welcome to kasie dc. we are live every sunday from washington from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. eastern, but this is a special night. as we come on the air, the principal conclusions we've waited for so long from robert mueller and his investigators are out. a summary from attorney general william barr explains that no american involved with president trump's campaign conspired or coordinated with russia in the 2016 campaign. but then there's the question of

obstruction of justice. the special counsel did not draw a conclusion one way or the other as to whether the examined conduct constituted obstruction. and while this report does not conclude the president did commit a crime, it also does not exonerate him. still the president celebrated on twitter and everywhere else, saying no collusion, no obstruction, complete and total exoneration. here he is leaving his mar-a-lago club to return to washington. >> so after a long look. after a long investigation. after so many people have been so badly hurt, after not looking at the other side, where a lot of bad things happened, a lot of horrible things happened, a lot of bad things happened for our country, it was just announced there was no collusion with russia. there was no obstruction.

none whatsoever. and it was a complete and total exoneration. it's a shame that our country had to go through this. to be honest, it's a shame that your president has had to go through this for before i even got elected it began. and it began illegally. and hopefully somebody is gonna look at the other side. this was an illegal takedown that failed. >> but house speaker nancy pelosi and minority leader chuck schumer read the four page document differently, saying it raised as many questions as it answers, does it not exonerate the president. and given mr. barr's public record of bias against the special counsel's inquiry, he is no a neutral observer and is not

in a position to make objective determinations about the report. jerry nadler already said he's going to call the attorney general to testify and we could see call for the special counsel as well. but the likelihood that the president is removed from office by impeachment by november 2020 is all but nil after this. i would like to welcome ashley parker, yamiche alcindor, brendon buck, jeremy bash, and nbc news national security and justice reporter july ia ainsle. and in alabama we have joyce vance. joyce vance, i'd like to start with you, in terms of the thinking behind not deciding to prosecute this obstruction of justice question. we know that mueller himself didn't make a determination on

this point. in fact, barr says that the report cites evidence in both camps. that there was possibly obstruction or that there was not. how unusual is it, and does it cast suspicion on this letter from william barr as democrats are insinuating? >> you know, this is a sort of 15 on the richter scale, i don't know how high the scale goes, but this is a big earthquake, because prosecutor's central jobs is to make decision about the evidence and about the law in the hard cases. and barr's letter, which is a summary, it's not the actual conclusions of the mueller report, tells us that mueller laid out evidence on both sides of the issue. acknowledged that both legal and factual issues were difficult but never came to a decision about whether or not obstruction should be charged. that is very unusual. it means there will have to be further inquiry by congress.

we'll have to see what the mueller report actually says. and the most important question to me is why did mueller do this? was he told not to make the decision? did he decide to leave it up to congress? surely he didn't mean for an attorney general, who in the memo he used to apply for a job with the president had prejudged the obstruction issue. that really calls into question the steps that barr took today. >> julia ainsley, to joyce's point, what do we know about how any of the decisions were made in the justice department? do we know anything along those lines? >> we have some bread crumbs laid out in the letter here. what the attorney general is saying is because the report from mueller didn't weigh one side or the other about charging obstruction, he believes that leaves it to the attorney general to determine whether that conduct described is indeed a crime. so he's taking that on himself because there was no conclusion reached by robert mueller.

and he says that one thing we know did weigh in his decision, that was the fact that there was no underlying crime. there have been charges for obstruction of justice in other criminal cases when there is no underlying crime. martha stewart is an example that comes to mind most famously for that. but there's the underlying, can someone have intent to cover a crime, and intent is what leads to obstruction. the other piece we wondered about is could they indict a sitting president and would that weigh in on robert mueller, and in this case, william barr's conclusions. and william barr made it explicit in this letter that that did not weigh in on his decision. the fact that a 2000 opinion from this justice department said that a sitting president could not be indicted was left out of this. it didn't come to this point. i'll read this to you, because the president was not involved in any underlying crime related

to russian interference, they found that evidence would bear upon the president's intent with respect to obstruction. the question i've been raising inside is how in the world did the attorney general make this decision within 48 hours of receiving that report, when he gets that evidence laid out, was this a decision he came to too hastily, what i've been told by officials here who are backing up their boss' decision, you have to remember that william barr new what was in this and rod rosenstein who he worked closely with, has been in charge of this since the inception. he appointed robert mueller so he knew what was coming to him. so he had the report long before the official report came down on friday. >> jeremy bash, to the point julie was making about collusion and their decision that, in fact, there was no crime around collusion. and therefore, there was no reason to actually prosecute the president for obstruction of justice. do you feel as though the

