because of the supreme court and john roberts' decision. so, it's important that those protections be put back in place so black voters and all voters really can go to the ballot box and have their voices heard. >> very provocative accusations by wiley. thank you so much. appreciate you coming in. and that's going to wrap up this hour here on msnbc. i'm chris jansing. "deadline white house" with nicolle wallace starts right /s >> hi, everyone. it's milwauk it's 4:00 in new york. the trump defense has come a long way in one year since fbi director bob mueller was directed to investigate the trump campaign and the russians. his lead lawyer rudy giuliani has shifted to a more practical message. far from leaning on a defense of donald trump's innocence, on the questions of collusion or obstruction, it's rooted in the president's character and moral

compass. giuliani is citing bob mueller's agreement to abide by justice department policy. >> i asked him specifically if they realized or acknowledged they didn't have the power to indict. both under the justice department memo which gives them their power, in essence, confines their power, and under the constitution. and he said, well, he wouldn't answer. and one of his assistants said they acknowledge they had to be bound by justice department policies. and then the next day or the day after, they clarified it for jay sekulow who was with me at the meeting that they didn't have the power to indict, that what they would eventually do is write a memorandum and give it to the deputy attorney general, rosenstein. >> the president adding his 2 cents with happy anniversary tweets this morning writing, quote, congratulations, america. we're now into the second year of the greatest witch hunt in american history. and there is still no collusion and no obstruction despite the disgusting, illegal and

unwarranted witch hunt we have had the most successful 17 month administration in u.s. history. but not being able to indict a president isn't the same as maintaining that the president is innocent of crimes around possible collusion or obstruction. and if you look at the scope of people who have been before mueller's investigators, people like attorney general jeff sessions, hope hicks, former chief of staff reince priebus, jared kushner, steve bannon, mike pompeo and don mcgahn. and if you consider the pace of mueller's probe and its results including multiple charges for former campaign chairman paul manafort and guilty pleas from the president's former national security advisor mike flynn, his former deputy campaign chairman rick gates, and former campaign aide george papadopoulos, it's easy to see why mueller makes him sweat. flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the fbi about his interactions with russian ambassador sergey kislyak and papadopoulos admit today lying to the fbi about his contacts with individuals

connected to russia. so far no one has gone down for lying about canada. we have assembled some of our favorite reporters and experts joining us on set today chuck rose not berg, former u.s. attorney and former senior fbi official. former u.s. attorney joyce vance. from "the new york times" mike schmidt and matt miller, former chief spokesman for the justice department. all of them, lucky for us, are msnbc analysts and contributors. let me start with you, mike schmidt. you have a story today about rudy giuliani's reliance on justice department policy, and i talked to folks close to rudy who say that that's it, that's the legal strategy. >> well, it's interesting where we are a year later. it's a good story for the president that he can't be indicted, and that just shows how far i think we have come on this entire thing. this is a favorable story for the president. it shows that this huge question, you know, will not be resolved at least in the courts about him.

so, it's a little bit, you know, i don't know if theme president thought he would find himself in this position a year ago when mueller was appointed. you know, they take this argument that because the president can't be indicted, he also cannot be subpoenaed or he can only be subpoenaed about the obstruction of justice questions, but that he doesn't have to talk to mueller for the other questions. so, this is sort of a broader thing. the things still hanging out there that they've been negotiating now for over six months is the interview, and they keep on saying we'll make a decision in the next few weeks, the next few weeks, but what's really going on? why hasn't he done an interview? >> there's no chance he'll be indicted, why not sit down for three days with bob mueller if he wants. no risk to him. >> apparently there is a risk to him, and he perceives a risk even if he can't be indicted. that's really a big question. why do they see so much risk?

every american citizen who is subpoenaed or even who receives a request to talk to fbi acts complies with that. somehow the president here is above the law and i suspect that that's because they perceive enormous risk, even short of an indictment, perhaps to family members. >> and if it's a cold hard fact never to be reopened, that no president can be indicted? >> well, look, it's policy. it's not law. policy was written, policy can be rewritten. as it stands now, yes, it's the policy that a president cannot be indicted. to resolve questions of law, we litigate them. we ask the courts to weigh in. that hasn't happened here, nicolle. it may not, by the way. but so if you're asking me can they indict him, the answer right now is no. if you're asking me whether or not it's unlawful to indict him, i would tell you it's not been resolved. >> and not that any of them win any medals for p.r., but speak to what you and i used to do was craft messages around

