition research on hillary clinton,their political opponent. ultimately the special counsel seems to have concluded that the people in that room, the americans in that room, including donald trump, jr, former campaign chairman paul manafort, son-in-law jare shner and others didn't have the requisite criminal intent to charge them with any kind of campaign finance violation. noti on the obstr side, of course, when parts of that meeting began to come to light, president trump played a personal role in sending out a

misleading statement from his white house to explain what that meeting was about and the involvement of his son donald trump, jr. the special counsel there found those statements to be fase, but, of course, lying to reporters is not a crime. lie to investigators is. the investigators said the president seemed inordinately concerned with public relations there. income, a top white house aide and jared kushner both told the president if the e-mails . involving donald trump, d the trump tower meeting came out, it would look very very >> woodruff: well, there's so much here to talk about and i want to try to get around to al of you with another question, other aspects of this. nick, speak about what ood out to you in the context between e president andpeople who were trying to influence him, the russians. >> the links between russia andp the gn and none were criminal. but they were business connec aons. we learnot about the trump

campaign attempt to create trp tower moscow. there were invitations to russia by the president to visit russia and campaign officials, policy decisions, relief on sanctions, softening policy on ukraine during the republican national convention, even a consideration to allow russia to clont eastern ukraine and many offers of assistance, the main one we just caard froie johnson, that meeng in june 2016 tween russian lawyer and members of the trump campaign, as carrie said, the special counsel said peckeddent prove the intent to havehe people in that meeting at that there was no dirt given, and, so, therefore, there's no val what the campaign officials took and, so, therefore, they did not commit anyind of campaign finance violation, which is the law that special counsel talked about for pages whether they would have. so so many linksnond, yetne of them deemed criminal. >> woodruff: so finally, let's

look ahe. what does it look like comes next with congress, lisa? >> t issues, one is attorney general william barr. we've seen letters from nancy pelosi and chuck schumerng blas him. the specl counsel will testify likely before congress in coming weeks. now congress has to wrestle wi the deits is cigs of how it handles impeachment, specifically democrats. yamiche mentioned mueller went to great lengths to say congress can per miably criminalize certain obstructive conduct by the president that isnother line that's going to be part of the road map i think yamiche mentioned for democrats that we're going to pay a lot of attention to. one other thing, in the last hour, judy, top republicans, thr nuwo democrat in the house and intelligence chair schiff have said they do not think this

leads them to move towardac iment. >> woodruff: fascinating. i will talk to congressman jeffries in a moment. ia mix what does the white house say next? >> president trump is feeling good about where the narrativean as it relates to the mueller report. however, white house press secretary kellyanne nway told white house reporters including myself that there should be an investigation of the investigators, that there should no a look into how this got started, whether othese were done in the correctaway. i also spoke to the president's yepersonal lawrudy giuliani, he tells me there's supposed to be a coud nterreport relea the next day or so or next week. we're not sure what's going to be in that report, but you can be sure that the president is saying this is clear that thiswa something that was opinionti fair, presid harassment, as the president said. but even if the president feelsh goodwhite house is still on the offense here. >> woodruff: carrie johnson, justice department, what are they looking to next?

>> judy, the work is not done. the most tantalizing parts to have the report was in the appendics, saying speclel counsel muand his team had referred 14 cases to other prosecutors, 12 cases are redacted, blacked out, under seal. there's still a lot of work going on behind the scenes. some day, it's going to break into public view. >> woodruff: and i know you will continue to report as our entire team is.oh carrieon at the justice department, yamiche alcindor at the whit house, lisa desjardins, nick schifrin here in the studio. thank yoall very much. >> woodruff: we turn to congressional reaction to the report with the chairman of the house democratic caucus, representative hakeem jeffes of new york. he's also a member of the judiciary committee.