evidence on the table already indicates that the president included with the russians and does this put to rest any question about whether the president could still come under the influence of russia? >> i think there's sufficient evidence to see that the russian government made outreach to the trump campaign and tried to interfere to help donald trump. it was really about sanction relief, the magnitsky act, and what they wanted over donald trump. so in some ways the conspiracy question is a narrow one. i accept robert mueller's decision that there was conduct there. but the william barr letter, page 3, where he says bob mueller didn't make a decision here, that leaves it to the attorney general, him speaking in the third person about himself, says who? there's no policy, no law, no attorney general guideline,

special counsel guideline that says if the special counsel doesn't make a prosecutorial decision it goes to the attorney general -- >> who else would it go to? >> it could be a nonprosecution event. instead what barr says is i have re-examined all the evidence and determined that donald trump is clean on this. i don't know what authority bill barr was using to make that conclusion, and i don't know if it was a correct conclusion. that's something congress is going to have to undertake and examine. >> brendon, i'll start with you, the question of what they do next. house democrats are not going to drop this, but it seems it shifts the conversation we've been having. >> you have jerry nadler saying he's going forward with his conversation. i was struck most by the response from nancy pelosi and

chuck schumer. if you're looking for an exit ramp, i think this would be it, and nancy pelosi didn't take it today. >> do you think she's come under so much pressure from her left? >> she certainly got blow back but she seems to be in control of the situation. certainly you have a committee chairman going forward and you don't want to look like you're getting rolled by your committee chairman, this is an opportunity to pivot from where they're headed and doesn't look like they're taking it. >> jerry nadler, the head of the judiciary committee, spoke a few minutes ago. i think we're going to show some sound from him. take a look. >> his conclusions raise more questions than they answer. given the fact that mueller uncovered evidence that, in his own words, does not exonerate the president. it is unconsable that president trump would try to spin the special counsel's findings as if his conduct was remotely

acceptable. given these questions it's imperative the attorney general release the report and underlying evidence. the attorney general's comments make it clear that congress must step in and get the truth and provide full transparency to the american people. the president has not been exonerated by the special counsel, yet the attorney general has decided not to go further or apparently share those findings with the public. we cannot simply rely on what may be a hasty partisan interpretation of the facts. >> i definitely take brandon's point, if they wanted an off ramp on impeachment, they could have easily taken one. on the other hand the president has declared himself to be completely exonerated which is counter to the facts we have been presented. it's possible that the attorney general and the deputy attorney general decided okay we're not going to go down this road but mueller said there's evidence both ways on obstruction of justice. >> for starters, this is not a president who from his campaign to his presidency has been

constrained by the facts. >> good point. >> what he went out and what he said, which is total exoneration, is going to be a rallying cry to use against the democrats heading into 2020. no collusion sort of started in the aftermath of 2016 as a defensive mantra, i didn't do anything wrong, i didn't include. now he's going to use it to say no collusion, i told you so, any other investigation, and there are some real investigations going on in new york, congressional investigations into the president's inaugural committee, his finances, we don't know what other investigations might be launched. he's going to say i told you no collusion, i told you this is a witch hunt. robert mueller who is he now going to say is a boy scout agrees with me. and everything else is false and a witch hunt. >> talk about a rallying cry, the president and people around him are using mueller's report as a rallying cry, they're on

the campaign trail fund-raising this, saying it's a witch hunt and text witch hunt to a certain number to essentially become part of their fund-raising campaign. there's this idea of people i've been talking to close to the president, it feels like 2016 all over again, and tlaeks night where they were pointing their fingers at people saying we told you so. someone texted me today, that's close to the president, lynn pat ton, she said this is basically the president being told you are really the president of the united states and you are lawfully in your office and democrats should take this as this basically being like hillary clinton, i know you're better, angry, but you should swallow this. >> your point on idea that there's still real investigations, the republicans don't want to talk about that at all al all, they're not going to. >> we should point out the president just returned to the white house a couple minutes ago, he said america is the greatest country on earth and he