inconvenient truths, and it seems to be that they have accepted this inconvenient reality that there aren't clear-cut denials around obstruction. there aren't -- they don't know what they don't know. i'm told that rudy has no idea what actually went on on the campaign, and so at this point their messaging is all around what can't be done legally, not around their client's innocence. >> that's right. i think a confident attorney or confident president would come out and say, look, i'm not worried about my client being indicted because my client did nothing wrong. not my client can't be indicted. you see them kind of retreating in all these areas to a version of argument that president nixon made which is basically if the president didn't do it, it can't be illegal. you've seen that with obstruction of justice. the president firing the fbi director can't be obstruction. the president asking him to back off an investigation can't be obstruction because he's the head of the effecttixecutive br. you see hem making this argument in other areas. the president can't be indicted. >> they did it around classified information, when he divulged

classified information to not the canadians, but the russians. the president did it. everything you said is technically true, but doesn't mean it holds up as exoneration for anything. >> they constantly move the goal post. they get this a place where they can't defend first the appropriateness of what the president does, so then they move to the legality and if they can't defend the legality, then they just move the arguments, well, he's the president, he can't be indicted. >> my favorite chapter of the year long probe is definitely the rudy clip. i want to show you guys some more rudy sound. >> we'll have to look into whether we can challenge the legitimacy of the entire investigation. maybe special prosecutor, special counsel shouldn't have been appointed. not based on an illegal leak. i'm shocked they put a spy in a campaign of a major party candidate, maybe two spies. now i'm going through my brain. you know i was a big part of that campaign. i'm trying to figure out who was the spy? >> right. >> now i'm wondering is it this person or that person or this person? >> yeah. >> now, if there is a spy, they

got nothing from it. look, they'd be able to bring their case right now if the spy had any incriminating information. that spy should have been enough to tell them these people were not talking to the russians. >> so, this is what they say, not on television. he and they were too stupid to collude with russia. that is their defense against collusion. am i missing anything? >> yeah, but the problem is the goal posts have moved on collusion. a year ago it was like, no, we know nothing about the russians, no contacts. the don junior contact comes out, the meeting about dirt, the george papadopoulos stuff, they certainly were collusion curious. >> they were collusion active. they were colluding. the question is did they know how well it was working. they were colluding. >> may not have been good at it. >> they're not good at criminal conspiracy to commit crimes, but

they were colluding as i understand the definition. they were trying to collude all the time. >> yeah, i think prosecutors would call it a conspiracy, and they were a little bit more than just collusion curious because we hear rudy giuliani saying this week, you know, they were disappointed by the june trump tower meeting. don junior expected to get more out of this meeting. manafort was on his phone and jared came up with an excuse to leave early because the russians didn't have enough collusion to offer. >> take me inside how bob mueller looks at all this. i mean, it's funny because of the incompetence with which they even carried out attempted collusion. but it does seem that there is an acknowledgment that there are a lot of people with a lot of exposure. the people i constantly hear come up on the collusion question are donald trump, jr. for that meeting for things he said when it was revealed, and the trump tower meeting. and then the known unknowns.

no one knew who was talking to anybody. and you've got papadopoulos holding out russia contacts. you've got people trying to set up a meeting between the big guy and vladimir putin. and even the legal team seems to acknowledge that they don't know what they don't know. at this hour it's possible mueller knows more than they do. >> i can guarantee you mueller knows more than they do. this is a guy who in a methodical precise way, nicolle, has gone about collecting these facts, right? >> so what do you think he has? >> well, i wish i knew because the submarine only surfaces from time to time and we only get a glimpse of it. >> a submarine? >> it's a big submarine, but it's also a big ocean that it's patrolling. >> so, what do you think he knows? >> well, here's what i expect to see. i expect to see more indictments. certainly related to the hacking of the dnc. almost certainly related to conspiracy to interfere in our election processes in some way, and almost certainly involving other financial frauds.