congressman jeffries, thank you very much for talk wogs. president trump says this proves, again,hat he is exonerated. >> well,he president i completely clueless and, once again, he's lying to the american people. if anything, the mueller report is exactly the opposite. it isincredibly, deeply troubling, the informion contained in the report. the president pursuant to the united states constitution is charged with faithfully executing the laws of the united states of america. the information in the mueller report reveals thain at least ten instances, the president likely engaged in obstruction of justice. that is aserious crime. what we need to do now is hea from bob mueller so that the american people can make a determination for themselves as to how we proceed to bring about some accountability. >> woodruff: i want to ask you about what the congress' role is next, but, at this point, do you accept the special counsel's finding that there are no mores

indictme come of either the president himself or anybody lose to him? >> yes, bobeller, as we we maintained from the beginning, is a highly respected law enforcement professional.ev i behe conducted himself in an appropriate fashion as relates to how he handled this investigation. i take him at his word with respect to his conclusion that the acts that occurred as between the trump campaign and russian operatives didton't rise the level of being able to prove beyond a reasonaubt that there was a criminal conspiracy that existed. but, also, take seriously t allegations that he laid out and the information that was presented with respect to the acts of obstruction of justice, and now we have to take that information, get the underlying documentation, andeventually hear from him before theouse judiciary committee. >> woodruff: so you're saying

you don't accept his conclusion -- rather you don't accept what he said that he couldn't reach a conclusion about whether or not there was obstruction of justice committed? >> well, what appears to be the conclusion that he reached is that, based on a ariety of different factors, including long-standing department of justice practice that you cannot indict a sitting president, fong with the observation that, notwithstanding tht, they were going to preserve the evidence of obstruction of e for both congress and presumly a future department of justice to consider, once donald trump is no longer president of the united states of the united statto of america, me, that's not the end, that's just the beginning of what needs to come next.dr >> wf: so when you say you're going to call the special counsel bob muelssr before congwhat do you think you can get from him he hasn't already laid out? he spent two years working on

this report. what more do you think you can hear from him, learn from him? >> it's a great question, one we don't have the underlying documentation in this exhaustive report. we also have only been presented with a redacted version that wae aken by the attorney general who clearly is not acting like the people's attorney, he's acting lik trump's publicist. so at this particular point in time, we can't simply accept the redacted version of what was presented to congress and the american people today. we need an d redacrsion, we need the underlying documentatioand, ultimatel we need bob mueller to explain the report to the american people and the principal findings and conclusions. >> woodruff: when you say the whole report, a you know the redacted portions include grand jury testimony, it includes testimony that we are -- material that we are told is confidential, part of

intelligence or intelligence regathering. yoaying you want to basically ignore those concerns, those restrictions? >> well, there are two things. with respect to congress, we have high levels of security clearance, so any member ofss congught to be able to review the report? its entirety. with respect tothe american people, the house democrats have been clear that we accept the notion that redactions areop apate in order to protect sources and methods connected to the intelligence com so that we can continue to promote the safety and security of theic am people. however, as you know, with respect to grand jury material, that's a very different story. there ia presumption of privacy. however, the law mits that presumption to be overcome when there is a compelling public interest. 17 different intelligence agencies concluded that russia attackedour democracy and interfered with our election to try and y artificiaace donald trump at 1600 pennsylvania avenue. to me, this whole scenario

involves the compelling public interest. that's why we need more information, not less. >> woodff: and is that something that would potentially lead, in your opinion, to impeachment proceedings? >> well, impeachment is still off the table as it relates how we're going to proceed. we want to methodically collect the information. nancy pelosi has been clear with respect to impeachment. she's laid out a standard i accept and report, which is that the case must be compelling, the evidence should be overwhelming, anthe sentiment around impeachment must be bipartisan. we've got an lot closer to the case perhaps being compelling, the evidence is beng developed, but we still haven't hit the third prong whereublic sentiment suggests that they have a president that is engaged in this type of criminality is no longer accetable. we'll ow the american people process the information over the next few weeks, but that's why it's imortant for us

to hear from bob mueller directly. >> woodruff: but you're saying that what happens after the congress hears from t special counsel is something that could lead to prosecuting the president or finding him -- or trying to remove himo frm office? >> well, no, the department of justice has been clear at thisnt particular pn time, which is to say that a sitle president cannot beed prosec pursuant to justice department practice. i accept that as the situationur that we findselves in. in terms of presidentialta accolity, i don't think that we, as potential decision-makers on the house judiciary committee, should come to any coneclusions until've gathered all the information, and that's going to include a report free of some of the redactio that are probably overly broad, that will include the underlying documentation, that will idechearing from bob mueller. >> woodruff: right.