walked into the white house ignoring shouted questions. >> joyce vance i want to ask you about this decision democrats have made to attack bill barr on this question. they said he doesn't have the credibility because he's made biassed remarks, that's their word, about the investigation overall. do you buy into that? do you think this is a smart strategy? do you think mr. barr has credibility to make these decisions or not? >> i think the problem that bill barr has to deal with is this memo that he wrote before he came to the job in which he pre-judged obstruction of justice. he has an easy method of clearing that question up, which is to release bob mueller's report, release all the underlying evidence, let congress engage in the inquiry they need to engage in, and let the american people see it for themselves. one issue that barr cannot cure by doing that is how very narrow

the investigation was, it was limited only to the question of collusion with russia, and obstruction pre sum bli in regards to that question of russia. before the president cries witch hunt we need to remember investigators don't pass on investigating a murder just because they learn about it during a bank robbery investigation. these other investigations are still live. they're important questions about this president. if the conclusion from the republicans today, is that you've got a clean bill of health, they may have to see what do you say when you do see a problem. >> just to remind our viewers what the attorney general said so far.

senator amy klobuchar did press barr on whether he would make the report public when he had his confirmation hearing back in january. take a look. >> will you commit to make public all of the report's conclusions, the mueller report, even if some of the evidence supporting those conclusions can't be made public? >> you know, that certainly is my goal and intent. it's hard for me to conceive of a conclusion that would, you know, run afoul of the regs as currently written. >> julia ainsley, you heard bill barr there. we know he has said in this letter that they're worried about some of the grand jury information and then, of course, information related to ongoing investigations. what's your sense -- we're watching the president walk across on the north lawn of the white house. that's him waving at reporters,

thumbs up. again, we overheard him saying that america was the greatest country on earth. and then he walked inside. so julia, what do we expect -- we do know there's going to be a public reckoning of some kind with the remainder of this report, but is that going to look like some of the classified documents? just a second. >> america is the greatest place on earth. the greatest place on earth. thank you very much. >> that was the president of the united states returning to the white house after what is no doubt a tryup fant day for his campaign. julia, let's go back to this question. is this going to look like a document we get from the senate intelligence committee where you get three sentences and the rest is blacked out, or we'll get some public reckoning? >> the only thing that would get

released is the only thing that the attorney general thinks is in the public's interest. anything he puts out now is for the public's consumption. however he put out a lot of parameters in this letter today, anything in front of a grand jury, which is how robert mueller conducted and collected a lot of evidence in this investigation. he wants to look around the limits of disclosure about other circumstances like going forward in other investigations. we know there are a number of spinoff investigations like in the eastern district of virginia and southern district of new york and possibly others that the attorney general doesn't want to leaf out anything that would get in the way. i've been pressing officials here to see how it might look, are we going to get another letter that looks like this, it's something that's going to come over a lot of time, consult with robert mueller, and it might not be in one document,

this might be dribbles over time as they decide what they can release. partly as these other investigations wrap there might be more they can give us. the last part is what i'm inferring based on the fact it's a longer time line. in a sense we don't have nearly the same commitment we had on friday when the attorney general said as soon as this weekend i'll release the findings. everything else now is really undefined on the time line. >> brendon buck, does that make it irrelevant in the political world? >> no. they're going to drag him up as soon as they can get him up in front of the committee to talk about these things. there's two layers of questions, here, how much is "breitbarwill going to release. you heard rod rosenstein talk about how in the department of justice they don't make accusations and claims against people they don't intend to prosecute. so how much is he going to say in that report and how much do we get from bill barr, two different questions but

important ones as well. >> what's your sense of what republicans are going to do on this point? >> celebrate. >> we're seeing that. but i mean, do they -- is this a situation where since they are celebrating they would feel comfortable saying yes, the american people should see this report? >> they said that. >> they voted for it. >> yes. everybody has said the american public should see the report. they want it out as soon as they can. what everyone is celebrating today, that first question, no collusion. that's what this entire thing started as. i hate to say some of the reactions i've seen from democrats seem to be disappointed that we learned that the president wasn't conspireing with a foreign power. that should be good news and we should be happy about that. >> one thing that might surprise you, and these are conversations i had with white house officials before today's news. a number of people in the white house were saying, actually, they were pushing for more transparency internally and the president seemed receptive to that, you might not expect that,