i mean, those are the signs we're getting, the signals we're getting right now. one other point i want to make, though. just because something's a bad idea doesn't make it a crime. although lots of crimes are really bad ideas. they could have conspired, colluded, it may not be a crime, but the fact that you would sit down with representatives of the russian government -- the russian government -- to get information on your opponent in a presidential general election is astonishing. and so -- >> you don't have to tell me. i talked to some folks who have done presidential campaigns. i think we have that sound, too. the idea that rudy's message around this is everybody does it, no, they don't. >> this is hair on fire ridiculous. it's not something you would expect from any candidate for any major office in this country. >> not just presidential. let's watch it. it's an important point. >> remember june 2016? that's about when i joined the campaign. nobody is going to focus on a russian woman who says that she

has false -- information about hillary, turns out she wants to negotiate sanctions. they throw her out basically. when she wants to meet again they don't meet with her. i wouldn't remember that. i have people coming up to me saying all kinds of things about hillary. i'm willing to believe almost anything about her, and i used to get rid of them. when i ran against them they were looking for dirt on me every day. i mean, that's what you do. maybe you shouldn't, but you do it. nothing illegal about that. and even if it comes from a russian or a german or an american, doesn't matter. and they never used it is the main thing. never used it. they rejected it. if there was collusion with the russians they would have used it. >> i actually worked on more presidential campaigns than rudy giuliani has run for president. that is wrong, that is a lie. you don't use information from another country, an adversary or an ally in the conduct of a president. >> i haven't worked on any campaigns and i knew this. that if the russian government wants to meet with you, nicolle,

it's not typically for your benefit, right. it's typically for the benefit of the russian government. and if you can't see that, if you don't know that, if your antenna are not up for th meeting -- >> their antenna were up for anything. i sort of accept this unwitting theory perhaps they didn't know. but the idea that it's gone so far over the line from what could be truly innocent collusion curiosity to now alleging that there was a spy. i mean, they read the paper and they pull out of it and distort the most ridiculous thing. rudy giuliani is now going through his brain. i was a big part of that campaign and i'm trying to figure out who the spy was. we know carter page was under fisa surveillance as early as 2013. start with him. george papadopoulos is working for bob mueller. he pleaded guilty. and mike flynn also pleaded guilty. i don't know who the spy was. i'm not sure it's clear there

was one, but there were people who lied about their contacts with russians. why? >> there were. so, this is one of those arguments that every once in a while you'll see people in the trump orbit make that aren't beneficial for them. if there was someone on the trump campaign that was providing information to the fbi because they thought was -- a crime was being committed, that's not a helpful argument for the trump campaign. that shows there was probably something very inappropriate happening and someone was concerned enough to go to the fbi. now, we don't even know if that's true. but to your point, there were a number of people -- back to your point and back to one of the big questions which is what is still to come. george papadopoulos we know got this promise in march of 2016. it was told that there were e-mails that the russian government had hacked. bob mueller, when he rolled out that guilty plea, did not say what he did with that information. papadopoulos has been sitting under wraps for 8 1/2 months now talking to -- >> july. >> since the beginning of october. whatever he -- whatever he did, whoever he told, however high

that information went, long before the trump tower meeting, i think that's the most important information the special counsel -- >> and everything that george papadopoulos knows and everything that mike flynn knows and now everything that rick gates -- they probably don't know everything -- is now known by the mueller investigators. let me just ask you to explain to our viewers where the spy thing comes from. it comes from a story you and your colleagues had out yesterday about essentially debunking the entire political defense to the mueller probe, that it was some deep state conspiracy. there was a deep state conspiracy, it was to keep a counter intelligence investigation to the trump campaign secret from the american public, not the opposite. but can you just flesh out this spy charge? >> so, they went -- the fbi went to great lengths to not even inform certain people that would usually be told at the justice department about the investigation. they knew how sensitive it was. and it was also very early, there was a lot that they didn't know. and as these counter intelligence investigations can take years to figure out, they realized very quickly we're not going to solve this by election

day. there has been this notion out there that there was this person within the campaign that was cooperating. that's not something -- >> an informant. they testified to that, the former fusion gps guy. >> the part of the dossier that helped produce the dossier. it's not something we've been able to flesh out on our own, but it's part of what seems to be this larger effort by rudy to throw everything at the wall. i try and make sense often of what he does. i essentially get paid for a living to do that. and i think it's just to create a line of confusion and say there was an informant, this is part of a larger fbi conspiracy, it plays into the devin nunes notions that have been pushed. and while some of the stuff that nunes has pushed has obviously not turned out to be true, it has created stuff in that conservative, you know, talk radio echo chamber, a lot of negative things about the fbi. >> it's helped buffer the

president. real quick. >> yes, words matter. michael cohen's office wasn't raided. it was searched pursuant to a search warrant signed by a federal judge. there is not a spy in the trump camp. there is somebody, to matt miller's point, that saw something that bothered them and reported it to law enforcement. then these are not spies and raids. words matter. >> thank you for placing that. we sit here every day. you're hired. when we come back, a firsthand account of the president's state of mind in the first hours after learning that a special counsel had been appointed to investigate him. and michael cohen at a breaking point with news this morning that there may be more women who were paid more hush money by donald trump. cohen announces he will not rollover. stay with us. ♪[upbeat music]