until we get to that pont, it's premature to discuss the potential of purin impeachment proceedings against a president. congressman hakeem jeffries, chairman of theem houseratic caucus, we thank you. >> thank you very much. >> woodruff: 22 months, 2,800 subpoenas, and some 500 witnesses later; mueller's extensive report goes over not just his investigation's findings, but also how he believed u.s. criminal law applied to the facts. three lel experts are here to wade into all of this: george terwilliger was deputy attorney gener, during william barr's previous stint atop justice in the george h.w. bush administration. bob bauer was white house counsel under president obama, and was outside counsel to senate democrats during the senate's trial of former

president clinton. and mary mccord served as actine of the justice department's national security division. she is mentioned in the report having been part oenthe team thatto the white house to voice initial warnings about michael flynn. she is now a litigator a geortown university. and we say hello and welcome back to "newshour" to al of you. thank you for being here on this important day. i'm going to start with you, george tewilliger. at do you make of the finding by the special counsel that there was no conspiracy, no collusion, no cooperationbe een the trump campaign and the russian government, russian yfficials, when there were so many attempts the russians to reach into that election? >> well, i really draw two conclusions as a citizen from that, judy. the first is that i'm glad the fact that the russians were trying tonterfere in our elections through a wide varaniy of mis getting exposed

because i think that will help us build what i hope will be bipartisan political support to combat tha the future. obviously, we don't want foreign governments messing with our elections. the second is that the politics of all of this and of the allegations of conclusion -- i' sorry -- of collusion really have been a mill stone around the neck of this presidency. leave the president personally out of it for a second, but just, objectively, it has hindered the presidency and the exution of some of the policies and initiatives of the presidency, m glad to see that lifted. you know, we'll have lots of robust political debate on substantive issues. i hope we can now putthis aside. >> woodruff: but you're accepting the findings of the special counsel based on what you see here?>> es, although i'm troubled in

a way that this is the way we got the answer to thiaus bec a criminal investigation is not necessarily the bet vehicle to make determinations about a widf rangfacts. remember, this started out as a counterintelligence investigation, which is what it should have been. >> woodruff: r bob bauer, what about you? how do you read what the special counsel came up with, looking at attempts by the russians to influencn the electnd finding there was no criminal perationcy or coo between the trump campaign and russia? >> like any other prosecutor, h had to make some difficult decisions. for example, the campaign welcomed the delegation from the kremlin offering dirtn hillary clinton, hosted them in their offices in new york and were eager to accept the help f foreign nationals, the russian government and their agents, and the specl counsel looked a that and concluded there were simply constitutional odher statutory impediments to bringing, say, a crimina

prosecution under the federal campaign finance laws. what that episode, however, revealed from what the rest of the section in the report shows is there were not only multiple efforts on the part of russia to influence the election, but they understood very quickly that the trump campaign and the president were open to those offers of support, and i think thatis extraordinarily troubling, even taking into account what george has said, we don want foreign nationals interfering in our election we don't want american presidential campaigns, much less those who will become president, encouraging them to interfere our elections. >> woodruff: pick up, mary mccord, the legal underpinning robert mueller ends up using to conclude there was no conspiracy, no illegal cooperation. >> well, it's a high bar to charge a crime, you hav, particularly conspiracy, you have to show an agreement, tacit or explicit, to commit a crime, and, so, one thing to think about when you think about bot the interference with the