by the time this rolled around, there was deep anxiety and nervousness, even before mueller turned in his report on friday. the people in the white house were confident, turns out they were right. but the people i talked to so far said they were pushing for transparency because if they don't release the full report they can do what the democrats are doing now. they want to see every period, com comma, and releasing it would get rid of the conspiracy theories. that said, the president thinks everything looks so good for him -- >> why screw it up. >> -- reading every word in that report. >> therefore, they have leverage. they've had financial and political leverage over our foreign policy and president and presidency. whether they assisted with that,

robert mueller said no. but it doesn't change the fundamental issue of national security. >> talk about this issue of transparency, though. there is this idea the dodj say if you're not going to charge someone, you're not going to disparage them. but then you think of the 2016 with james comey, the press conference of all press conferenc conferences, hillary clinton didn't break any laws, but she did act neglectly. you have the president on the white house lawn saying make the report public. but if you read the president acted negligently, surrounded himself with bad people, if the report says anything like that, the president would say, let's put this behind us. that's where it comes down to

the details of the report. >> it is a good point that james comey set a precedent. it'll be interesting to see if they follow it. hallie jackson joins us from the white house. how much -- what are they going to say in public about whether this should be released? >> that is the question that president trump, despite many opportunities to answer just in the last few hours alone has not answered. the mood i think here at the white house among the officials we've talked to and our reporting seems to be celebrator frankl frankly. there's a glow among the folks after the release of the barr letter. and the president came over, in this interesting moment, i think you played it back earlier, came off the chopper on the south lawn of the white house, came up to reporters we thought it was an opportunity to ask him questions about where he stands on the release of the report,

instead he said america is the greatest place on earth, i'm paraphrasing there. he seems to want to be chatty but not take some of these questions talking with reporters, which is his prerogative. but the question is not just how much of this report do you want released but are you personally asking attorney general william barr to do that. i was told that the president does not have any calls or meetings scheduled with barr, they're not on his schedule imminently, but that could change. that is something we could be drilling down on. is that something that the white house also wants to see, barr going out publically or perhaps behind closed doors, answering questions from democrats, republicans, lawmakers who were asking about this. i'm going to get on the record with this here, we have a new statement out from vice president, mike pence, who says today is a great day for america, it's lengthy, i won't

read it, but he wraps up saying we can only hope democrats who have spent so much time on these allegations will join us to make our nation more prosperous and secure for all americans. we know he takes the cue from his boss, the president of the united states. in this case it's a shot at democrats down pennsylvania avenue. >> it's a good point about mike pence. you guys have covered the president on the campaign trail, probably more times than you care to remember. what is the sense -- i know the campaign seems to think this sets them up very well for 2020. i have talked to some democratic sources who are pretty disspirited and feel like this is going to send the president back to the oval office in 2020. is the level of confidence among the trump campaign at that point or not? >> this just happened, but the people i've been talking to in

his orbit in the campaign are deeply, deeply excited. this is a tremendous victory lap for them. what's interesting, going into this, you saw this this weekend, their argument to the president, to their surrogates and allies was be restrained. let the democrats go out and hang themselves by engaging in what they see as overreach. you saw president trump made remarks before he got on "air force one," after he got off on the south lawn but he's been restrained. everyone is waiting to see what does he do when he gets up at the rally thursday night. what does he do when he wakes up and looks at his phone and wants to tweet something. >> i've been talking to trump campaign officials and they're debuting what sound like key talking points on the 2020 trail. the number one thing is not only

was the president vindicated and exonerated but he's ushered in a good economy, he's carried through all the promises he said he was going to do. that's some political spin there -- >> and potentially tenuous. the economy could tank in the next year. >> yes. their message is the president has been doing work while democrats have been obsessed with the mueller report and figuring out a way to bring donald trump down. that's their message, not to say it's accurate but it's the debuting of it. the president his first statement after the report, keep america great again, that's the campaign slogan, and that's the first thing he tweeted after the summary. sheila jackson of texas is joining me, a member of the house judiciary committee. congresswoman thank you for coming on tonight. >> thank you for having me. >> i'd like to start walking through a couple pieces of what we learned in this summary tonight. do you believe the conclusion that robert mueller made that

there is no evidence that the president or his associates included with russia? >> i think first of all, we should just remind the american public of how we got here. we got here because of levels and layers of evidence of russia's intrusion into the 2016 election. wikileaks, the dumping of e-mails. the conspicuous call to the president during his campaign from roger stone saying e-mails are about to be dumped. then we got here not by democrats but by the deputy attorney general, rod rosenstein, who thought after the incident with director comey that there was another enough evidence or enough concern to the rule of law to open a special counsel investigation. the judiciary committee, all of us on the committee, want to be