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a source who spent time with donald trump just hours after he learned about bob mueller's appointment as special counsel today described the president's mood as clearly surprised in those hours and the scene in the oval office was chaotic with don mcgahn, hope hicks reince priebus and jared kushner coming out of the oval office with constant updates and advice while they were meeting. the source described trump's greatest source of anger on that day the fact that the president had interviewed mueller to be his fbi director, to replace jim comey. today the president continues to call the mueller probe a witch hunt, but a quick check of the facts shows it's anything but. >> after serving as the deputy attorney general for 22 days, the deputy rod rosenstein today took himself out of overseeing

the russia investigation, turning that over to robert mueller. >> good evening once again from our headquarters here in new york. this was day 118 of the trump administration, and we now have a special counsel to head the russia investigation. >> the entire thing has been a witch hunt and there is no collusion. >> why do you believe you were fired? >> i take the president at his word because of the russia investigation. >> the president's son admitting he was promised dirt about hillary clinton before agreeing with a russian lawyer from the kremlin. >> i did not collude with russia nor do i know anyone else in the campaign who did so. >> in the last couple minutes a spokesperson for paul manafort confirming an fbi raid at one of manafort's homes. >> president donald trump's former campaign chairman paul manafort and his top lieutenant rick gates were indicted on 12 criminal charges. >> minutes after the indictments were announced, we learned that

a little-known campaign aide named george papadopoulos had already pleaded guilty to lying to the fbi about efforts to collude with russian representatives. >> ex-national security advisor michael flynn today pleading in the mueller case. >> there's been no collusion. there's been no crime. >> indictment charges 13 russian nationals and three russian companies for committing federal crimes. >> special counsel robert mueller has obtained another guilty plea. this one from former trump deputy campaign chairman rick gates. >> i'm interrupting with breaking news from the justice department. attorney general has just find andrew mccabe. >> today a dutch lawyer is the first to be sentenced in connection with special counsel robert mueller's probe. alexander got a 30-day sentence and a $20,000 fine. >> the fbi today raided the office of the lawyer to the

president of the united states. >> all of this sparked by evidence gathered, yes, by special counsel bob mueller. >> there's no reason for this investigation. there never was a good reason for it in the first place. this was engineered by comey. >> astonishing to see it all laid out like that. the pace, the breadth, the number of people ensnared, the number of people pleading guilty to crimes uncovered in this investigation. >> public corruption cases are really difficult to make, nicolle. they take prosecutors a long time, sometimes these cases can take years to develop just when you're talking about a mayor or a governor. here we've got this far-flung international series of events, financial transactions, collusion, obstruction, more progress in this one year is absolutely remarkable, don't you think? i didn't expect to see anything this quickly. >> to nicolle's point, prosecutors have to go into court to prove this beyond a reasonable doubt and unanimously

have a jury agree to that. so, they can't go forward when they think they got it or more or less have it. they need proof beyond a reasonable doubt. if you're going after the leader of the free world in a criminal case, you're not going to just dot your i's and cross your t's, you're going to do it ten times. of course it takes a long time. >> one of the president's allies described bob mueller's selection as special counsel is like selecting a prosecutorial assassin. when that decision was made donald trump's fate was sealed. >> sometimes i don't know whether trump understands everything that is going on, but he clearly from the beginning understood the significance of mueller. he clearly knew that this could be a potential existential threat. and we've watched him struggle with it over the past year and he always -- he always comes back to the sessions recusal as the original sin. he can't move beyond the sessions recusal. always wants to talk about t. >> he wants his guys there to protect him.

