traditional -- seriously. this was ta fascinating day to e at work. your stuff about the barr report was freaking spot on. >> appreciate that. in 1974 leon was investigating watergate related to issues within the nixon administration. the special prosecutor was cox. president nixon had to fire his way up to fire cox, the first special prosecutor for him having the demand that the nixon white house follow law and obey court orders and hand over material relevant to the investigation. cox got fired. leon jaworski was the successor and if the nixon white house was hoping for somebody to be intimidated and hoping for somebody more crowd, somebody that would be less aggressive

and felt at least implicitly threatened by the way cox had been ousted on direct orders from the president, that was not what they got with leon jaworski. he was rock ribbed and straightforward and unintimidated and 45 years ago this month, leon jaworski assembled this 62-page document. summarizing material that the watergate grand jury had obtained that was relevant to understanding the president's own conduct within the watergate scandal. now grand juries conduct their work in secret. it is absolutely entintergral ie used for one purpose, drawing up indictments. that's all grand juries do. the information that goes to them can't be used for any other purpo

purpose, however, when a grand jury collects information relevant to the misconduct of a sitting president of the united states, it has long been justice department policy even in the watergate era that in that instance, the end product of the grand jury's work can't be an indictment. a sitting president can't be indicted and so what is grand jury supposed to do with the evidence it collects about criminal activity by a sitting president? where does that information go? when a prosecutor conducts grand jury proceedings that turn up evidence that indicates potential criminal activity by a sitting president, that prosecutor has to figure out, right, what to do with what this grand jury has just learned about the president's behave dwro -- behavior. what he decided was that it just would not do for that information about the president to drop into some black hole of presidential immunity from prosecution and so leon

jaworski's grand jury in march of 1974 obtained permission from the federal court in washington d.c. to transmit the evidence they obtained to congress. the evidence they obtained evident to richard nixon's criminal behavior as president. that 62-page document was not an indictment. they did not try to bring an indictment. what they did is present the factual record. this was a 62-page document essentially a guide, a lot of people called it a road map to the hundreds of documents and multiple tape recordings that grand jury obtained and reviewed and come to see as relevant to the president's potential criminal actions. they packed up all that evidence. they wrote up this document summarizing that evidence giving congress the information they thought congress would need to be able to make a decision about what to do next. there were no recommendations as to what congress should do. there were no conclusions drawn as to whether or not the president had committed crimes. it was just the facts.

just the factual record. and in the end, congress did decide to use that road map of evidence collected by the grand jury as the basis for their impeachment articles against richard nixon first and foremost on the basis of his alleged obstruction of justice. and while grand jury information really is supposed to be secret and it is therefore a big deal that that court cleared it for that grand jury information to be conveyed to congress in 1964, it's interesting. that 62-page document containing the grand jury information about the president never leaked. it was conveyed by the grand jury, by jaworski's grand jury to congress. it was kept confidential by the house judiciary committee as they used it to draw up the impeachment articles. it was never leaked to reporters and public. the on reason we can look at it now 45 years later is because just within the past year the court decided it was okay to let

it be seen as an object of historical interest. we can read in the original document these years and decades later what evidence there was about president nixon obstructing justice. it is remarkable to see it typed up. there he was. february -- item 41. february 28th, 1973 there was nixon talking about offering presidential clemency to the watergate defendants and we know from the footnote there 41.1 there was a tape recording of the meeting and that's how the grand jury knows that conversation happened and what they discussed and a few pages later, item 45. which tells us that three months after that conversation he had with john dean about offering clemency to the watergate defendants, nixon said any public statement at no time did i know about an offer of executive clemency for defendants and what is the source of that information? that's the thing the president did in public.

they source the transcript of a q and a session by president nixon with associated press managing editors. and putting out those two pieces of information in that document, that was not leon jaworski or special prosecutor saying the president appears to be obstructing justice. he lied whether or not clemency would be used. they laid out the facts and how they knew those facts. that was jaworski and the grand jury saying this is what we know. here is the documentation that proves it. you make the call what to do about this. and the you making the call in that case was congress. leon jaworski and that grand jury was not going to indict the president in a court of law so they got permission from the court. it was congress' decision what to do with the information.