sobering and deliberate in our review. the first order of business is to release the report. while there's jubilation in the president's camp, then let's have the president urge the attorney general to release the report in its totality to the american people. secondly, let us make sure the oversight committees, particularly in the house, get every single document because our task is to continue the review of this and provide to the american people our assessment, our review, which we want to do as quickly as possible. >> again, do you believe robert mueller when he writes that there was no collusion? do you accept that conclusion? >> i accept that robert mueller did a thorough job and he made the assessment that there was no collusion, again there's not a

legal term, it's conspiracy. but his decision was based on a whole number of factors and investigations, and what i am saying is, we in the judiciary committee want to review those documents. >> and on the obstruction of justice piece, robert mueller has said that there was evidence on both sides of that, it's william barr, the attorney general and his deputy, who made that conclusion not to prosecute the president for obstruction of justice. do you think the attorney general handled that appropriately? >> i think the main point is that the report from director mueller indicate that is he did not exonerate the president, nor did he exonerate him from the issue of -- in particular of obstruction of justice. what the report says, i believe, is that he submitted those issues, those documents to the attorney general. and we want to have the attorney general as a witness, because

certainly the attorney general's decision, if there's been a final decision of what to do next regarding the president of the united states, we know where he stands with respect to a president being engaged in the criminal justice system, we want to abide by the rule of law. i think questions still remain on the question of abuse of power, public corruption, obstruction of justice, and we think it's important for us to see all of those documents for us to be able to review it and review the decision. so we would like to have attorney general barr come before the house judiciary committee as quickly as possible. >> sure. we saw jerry nadler call for that tonight as well. based on what you know now, do you believe there is evidence to impeach the president of the united states? >> based on what i know now, i think i'm following the same theme, which is high crimes and misdemeanors have to do with the high office of the presidency, and you know kassie what we need to do.

what we need to do is to follow the evidence, continue to investigate. this is a political process, if impeachment were to ever be discussed or moved on and look to our colleagues on the other side of the aisle to join us in following the evidence and the rule of law. >> it sounds to me like you don't think it should be ruled out at this point. do you think it should be ruled out at this point? >> we can't rule a final process if evidence takes us there. but as you know, we as democrats are doing our work, passing legislation that the senate is blocking, such as gun safety legislation, such as legislation dealing with the violence against women act, and legislation dealing with issues of health care which we're working on extensively. we want to continue to work on them on behalf of the american people. >> would impeachment hearings and the focus on impeachment jeopardize that work and

potentially jeopardize democratic chances of winning in 2020? >> i think that any ultimate results would only work if we're doing it on behalf of the american people and it is done with republicans and democrats who recognize that the rule of law has been violated. that's all we want to do in the house judiciary committee, what are the real questions -- the only way to do that is present the document, the report to the american people and follow the evidence. so we want to get to work. get to work quickly. we want to share with you, share with the american people what we found. what is our assessment and analysis. what are some of the witnesses -- as you well know, we have documents ourselves that really point to quite a bit of russian involvement in the 2016 election. so we want to match what documents we now have, we also deal with the emoluments clause, which has not been addressed by the special counsel's report. dealing with the gains or

benefits to the white house in the midst of their presidency. that's a violation of the constitution. so we're not prepared to have conclusions. we are prepared to deal with the facts. >> congresswoman sheila jackson. thank you for being on the show. >> thank you. >> it does sound like they're not backing off the impeachment. >> they're not backing off, but i saw it the other way. the fact that she wasn't willing to go there hard right now, this is the moment. this is the night tonight when this report came out or at least a summary of it, it was a go. it was a go or no go moment. it wasn't going. to your lead to the show. i think the chance of him getting impeached was small to begin with, but at this point i think it's none. >> almost reverse of the speaker's statement where they didn't seem to take it totally off the table. >> they're willing to continue

to push forward with this in terms of having hearings and making a show of it, i wonder the wisdom of that as well. i don't think they'll be successful and i don't think they'll be able to get a national consensus this is the right thing to do. >> this is t where the barr level and text is relevant. because if bob mueller put forward a report and we were able to read it, there was evidence he did obstruct justice, and i can't make a decision. it would go to the judiciary committee, to look at it if it was a constitutional basis. but because bill bar said i made a de novo review of the law and determined the president is clean on this, that's going to cause so many questions by democrats, some republicans, too, independents. why would the attorney general make his own determination? he didn't do the investigation? he had 48 hours to look at this. i think this actually hurts the