>> he's very open. he said on the record to us, i would not have made jeff sessions my attorney general if i knew he was going to recuse himself. >> is that obstruction of justice, i want people there to protect me? >> the admission, he wants an attorney general who would block an investigation of him. if we see an obstruction of justice report to the congress, whether the president does an interview or not with the special counsel, it is his repeated words on the record in public, on twitter, asking for anyone at the justice department to shut this down, wanting sessions to do it, wanting rosenstein to do it, asking comey to do it before he fired him. it's his own words that are so damning in the obstruction piece of this. >> i mean, i spent a lot of time in the past year trying to figure out things that the president did in private. we worked really hard to do that, only to find out that he tweeted it. >> but this idea that he wants to be protected by -- i've heard he started asking around, is chris wray going to be a good

guy or bad guy? good and bad mean to him something specific. >> from the beginning he did not understand the sensitivities of washington, where even the slightest appearance of a conflict is something that's taken incredibly seriously. and he's never had a regard for that. you can see that right off the bat with the dinner with comey seven days after he becomes president. >> we put up a list of all the people that have been into mueller's -- met with mueller's investigators. some of the lawyers have actually had to call back the investigator -- the fbi and the agency and say, when they got back, the president asked -- some of the attorneys for some of these folks have had to call back after the president has asked them about what kinds of questions they got. aren't these -- i only watch law and order. i'm not a lawyer. aren't these crimes hiding in plain sight? >> they are hiding in plain sight. the point that chuck makes, that we don't know what mueller has because he doesn't try his cases with press conferences or

appearances on fox news, we'll find out when the submarine surfaces and there is a new indictment. that's the point in time where we know what he has. but i've often pondered the irony of this refusal to give mueller an interview by the president when he tweets it out every morning. and much of the questions that you would want to ask as a prosecutor are there in plain sight already. >> and he's tweeted -- to mike's point, he has tweeted his peak about mueller wanting the job of fbi director. today was the first time that i heard that was something he was angry about after learning mueller was appointed to investigate him. it's always the personal with him. it is never about the country. it's never about getting to the bottom of the russia -- never about the pursuit of truth. it's always about people who have been disloyal to him, people who screwed him, who owed him something. he thought mueller being interviewed as the fbi director owed it to him. >> the only thing mueller owes us is the oath he swore, follow the constitution, follow the facts, follow the law, do what

justice demands. i think to mike's point, the president doesn't get that. he doesn't get the sensitivities. and not to get preachy on you, nicolle -- >> that's fine. >> -- as prosecutors, that's something we hold dear, that sort of is innate to us. i'm not saying we're better or worse. i'm saying we get that. >> it's a good point because it is what is so foreign to -- it's what makes him say to reporters, i wanted my guys, my guy roy cohn. >> he doesn't get it. at this point he doesn't want to get it. i can take the argument when he first got there he didn't understand how the justice department is supposed to work. he didn't understand how he was supposed to be hands offer. people have told him how it's supposed to work. he continues to interfere. he wants to shut it down. he has bad intentions here. >> the president may not understand people like bob mueller. it just -- it doesn't make sense to some people that there is a bob mueller who doesn't care about politics and doesn't care about press, but cares only, joyce, about doing the right thing. that's sort of a foreign concept

to some people, but it exists. >> some of us are pulling for him. when we come back, more women, more hush money. that's the allegation for the attorney for stormy daniels. what does that mean for the president's former attorney and fixer? these birds once affected by oil are heading back home. thanks to dawn, rescue workers only trust dawn, because it's tough on grease yet gentle. i am home, i am home, i am home

they are not fully vetted but there are at least two i think are on solid ground. as the evidence rolls out in the coming months, disclosures will be made my client was not alone as it relates to these payments. that michael cohen was not a 24/hour seven-day a week fixer for the sole purpose of taking care of stormy daniels. >> two women alleged they have agreements with michael cohen or donald trump? >> correct. >> and women who claim to have had affairs or sex with donald trump? >> correct. >> and these women, are they part of a larger payments? >> i'm sorry? >> did they have larger payments paid to them, larger than

$130,000? >> yes. >> oh, oh, more incoming for the president's embattled former fixer and vanity fair's emily jane fox reports on michael cohen's state of mind. quote, cohen according to two people familiar with his thinking has vacillated between fuming over avenatti's involvement in the matter and feeling browbeat enby the barrage of headlines. in the last week he's told he's being attacked and his family is being made to suffer all because investigators are trying to get to the president. quote, i'm not going to just rollover, he's told friends, spending hours each day with his attorneys in order to comb through documents the government has returned to them from their raids which we're not going to use any more thanks to you last month. what do you think? >> well, i reject the language, first of all. >> but the idea that this is where he is. he's pouring over the documents, he wants -- you know, i've heard anecdotally, he's prepared for the worst in terms of his own personal legal situation. >> he ought to be.