election part of this report as well as the obstructi part is that, in reaching the conclusions about crimes, that's the stamundard thatller was applying and, of course, he didn't reach a conclusion when it came to obstruction. so there's a lot of day between there's nothing to see here, there's nothing wrong and there's enough evidence to support charging a crime. >> woodruff: but for all threere of youing through this report today, do you come away thinking, all right, they did everything they could, and i'm satisfied, there was no collusion, there was no conspiracy? >> i tnk it would be hard to read this report and come away without feeling that there wa an incredible amount of interest and encouragent by peole associated with the campaign in russia continuing its election interference efforts. >> you know, judy, ihink mary makes a good point, that the bar to get over in a criminal investigation is very high. that's one of the reasons we

don't typicallyve prosecutors writing reports, because how evidence is viewed -- and we're going to hear it in washingtonth next few weeks -- how the evidence that's reported is viewed is gng to be viewed in political terms, and it's going to be usefor political purposes. i mean, one could argue that the greatest instance of collusion we saw was the clinton campaign's involvement with the dossier, which was supposedly dirt on trump. i think the bottom line conclusion that we as citizens ought to be drawing here is that we need vigilance within campaigns. bob's point is well taken about that, but edwe ne even greater vigilance when we have foreign governments trying to interfere with our elections. >> woodruff: the reason i'm pushing this a little more is p sople say what about the trump tower meeting, that sure didn't look like something that would normally happen in a campai, but you're saying nothing illegal happened? bob? >> that's never been my view.

i've always thought this was a clear-cut campaign fiance violation associated with the trump tower. >> woodruff: campaign finance violation., >> corre that a campaign is absolutely barred from incepting any support whatsoever or solic support, any whatsoever, from a foreign national, or substantially aiding a foreign national inuencing a federal election. as it turns out, i think the special counsel took a conservative view. we can debate whether or not he and his team should have done so, but i think 's open to question, and i certainly questi b their conclusio i don't question the good faith analysis behind it. >> what th boils down to, judy, in many respects, in many aspects of thires port, lawyers disagree. now, there's news. >> woodruff: let's turn to the obstruction piece of this and whether or not the president committed obstruction of justice. mary, you brout it up. it is a high bar and, ultimately, robert mueller determined he could not mak a

conclusion one way tore thehe >> i don't think that's what he determined at all. i think he said, based oon.l.c. guidance -- >> woodruff: office of legal counsel inside department of t'justice. >> tright, and he as special counsel of n the employ of the department of justice is bound by the guidance that says you can't indicted a sitting esident, and based on that and his recognition of the reasons behind that, the unfairness of indicsaying a signature presides not committed a crime when there'not going to be an opportunity to air out the other sides or a neutral jude karat, that he was not going to reach that conclusion. >> woodruff: you're not read election dayent, you're saying his hands were tied legally because of the department guidelines? >> i think that's right, yes. i think "hands were tied" is a fair conclusion based on what's in the report. i think there were a number of factors that went into it, and one of the things that he

mentions that i thk is very important, judy, is that, since there was no crime of colalusio, and 's what he was allegedly obstcting was that investigation, then you look at the evidence of what e president did in a different light, and i'm not the esident's lawr, i don't want t,e president's lawyer, but i will tell you th in my experience with public officials, with high-ranki public officials, the fact that the president would rant at aides and say can't we do this, can't we do that, when hes incensed by the fact that he beeves this is a phony investigation, you have to look at tg at in judginwhat his intent should be and in exercisingour discretion as to whether or not that's a prosecutable case. it's not only can we, it'sld she. >> the question on intent, i don't think there is any out the about hismotives. on june 14 -- >> woodruff: the president's motives. >> the president's motives. on june 14-rbgs 2017, the