president. it makes it more likely that the democrats have an opening to investigate. >> do you agree? >> as a reporter you have both articulated why this becomes a political fight. on one side you have people say this does not exonerate the president. we need to see the entire report before we can do that, by the way, there are so many other things like the emoluments clause, like the fact that ivanka trump works in the white house. but then there are people, like republicans, that are going to say you're just fishing you need to let this go and we need to go down a path of something different. i think this is two political wars. this is the beginning of a political war. we waited for two years for the mueller report to answer questions and i think what we have now is just the beginning of an argument. >> it's going to be a long additional two years. thank you for your reporting tonight. julia, thanks to you as well. still to come, michael besh losh

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simple. easy. awesome. stay connected with the best wifi experience and two-hour appointment windows. click, call or visit a store today. does the public have the right to see the mueller report? >> i don't mind. let it come out. let people see it. >> i have been saying it for a while. put it all out there. put it all out there. how about don't redact anything? >> i tend to think we should air on the side of transparency. i have been for that all along.

>> if he does put out a report, you will see people claim we have to have this public. it's got to be made public. that's fine. >> that includes our witness list, every interview transcript and document provided. >> the president, his son and several republicans in congress all calling for transparency in the run-up to the release of the mueller report we got today, and now the focus is squarely on barr, who the president called a highly respected man this week. here's the president talking about the attorney general last month. >> i think we have a great attorney general, i hope. and i think he's going to do a terrific job. he's smart and he's tough and he loves the country and department of justice and the fbi. bill barr i think is going to be exceptional and we need somebody exceptional because it has to be cleaned out. >> joining our conversation as associated press white house reporter katherine lucy. so katherine, one question i have for you, obviously you

heard a lot from the president, his family, republicans. but we didn't hear hardly anything from the president for like two full days on twitter over the weekend. i'm sitting here last sunday it was after 50 tweets insulting various people in the course of 12 hours. so clearly keeping him quiet was kind of a project. how did that actually work? >> it was a real contrast. we had this epic weekend of tweets about everyone and anyone to a very, very quiet weekend down in mar-a-lago. there was an acknowledgment from a lot of aides that he perhaps didn't have enough to do the previous weekend. it was important to keep him occupied. >> did they overschedule him? >> he certainly was scheduled. and he was down in a place that he enjoys. his family was there, more aides went down than often go down typically, sarah huckabee sanders was down there, chief of staff there, lawyers there. and variety of events, fund-raiser, dinner at mar-a-lago he attended, birthday

dinner for his son, golfing both days. in addition to scheduling him, there was a message given to him by attorneys, by aides, allies, that you should really hold back. let's see what this is. they felt pretty good after friday with no new indictments. that there was a message sent to him that it is better for you to wait on this. and he took it. >> ashley, do they feel like there's now no danger in the president going out and talking about this? we had been having this ongoing conversation every time he picks up the phone to tweet something, he could be putting himself in further legal jeopardy. have those questions been put to rest? >> that's a good question. i don't know the answer. it's two-fold, in general his aides and certainly his lawyers feel like the less he tweets, the better. that's a baseline rule of thumb. but they understand there's only so much they can do and they're operating in a world in which they can give him these

messages, and this past weekend, he took it and acted on it, or he didn't act on it. some weekends he doesn't. there are moments his lawyers would tell him on this issue be sure not to say anything and they would be pulling out of the white house, not even back at their office, and he would tweet the exact thing he told them not to tweet. just to briefly go back to last weekend's crazy tweet storm i have been doing a lot of reporting on, there's also acknowledgment in the white house yes, they don't love it but again there's not that level of sort of panic and anxiety that there used to be. it's just sort of, the president is going to do what the president is going to do and everyone will scurry around trying to fix it or spin it or modify it or in some cases many amplify it. >> which is true even with the mueller report, why they pushed him to stay quiet, nobody expected he would permanently not comment. they're grounded in reality. this is only a pause. >> one thing with our experience, there are no permanent victories. he takes guidance but requires constant reinforcement over and over again. >> i'm going to refrain from saying what's in my head about what that compares to.