when the fbi executes a warrants on your house, that's a bad day, not a good day. you ought to be prepared for the worst. on a human level i'm sympathetic. but the reason they executed a search warrant, nicolle, they had probable cause to believe a crime had been committed and the evidence of a crime in his office. >> and one of the kinds of crimes uncovered, the washington post reporting michael cohen, president trump's personal attorney solicited a payment of at least a million dollars from the government of qatar in late 2016 in exchange for access to and advice about the then incoming administration. >> yeah, it seems like he was flat-out soliciting a bribe from the qataris, an incredible thing. i think chuck is right. he is almost certainly going to be indicted. the question if you're him, you're looking at potentially a long time in jail. if you look at all the charges surrounding him, bank fraud, potential bribery, a number of potential charges. most people in that situation end up talking. they end up cooperating. the one thing that makes this one different is that most people in this situation don't

face the possibility of a pardon from the president of the united states. i think that is the one thing hanging out here, the red line that mark warner laid out several months ago that if the president pardons anyone in this investigation to try to make the investigation go away, which this would be, that's a red line for the president to cross. >> you reported that the president called cohen the friday after the early week raid, search and seizure. >> search warrant. >> do you have any idea what was discussed or if that's on the table? >> we don't know how -- what, if anything, about pardon or anything like that came up. there was no evidence that we had along those lines. the thing about cohen that i find remarkable is how much more we know today than we did at the time that the search warrant was executed. >> my god, could you completely brain washed everybody. raid has been purged. >> big buzzer. >> but the thing that the president's lawyers will admit, if they're being candid, is that they're much more worried about

the new york investigation than they are about mueller. you get all these questions about mueller, all the stuff, whatever. they don't understand what's going on in new york. they don't know the contours of it and they don't think they're getting a fair shake from the president or cohen about it. so, it's a two-front war and they don't even know who the enemy is on the other side. >> and who is cohen in all of this? i mean, before the search warrant, he had been on mueller's radar and he had -- the trump organization subpoenas had gone out. i mean, mueller has been -- cohen has been a figure well known by the mueller investigators for a long time before any of this was kicked over to the southern district. >> cohen is in the dossier. there is a thing about a meeting they allege in the dossier that cohen has, so he's been someone even on the russia part that has been looked at in all of this because we know the fbi took the dossier seriously. i guess in trump's orbit, the question is, is he a hanger on, is he a fixer, is a real lawyer,

is he someone who worked for trump or got fired by trump oerg? there are a lot of these people in trump's inner circle that come and go and he's certainly one of them. you have to wonder who else they may be looking at. >> he's also, joyce, someone who did inelegant things for the president. his book of business for donald trump was taking care of the porn stars that he allegedly had sex with, was writing i guess unsound legal documents, ndas that attorney michael avenatti seems to think he has a good case to undo. i mean, michael cohen's aboveboard book of business wouldn't really be the kind of thing that would withhold public scrutiny for a normal president. >> the watergate wisdom is follow the money. michael cohen makes it awfully easy for prosecutors to follow the money because he was a sloppy lawyer. he was not careful about creating sort of separated entities for these sort of operations. none of it will stand up to scrutiny. i suspect at the end of the day

that he will find himself in a situation where he really has to cooperate with the investigation. he won't be able to pay the freight for a full-on indictment and the sort of time it would put him in przybyison for. >> speak to mike's point. you think that is too much to put off to wait for the eventuality of that, the legal cost, the sufrlg? >> you know, if we're going to survive -- i don't mean to be dramatic about it. if we're going to survive as a constitutional republic, it has to be the case that the president of the united states cannot pardon people who could provide testimony against him personally and close members of his family. so, if the folks on the hill don't see a pardon of a witness who is being scrutinized for this sort of conduct, if they don't see that as a red line, then we're in a lot of trouble. >> you agree? >> i do agree. but i would add one thing. a pardon can wipe clean a criminal conviction, right. it doesn't preclude him from being called as a witness. you can still get his testimony. he can still be compelled.

in fact, once pardoned, he has no 5th amendment concern and therefore no 5th amendment privilege. and so i'm very concerned that this may result in a flurry of pardons. i still believe the grand jury will obtain the evidence. >> all right. hope springs eternal. chuck rosenberg, thank you so much for being with us. when we come back, you may be seeing a lot more of these guys on your television screens sometime soon. (vo) why are subaru outback owners always smiling?