president learned an obstruction phase of the investigation commenced. within days he was pressing his white house council to arrange with the d.o.j. to he bob eller fired. it seems as soon as he came ines e of potential liability, he put pressure on the whitety house secucouncil and attorney general, and i'm just scratching the surface of some of the disclosures in the report. >> but further analysis of that requires -- let me accept what b says as a fair inference orom the facts. you still have to k at the question of what the real intent was there. was the pren sident driy i want this investigation stopped because he had a corrupt intent to stop an investigation, or was he politically saying i'm not going to have this mill ston around my neck and i want to find a way to set it off. >> woodruff: mary, how do you read that?hi >> i this is another example where mueller made clear

he was not exonerating the he lays out in great detail, which i haven't had the opportunity t read yet, all the facts with respect to the eleven different scenarios that could be, any one of them, a basis for an obstruction charge. i think what's important is the law, when it comes to obstruction, is narrowly interpreted according to the supreme court and, again, there's a lot of daylight between nothing wrong here and enough to charge a crime or even make an allegation of a crime, t and i think th's important that people need at least the executive summary, the whole american people, and they can make judgments. i think a layperson reading this would say there's obstrtion here. >> woodruff: there's a lot to read. >> i would also add let'st confuse the kinds of beliefs the president may have had.d he may have belief the allegations of collusion were esfair and angry about that phase of the invgation, but he was motivated in the obstruction phase of the investigation by the personal threat to him, and he had a

belief it was a threat, he expressed that to his assoctes and tried to curb the investigation. >> if that were the on accepted view off these fact and, again, i grant bob maybe that's a fair inference from the facts and that's a view that somebody cld have, then there would have been a prosecution or recommendation for prosecution. the bottom line is mueller did not recommend a procution. >> woodruff: mary, you're shaking your head no. >> i think he makes it clear in his executive summary to part two the reasons why he's not king a recommendation and based on the l.l.c. memo. >> woodruff: bob bauer, do i understand you to say that you based on what happened that the special counsel could have gone ahead and found the president guilty obstruction? >> on the facts revealed in this report, that would have been a completely defensible exercise

of prosecutorial scretion. ere are a host of fact here about the president's repeated attempts in a number of ways to stop what lieved to be a threat to him with respect to the investigation into the collusion matt y. >> woodruf're saying he could have defied the office of legal counsel guidelines? >> no, i'm suggesting he could have brught to prosecution, because he concluded he could don't that under the l.o.c., but he could have, i think. he hints in this direction by saying he's not exonerating, he could have clearer that there was clear evidence of obstructive behavior. >> this is why we should not have prosecutors writing reports. this is what happened with hillary clinton in her handling of classified information. a decision was made not to

prosecutor here but a whole litany of sin was laid out. same thing here. it provokes this kind of debate and is not heahy. >> i think george is seriously confusing the issue. in the hillary clinton case, he reached the judgment that no reasonable prosecutor would havo d a violation on the facts of his investigation, and then he went ahead and characterized her conduct, if you will, in moral or normative terms. i agree with george, he should not have done that. we're talking about whether a prosecutor on these facha could concluded that the law was violated, and no one's going to argue on these facts that no reasonable prosecutor could have reached that conclusion. >> is the same bottle line decircumstances different degrees, i'll grant you that, but the same bottom line dichotomy between making a decision. what prosecutors are supposed to do, if there's a basis to charge somebody, move ahead and charge them. if not, you say nothing. when we get this kind of information flowing into the

public space, exactly these kinds ofue debates ewhich is tremendously unfair to the people who are subject to these -- >> that's clear, george, unlike the comey case, he was under legal obligation to produce this report. >> i understand. 've read hundreds of prosecution reports. i was criminal chyf for man years and head of m.m.s.d. for a while and this oceeds very much like a normal prosecution memo. it starts with one of the laws we're looking at, it puts out the facts, applies the law to the facts, it then usually makes a recommendation and talk about defenses. the ly thing this lacks is that recommendation. >> woodruff: mar mccord, george terwilliger, bob bauer,u. thank we will continue to talk about this. thank you. >> thank you. >> woodruff: let's move tore tion outside the u.s. now. our special correspondent ryan