brendan, do you think that this -- the other thing that we've been talking about over and over again, is there a point in which republicans break from the president? we were waiting to see if this would be catastrophic event. you think that conversation is done? >> i would have to think so. bill barr would have to dramatically misrepresenting what is in the report for there to be a bombshell that is going to change his standings with the republicans. it's as firm as it's ever been, and i don't think it's going to change. the thing for me is how the democrats will handle this on the campaign side. i don't know any smart democrat was banking on this report would save them or get them elected. while republicans may have to reassess how they're going to approach this, the ones who were waiting in the wings, i think for democrats it's business as usual, carry on and they weren't ever really waiting on this one. >> briefly to brendan's point, there were some democrats who, even a couple weeks ago, when

they thought this report might be a bombshell, they said, even if it is a bombshell, that's not where the campaign will be won or lost. that that's not the most effective approach to take. >> that was my experience too when you pushed especially 2020 candidates on this. they didn't want to go there. jeremy, one big decision we're seeing chatter about tonight is the decision not to subpoena the president. what do you make of that in the context of how this is going to move forward with the criticism of barr? >> the president obviously stiffed the special counsel and kind of got away with it. if you think about, in 1998 when president clinton was under investigation, not only did the special counsel -- different legal authority but not only did the special counsel interview the president and interviewed before the grand jury, they drew blood from the president's arm. think about how intrusive it was in 1998 and here we have a president who basically said, i'm not playing ball. i think there will be a lot of questions about whether or not that aspect of the investigation was thorough enough and also in 1998 i think it's important to note ken starr not only sent the

report to the hill, he sent all of the boxes of information, the underlying evidence. even the 2016 investigation of hillary' e-mails, all of the fbi 302s went up to the hill after republicans requested them. so i think there is a lot of precedent for all of the underlying information, the evidence, the witness testimony, the 302 investigative files to go right to the hill and that will be a basis for further investigation. >> very good case about precedent that was set. joyce, can you weigh in on the decision not to subpoena the president and the point jeremy was making of the history of this? were you surprised they ultimately came to the conclusion not to subpoena the president? >> you know, i think jeremy's absolutely right. it was a surprising decision in many regards, unless the president was himself a target of some investigation, doj doesn't typically interview targets under oath. but the real issue that this hints at here is whether or not the president is, in fact, fully exonerated by this report. if you read the collusion

section of bill barr's letter carefully, it doesn't say that the president has been exonerated. instead it says that the investigation didn't find evidence that established collusion. that's a very wide gap. so it will be interesting to see at the point where all of the evidence that under lies the investigation is turned over to the hill and, jeremy is right, it has to be turned over. it will be interesting to see if mueller tried to interview the president and was somehow foiled in his effort to do that and whether that weakens what the president is now calling outright exoneration. but something that bill barr didn't go that far. he didn't say there was exoneration on collusion and i would expect he would have used that language in his letter if mueller had, in fact, used it. >> that makes sense. joyce vance, thank you so much for your very long day here on msnbc. i'm sure your week ahead will be equally as intense. we appreciate your insights. ashley parker, brendan bach, jeremy bash, katherine lucy, thank you to all as well.

in his four-page summary the attorney general says mueller didn't identify any actions that were, in his view, done with corrupt intent. back in 1974 president richard nixon argued that he wasn't guilty of obstruction because he lacked corrupt motive. nbc's presidential historian michael beschloss reminded us of that fact today on twitter and michael joins me now here on set. sir, it's great to have you and your perspective. >> thanks. >> thanks for being here. let's pull back a second. we've been talking a lot about the details, which i know are very, very, very important. but it's still a momentous day in kind of the arc of what has been just a remarkable presidency. what are the things you think we should focussing on, and put it in context for us? >> one thing is that however it is ending, this is one of the biggest investigations of a president in american history.