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the latest stars of television, an attorney from los angeles suing the president on behalf of an adult film actress and a former white house communications director who lasted all of ten days, michael avenatti and anthony scaramucci have had their fair share of tv appearances so much so "the new york times" now reporting a show featuring the two of them has been pitched to two cable networks in recent weeks. one of the reporters with the by line on that story, mike

schmidt, tell us about it. one of them i should say is this network and our network has declined to comment. >> we hathey have been working an agent trying to figure out whether there was a television show they could do together. >> are they friends? >> i don't know. but the larger question here for avenatti is, does this sort of undercut his standing as this person who has been standing up to trump? he has taken on such a public posture against the president, then now there to be the notion out there he was looking for a television show, you know, that may fuel the critics who have said that he has really taken advantage of this moment to promote himself. >> he responded to your story or in your story saying, lol, i have no interest in television right now. i'll leave that to the experts. he's getting pretty expert. i enjoy practicing law and look forward to prevailing on behalf of my client stormy daniels. that's where my focus is, bunch of hashtag stuff.

what do you think, does the country need two more lawyers on tv? >> yes,ly tune in to the joyce vance chuck rosenberg show. >> i would, too. >> to your point, michael avenatti has done a good job using tv to advance the interest of his client. there are times he let his love of being on television lead him to do things detrimental to his cause. the perfect example when he released the -- michael cohen's financial information last week. obviously someone leaked that to him. if he quietly provided that to "the new york times," washington post, msnbc, and not put himself in the middle that of argument, he probably would have given the source of that leak, the person at the treasury department who leaked it, who is now under investigation and probably is going to face criminal prosecution a much better argument as a whistleblower. >> good point. i asked who he billed that time to when he did that report. did that go on stormy daniels' bill? how did that relate to the

central case? "the new york times" reporting found out one of the michael cohen's whose records were released was the wrong one. so, he does get most of it right, but if any of us made a mistake like that, we'd be in hot water. >> yeah, it would be a real death knell i think for many of us especially in court. but what avenatti does that's so compelling is that he slowly puts out this lead and in many ways you hear when you're talking with folks now, they've come to view him almost as a mueller-like figure, as someone who is helping to preserve the country in some way. i have pretty much matt's reaction as a prosecutor and i think we've talked about this before. i think it's a little bit troubling to see evidence that prosecutors have been cautiously guarding coming out in public, perhaps coming out too early and impeding the continuing investigation. just need pause. >> i want to bring somebody in the conversation best to be talking about tv lawyers in

front of, joining the table harvard professor, constitutional law expert known for many things including his role as counsel in bush v. gore. let me get your thoughts on the story we've been talking about all day, the one-year anniversary of bob mueller's investigation and whether or not there is any prospect of it ending in the impeachment of this president. >> impeachment is an extremely serious step. a lot of people have come to treat it as daily entertainment, sort of part of the -- sort of the reality show, political conversation. i think it's dangerous to have loose impeachment talk. it's not a bullet that you can shoot more than once against any given president. and the evidence is building up, but i strongly think we ought to wait until we learn more. connect the dots. mueller is doing an astonishing job. the idea that one could dismiss it all as a witch hunt is ludicrous, but we don't yet know enough. i do think it will come to a

head and i don't think any of us knows exactly what will emerge, but i think the whole package is likely to look, if i were to make a guess, it's likely to look like cleptocracy on steroids. it's likely to look like someone who worked with a hostile foreign power to become president, who has all sorts of obligations to that power, who is dealing not only with russia, but with china, having them put half a billion bucks into his portfolio, violating the emoluments clause, then giving a special deal to zte, endangering our security. when all of that explodes, it can be quite nuclear, and the idea that the people will simply stand for it and that republicans will not suddenly grow a spine i think is premature. we don't really know. we certainly know that getting 67 senators to vote to convict is almost impossible.

it's never happened, but there is always a first time. and if there is any president who has tempted the country to see whether the safeguard that the framers put in place against a renegade president who cares more about himself than about the country, this might be that president. so, i'm watching with all the rest of us. >> history has been made. you have more confidence in the republicans right now than i do. >> confidence may overstate it. >> you really think what bob mueller will find will be enough to shake the republicans out of their zombie state? >> probably not, but probably not means there is a chance that it will. but the point of my book really is to layout the whole road map, to show throughout our history how impeachment was a kind of slumbering power, that it woke up. it really did the job with nixon, even though he left before the guillotine could drop. >> the threat of it. >> the threat of it. and talking about the pros and cons of removing even a terrible

president, one who violates various central tenets of our democracy rather than waiting to the next election, those are things that i examine with joshua matsuyama in this book. joshua mats in this book. >> we want to ask you more about it. we have to sneak in one more break. we'll be right back. from paying too much on their car insurance. hey, there's cake in the breakroom... what are you doing? um...nothing? marvel studios' avengers: infinity war, in theaters april 27th. now...where were we?