no recommendations from the grand jury and special prosecutor. no conclusions drawn, just the facts. that is our historical inheritance as a country, as a people in terms of how we deal with presidential wrongdoing and now to sul zcelebrate the 45th anniversary of the historical president for an investigation into potential obstruction of justice by a sitting president of the united states, now 45 years later to the month, now this time the trump administration has decided they would like to handle this a little differently this time. in a four-page letter to the judiciary committees in the house and senate, newly appointed attorney general william barr wrote a short narrative description of the content of the final report prepared by special counsel robert mueller, a final report which no one outside the upper reaches of the justice department and special counsel's office has apparently seen. in what barr describes as an

initial review of mueller's report, he starts off describing the reach and effort put into mueller's investigation. coat in co quote, the special counsel employed 19 lawyers assisted by approximately 40 fbi analysts and professional staff. the special counsel issued more than 2800 subpoenas that and executed nearly 500 search warrants and 230 orders for communication records and 50 orders authorizing the use of pin rig sters a registers and interviewed approximately 500 witnesses and boy, that's a lot of numbers. certainly seemed like an ill pre impressive list of numbers of things. it would be more substantively illuminating to congress if we knew anything about the products of those 2800 subpoenas that or what those 13 foreign governments turned over when they got request for

information. it would be more substantively helpful to know the information obtained from these 500 witnesses. but nevertheless, i think those free floating numbers are up there at the top of the letter to make us feel assured that no stone was left unturned. barr then describes what he says are the two parts of the special counsel's report. the first is the special counsel's investigation into russia's interference and the 2016 u.s. presidential election from what barr says in the short letter, it sounds like the actual mueller report goes into quite a bit of detail about what russia did to try to mess with our election and try to install their favorite candidate in the white house. barr then says that quote the special counsel's investigation did not find that the trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 u.s. presidential election. so that's the first part of the

report. he quotes what he says is a sentence from mueller's report that there was no finding that the trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with russia. that's the first part of the report. when it comes to the second part of the report, when it comes to obstruction of justice, one of the things barr appears to be vaguely hinting at is that mueller seems to have made some sort of detailed factual accounting of the president's actions that could potentially be construed as obstruction of justice. barr says mueller made a quote thorough factual investigation into these matters related to obstruction of justice and says for each of the relevant actions, the report sets out evidence on both sides of the question and quote leaves unresolved what the special counsel views as difficult issues of law and fact concerning whether the president's actions and intent could be viewed as obstruction. more broadly, william barr describes the special counsel's

decision to describe the facts of obstruction without reaching any legal conclusion. which is something that has echoes in history. factual information about the president's behavior as it relates to obstruction of justice. no conclusions one way or the other as to the criminality of those actions, just that detailed factual information handed over without recommendation without drawing prosecut prosecutor conclusions. that's what leon and his grand jury did on march 1st, 1974 in the document conveyed to the house judiciary committee. and we don't know exactly what robert mueller has done because all we have is william barr's short and somewhat opaque description but what barr seems to be indicating here is that he got a detailed just the facts recounting of trump's behavior that potentially pertains to criminal obstruction of justice.

recounting that quote does not conclude that the president committed a crime but it also does not exonerate him. and when that exact sort of document was handed over to the judiciary committee and house by leon jaworski and watergate in 1974, the committee looked at that factual record of information they obtained from the grand jury and special prosecutor and decided in fact that based on that information they would draw up impeachment proceedings against nixon for obstruction of justice. this time, this factual record and description of the presid t president's behavior didn't go to the house judiciary committee. instead, they got a letter because the actual information went instead to the president's newly appointed attorney general who has been on the job for a month. and who got the job after submitting to the white house an unsolicited 19-page memo that says the president can't obstruct justice and robert mueller can't investigate him

for that. whatever information attorney general william barr just received from robert mueller about the president's behavior, barr could have passed that information onto the judiciary committee for them to decide what to do with it in the handling of the watergate road map in 1974 but instead, somewhat inexplicably he decided to take it upon himself to declare definitively, yeah, i looked at that stuff and i can tell you there is no crime there. it's fine. at which point whatever you think about the quoted conclusions about the other half of robert mueller's report, on this obstruction stuff, it's like do what? where did this come from? i mean, on what grounds are you saying that you have concluded there is no crime here? facts did you consider about the president's behavbehavior in arg at the conclusion? mueller did provide a detailed