chilcote lived in russia for 20 years. he is in moscow tonight to tell us what the kremlin had to say about the mueller report, andf flesh out somee details of what the russians did in 2016. ryan, as we mentioned, you lived there for a long time. you've had contact with russian officials over the years. what is standing out to you tonight? >> what stands out to me, judy, is the extraordinary lengths and unconventional approaches that the kremlin took to establish off the dar direct communications with the trump administration in the lead up -- during t campaign in the leadup to the inauguration and after.a for mple, mueller lays out how the wealth of sovereign fund reached out to one of jared kushner's friends, a world banker, to work on effectively a russian-american peace plan, a way of reconciling differences between the two countries, acting as an intermediary for the russian president.

another example, we know paul manafort, who was, as youno obviously, the campaign manager for the trumpm adistration for much of 2016, he reached out to someone he worked with, a russian billionaire who i interviewed earlier this week, that he had done consulting with before, a number of years fore, and he offered him information about the campaign polling data, at lea according to mueller, in the leadup and tter theactual elections to settle a debt, settle a legal dispute that he had with him. when i interviewed him, he sai any of the discussions he hthad aul manafort was in 2010, 2011. but mueller said it was in 2017y and ere discussing foreign policy. a third banker also said het reached the u.s. administration on behalf of the aussian president to establish

back channel. he said that he was subpoenaed by mueller and himself said that, all he said because president putin asked him, because the president putin administration, the kremlin, was desperate to get some kind of okalogue going. >> woodruff: it like we may have lost the connection of moscow and to ryan chilcot we'll try to get that back up, but looks like we do not have it right now. take a short break. we'll be right back. >> woodruff: in the non-mueller koport news of this day, north a said it wants u.s. secretary of state mike pompeo removed from nuclear negotiations. s intement, a senior foreign ministry official said "whenever pompeo pokes his nose in, theng talks go w hours earlier, pyongyang said it had test-fired a new tactil

weapon, its first major weapons test in nearly half a year. french police are now saying an eletrical short circuit is most likely cause of the fire at notre dame cathedral. the structure had been undergoing renovations when the inferno erupted on mon today, hundreds of parisian firefighters a police officers were honored at the presidential palace. they have been praised forsa ng the cathedral from total destruction.n policew york are holding a man who allegedly walked intos saint patricthedral last night, with gasoline, lighter chuid and lighters. he was arrested anged with attempted arson and reckless endangerment. police say he claimed it was all entirely innocent. >> story was that he was cutting through the cathedral to get to madison avenue, that his car had run out of gas. we took a look at the vehicle. it was not out of gas.

and at that point was taken into custody. >> woodruff: the suspect is from new jersey. investigators say he had also been arrested at a new jersey cathedral, a few days ago, and had book a flight to rome for today. new findings today underscore fears about the decline of wild bees. researchers at the university of new hampshire report the populations of 14 species of bees have fallen by up to 90% over 125 years. the study adds to growing evidence that bee numbers are dropping worldwide, due to insecticides, parasites, climate change and other factors. and, on wall street, stocks gained a little ground, going into the holiday weekend. the dow jones industrial average was up 110 points to close at 26,559. e nasdaq rose two points, ands& th500 added four. markets will be closed tomorrow for good friday and passover.

>> woodruff: on the newshour muline, keep following all of our coverage of thler report, from major takeaways to new information about russia's campaign. that's on ouweb site, pbs.org/newshour. and you can also find the latest highlights from all of our reporters on instagram and twitter, "@newshour." and that's the newshour for tonight. m judy woodruff. join us online and again here tomorrow evening when markan shielddavid brooks break down the political fall out from the mueller report. for all of us at the pbs newshour, thank you and see you soon. >> major unding for the pbs newshour has been provided by:

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thinks this may be her best chance to get past these guards right now. >> mr. trump won this district overwhelmingly by about 20 inutes. the question noether the enthusiasm for president trump will convert into enthusiasm for a different republic. >> the president interfeed in the 2016 election and possibly as arm midas an attack on democracy -- captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

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