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to compete with private insurance companies. and expanding medicare to everyone over 55. and i believe medicare must be empowered to negotiate the price of drugs. california values senator dianne feinstein to negotiate the price of drugs. i we worked with pg&eof to save energy because wenie. wanted to help the school. they would put these signs on the door to let the teacher know you didn't cut off the light. the teachers, they would call us the energy patrol. so they would be like, here they come, turn off your lights! those three young ladies were teaching the whole school about energy efficiency. we actually saved $50,000. and that's just one school, two semesters, three girls. together, we're building a better california. we're back. lawrence tribe hassle valted us, not that we needed much

elevating with awful you. i want to ask you a question we have been talking about this hour. can a sitting president be dated? rudy giuliani doesn't think so. what do you think. >> i think he can be. i don't think he will be because mueller is likely to follow the guidelines. but when you ask yourself is there nothing that a sitting president could do, murder his opponents that could lead to an indictment. of course there are thing he could do that would lead to his indictment. it is a matter of how serious it is. >> do you acknowledge it would take a policy change? >> it would certainly take a policy change. a lot of things changed under this president. i think the idea certainly that idea that senator blumenthal does of indicting him, sealing the indictment, and waiting until he is out to have the trial that at a minimum should be doable. the idea that all of this work that might well show criminality as well as impeachability should just be put aside until maybe

even 2024 is really hard to abide if what emerges is as serious as it looks like it might be. >> do you agree with that? >> i do agree with it. i think there is an interesting nuance. the inside baseball point. the way the special counsel regulations have been written is it's permissible but not mandatory for the special counsel to send a report up to the chill. so mueller has to go to rosenstein and ask for permission to indict and then have that permission denied in order to technically cent send a report up to the him it's possible they could just agree they will write a report and accepted it up. within the regs there is that fail-safe mechanism for ensuring a report gets out. >> don't you think it will get out no matter what? the idea that you could seal up a report like this and not have it become somebody in this town when the stakes are so high is beyond my imagination. >> with reporters like that. what do you think? >> it would be nice to get them.

>> i want to put you on the spot. that do you think? >> it is a very difficult thing. even if mueller wanted to indict the president, i think knowing rod rosenstein the cautious institutionalist he is he would be unlikely to overrule the long standing department of justice opinion that it's unconstitutional. i think we are left in the situation -- >> can i argue, what do we have left to lose? if the report was going to get out anyway couldn't he go out in a blaze of glory. >> yeah, he would tell mueller to write a report and authorize it to be sent to congress. >> he is not a blaze of glory kind of guy. he believes deeply in the institution of the justice department. if there was ever a do the right thing kind of guy it is rod rosenstein. >> he wouldn't take part in the scaramucci show. >> no? of course. do you have any thoughts. >> the question of impeachment is whatever the house of

representatives makes it up to be. >> that, i don't agree. ford thought that. but the fact is the house of representatives has to have a plausible argument it is a high crime and misdemeanor. they can't say we don't like the guy, we disagree with his policy. >> we are going to keep this debate up. we have to sneak one more in. don't go anywhere. we'll be right back. it's all so... smart. but how do you work with it? ask this farmer. he's using satellite data to help increase crop yields. that's smart for the food we eat. at this port, supply chains are becoming more transparent with blockchain. that's smart for millions of shipments. in this lab, researchers are working with watson to help them find new treatments. that's smart for medicine. at this bank, the world's most encrypted mainframe is helping prevent cybercrime. that's smart for everyone. and in africa, iot sensors and the ibm cloud are protecting endangered animals. that's smart for rhinos. yeah. rhinos.

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♪ your wing nut has you covered. ♪ hi. ♪ introducing planter's crunchers. a nutty crunch inside a flavorful crunch. ♪ that does it for our hour. my thanks to lawrence tribe, joyce, mike, and matt. "mtp daily" starts right now. hi chuck. >> thank you nicole, how are you doing? 1-1, i like where your warriors are sitting. >> that was passive aggressive of you. >> 1-1 is not bad going back to the bay area. let's go cavs. >> let's see if it holds up. >> i will be impressed if they can beat new oakland. fair enough. if it's thursday, oh, the mueller investigation blows out the birthday candle on number one. tonight, the anti-mueller message. >> witch-hunt. >> witch-hunt.