report including actions barr says were not publicly reported. but we apparently will not be allowed to see that material and the attorney general seems to be indicating congress won't be allowed to see it, either. only he gets it. to the extent that mueller unmasked a factual record, some will be stuff the president did in public that we can read about in the paper but other stuff, stuff that wasn't publicly reported he presumably would have pursued through the grand jury process. those 2800 subpoenas th were to provide evidence and information to the grand jury. there were interviews with hundreds of witnesses and some of those witnesses may have been directly interviewed by the special counsel's office and that's it but witnesses were also brought a lot before the grand jury. attorney general william barr says the end of the short letter

while he would love to convey robert mueller's confidential report in its entirety to congress and he is quote mindful of the public interest in the matter, sad trombone, he can't because he needs to remove all grand jury material from the report before he allows anybody else to see any of it including the judiciary committees in congress. and again, grand jury information rightfully is kept secret but for a reason, grand juries collect information for the purpose of considering criminal indictments against criminal suspects. when a grand jury collected information against one person in the country who can't be indicted as a criminal suspect because of his job, because he's the president, well, does that grand jury information about the president go into a burn box somewhere? or does it go in confidence to an entity for known criminal

acts when an indictment can be broug brought. jaworski and the grand jury conveyed information in secret under seal in 1974. this information apparently just goes to president trump's appointee and other than that, he'll make sure nobody else sees it. the surprise in mueller's letter, the big surprise is this strange assertion about robert mueller the special counsel choosing to not make a traditional prosecutor judgment whether or not the president committed crimes related to the obstruction of justice and that looms the largest in the questions raised by william barr's report. we have less than 50 words that barr says are quotes from the

mueller report. other than that we got william barr's statement and william barr's statement, we can call the barr report raises all sorts of brand-new questions we didn't have before what is going on with the investigation and what fruits will be allowed to bear. question one, the special counsel's office decided not to make a judgment on obstruction of justice. well, why did mueller make that determination and was ate choit choice? did he believe he was constrained by justice department policy? i mean, barr in his report describes this decision by mueller almost in wonder like who knows what this mueller guy was thinking? he decided not to do this part of his job, weird, right? that led to a day plus of speculation and news reporting now as to what this crazy guy mueller must have been thinking

when he did that? all we have here is barr's assessment. mueller was reportedly not consulted on the barr report and how he characterized the decision and how the special counsel's office committed one way or the other so we don't know. if robert mueller believed and the grand jury did in 1974, if he believed that his role was to layout the facts that pertain to the president's alleged criminal behavior without recommendations or drawing conclusions whether or not that behavior constituted a crime, well, that makes it all the more remarkable that attorney general william barr jumped in and said i know what the answer is here, i'll do it. i'll decide. so that's question one. question two, did robert mueller expect the attorney general to jump in and make a no prosecution announcement regarding obstruction of

justice? did he ask him to do that and expect him? third question, and it relates. is it proper that attorney general william barr would make this public call? especially upon receiving no recommendation from the prosecutor who helmed this grand jury and otherwise conducted this investigation? is there anything in the special counsel regulations or in justice department regulations more broadly that direct the attorney general to jump into the breach here? and say hey, i personally have decided after looking at this for a day that there is definitely no crimes. i've decided it's my role to make that public pronouncement. was that a proper role for the attorney general and on what basis did he make that public pronouncement? fourth. one of the reasons it might not be proper for a prosecutor for any prosecutor or for the department of justice more broadly to jump in and make a pronouncement that a president appears to have committed crimes

is because of the possibility that that president could actually be indicted and prosecuted and put on trial for those crimes after he or she has left office. so let's say like just as a lark, that a president directed his long-time personal lawyer to commit campaign finance felonies before the 2016 election and they are sending his personal lawyer to the prison for that and they think they have the president dead to rights for the felony and prosecutors are willing to bring charges and mount a trial to prove it in a court of law but they can't do that while the president is serving as president so say they plan to do that. they plan to try to secure that indictment against the president starting the day he leaves office. that kind of scenario might be a reason why a prosecutor and why the department of justice more broadly would not want to go on the record publicly declaring whether or not behavior by the

president amounts to a crime because that sort of pronouncement from a justice department prosecutor or the justice department more broadly would taint the deliberations of any grand jury asked to consider whether an ex president committed a crime and should be indicted as such. so is that a reason why robert mueller might not have said one way or the other whether the president's actions constitute a criminal obstruction of justice? so as to avoid essentially precluding any future prosecution of the president for crimes that he may ha y have committed once he leaves office. and if that's why mueller believed, if that's why mueller believed he was not supposed to say one way or the other whether this was a crime, if that's why he believes this is just the facts, other people should come to their conclusion whether or not this is a crime, if that's why mueller was on that point to give any recommendation and pronounce any conclusion and make any prosecution announcement, if that's why