there are not too many of those. and the other thing is there's been suspicion that donald trump was acting during the campaign and later on as president in secret concert with a hostile foreign policy, russia. and that one, you know, obviously there was by the mueller report if we can trust what william barr has said, not a violation of the law but those suspicions continue. >> in terms of how we're going to think about this for years to come, how important is it we do see kind of the full accounting of all that's gone on? and if we don't find out now, i mean, will we ever? >> yeah, sometimes -- i hate to say this and sound like a historian, but sometimes it takes a couple decades to find out things we didn't know at the time -- >> you're killing us. >> sorry about that. we need journalists, journalists need historians so we all work together. but assuming that the mueller report is correct and assuming that william barr has not misrepresented it, so far we've been talking all this afternoon

about basically a four-page press release, not a report of whatever length -- do we know how long the mueller report is yet? do we have any idea? >> we have a little bit of an idea of the scope, 2,800 subpoenas, et cetera. but you're right. >> there's a lot we don't know yet. there's a lot of evidence we don't know. and william barr who's a very big donald trump partisan maybe does not see in this something that alarms him, but perhaps if democrats look at it and other observers they might be alarmed by things he is not unsettled by. >> how would you compare the treatment of this president by the justice department and the kind of conduct of this investigation to what happened to bill clinton when he was impeached although not ultimately removed from office. >> i think also if you compare it to richard nixon, you haven't had a situation where an attorney general in this case basically is controlling this situation. this is someone who, as has been said before, was hired on the

basis of a memo saying essentially that the mueller investigation should not take place at all. so he's not exactly coming at this as a neutral broker of the kind you'd want from most attorneys general. >> do you see any parallels between what has unfolded here and the nixon kind of experience, in terms of -- obviously nixon ultimately left office. it doesn't seem here as if the president is going to be forced from office. in terms of the investigations themselves, where do you see that divergence? sit just today or is it somewhere earlier? >> different in all sorts of ways. in nixon's case you had two special prosecutors going after nixon, you had the senate watergate committee going after him in 1973, judiciary committee talking impeachment in 1974. comparatively it was sort of a linear process. in this case this has gone all sorts of different ways that

were very different from the nixon case and to some extent reflects how different life is in the united states from 2019 from 1974. and even more than that, donald trump a very different president from richard nixon. and in nixon's case, he was never accused of consorting with a foreign power. that's something very different. >> what do you think is different from our politics today? you mentioned the watergate hearings. we know it was the senate republicans in richard nixon's own party who ultimately were the reason why he lost the support he needed to stay in office. what's different from those republicans then or our body of politics and willingness to go along with this? >> in nixon's case he was always dealing with a hostile congress. the dems had both houses. so he felt he could not miss a

trick. as we saw, you cannot throw a president out of office, in a place where the hearing would be held, in this case the senate, going back to voters who love him. >> how do you think history is going to judge robert mueller? >> i'd like to see the report before i say that. >> fair enough. >> and i hope it does happen. because that report is essential for americans to understand what has gone on. it would be a travesty of history if we have make decisions on this based on a four-page press release by a partisan attorney general we've seen today. >> do you think this reflects what the founders intended for this country? >> i think the founders would be chagrinned because what they always worried was if there was a question, a possibility of a president not behaving well, they assumed that the house and senate would move in and at

least investigate. maybe not impeach, maybe not convict but even members of his own party would be up against that president and make sure that he behaved well. i think they would be chagrinned by the fact that in all too many cases during the first two years of this presidency, republicans in congress and to some extent republicans in the senate now basically see this in political terms rather than getting a president to do the right thing. >> do you think there's a problem of not doing the right thing, the constitution suggests high crimes and misdemeanors, if they don't go after him for that, is that a bad precedent to set? >> it's a real problem. the founders were really worried a president would behalf badly and you would have presidents in conspiracy with a hostile foreign power. but they always assumed that there would be that check by congress.

instead, we've got attorneys general saying, a president can never be indicted until he's out of office. and you have members of a president's own party saying we're not going to impeach him, not going to convict him almost no matter what. the founders would say they're letting down what they should be doing. >> historian michael beshloss, thank you for being here. >> we're just getting started here. we have another hour of breaking news coverage to come. the first insights into the mueller report tonight. i'm joined by tom perez. we're going to talk about what the party should do now with 2020 on the horizon. you're watching breaking edition of kasie dc. edition of kasie dc. mix it up a little. how about something for a guy who doesn't want a corner office? hey mercedes, i don't even own a tie. do you think i need a mahogany dashboard? hey mercedes, can you make it a little cooler in here? [ a-class ] i am setting the temperature

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welcome back to kasie d.c. on a historic night in washington. the term of office is divided. the days before the mueller report, and the days after. attorney general bill barr has released a summary of special counsel robert mueller's findings and some of his own. the top line take aways. mueller's investigation found that neither president trump nor any of his aides conspired or coordinated with russia to influence the election. mueller's team drew no conclusions about whether the president legally obstructed