mueller was holding back on that, did william barr blow that up? when william barr decided to land with two feet on one side of the question and say as far as i can tell, there is no crime here. i proclaim no crime. did he screw up any future grand jury proceedings mueller might have been trying to protect? we're only to question four? hold on. i'm just getting started. stay with us. hold on. i'm just getting started stay with us thank you. how many kids? my two. his three. along with two dogs and jake, our new parrot. that is quite the family. quite a lot of colleges to pay for though. a lot of colleges. you get any financial advice? yeah, but i'm pretty sure it's the same plan they sold me before. well your situation's totally changed now. right, right. how 'bout a plan that works for 5 kids, 2 dogs and jake over here? that would be great. that would be great. that okay with you, jake? get a portfolio that works for you now and as your needs change from td ameritrade investment management.

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. you knew it would be this kind of night, didn't you? i tried to go on vacation these last few days. did not work. i have questions. i have lots of questions based on the barr report, some of which i think will be answered if and when we get robert mueller's report. what william barr gave to congress does raise a lot of questions that we never thought we would be asking, i think, about how this investigation is

being resolved. i just round down my top four questions, all of which have to do with this surprise in barr's letter about robert mueller reportedly not recommending one way or the other whether trump should be prosecuted. we are about to have here onset a former very senior national security official who was involved in the early stages of this matter within the justice department. he is here tonight because he has some things he has to say. excuse me, some things he wants to say about this part of what william barr is doing and how this investigation is resolving. i'm eager to talk to him. before we bring him on, i want to layout a few more questions from what william barr has done and are driving me nuts. number five. what does it mean when barr says he had to consult with the office of justice department consideration about president

trump and aufoffice of legal counsel, the lawyer's office for the justice department deal be policies and complicated and show themselves clearly and through a difficult maze. i mean, when barr says he had to go to the office of legal counsel before deciding around whether or not the president. did he determine the president didn't commit any crimes when it came to obstruction of justice or did barr have to go to the office of legal counsel because he based his determination that the president hadn't committed any crimes on his own legal theory, which he laid out to the white house months ago in that confidential memo in which he said that a president inherently cannot commit obstruction of

justice just because he's president of the united states. a president can't commit obstruction. he says this president didn't commit obstruction. did he decide that on the president's existence or facts? is that why he needed to talk about this determination because it's based on his legal theory or is it based on the facts of the president's behavior? question number five. question number six, the congressional leadership of houses or intelligence committees when it comes to mueller's findings. what will they get? this is a criminal investigation by robert mueller but it was partly a counter intelligence investigation, too does the counter intelligence investigation, the counter intelligence part of what mueller looked into, does that deal with the question, does that answer the question of

whether anyone in the trump campaign or the trump administration was under the influs wi influence of a foreign edadver y adversary. that's not the same as colluding to influence the 2016 election. if you're under the influence of a foreign adversary, that's not necessarily a crime and it may not relate at all to russia's interference in the 2016 election but if there are people in administration or campaign operating under the influence of a foreign adversary, that could be important for us to know as a people, especially if those people operating under the influence of a foreign edadversy have got really, really big jobs in the government. it would be good to know that. we learned not long ago that one of the open investigations robert mueller inherited as part of his special counsel was an fbi counter intelligence investigation into president trump himself into whether or not president trump himself was under the influence of a foreign

adversary. did mueller close out that part of his investigation, as well? will that be briefed to congressional leadership? will that be briefed to the intelligence committees? will that be briefed to congress or to us? question number seven. what there a full determination, was there a full investigation of trump's intent regarding obstruction? william barr says the determination he came to that trump couldn't be charged with obstruction of justice was based in part on the special counsel's conclusion that quote, the evidence does not establish that the president was involved in an underlying crime related to russian election interference. barr says quote while not determinative, the absence of such evidence bears upon the president's intent with obstruction. well, was there a full investigation of the president's intent when it came to obstruction of justice? one of the ways you try to get it intent is by asking people questions, you know, president

never came in for an interview. does it make sense as legal reasoning for william barr to have cleared the president of obstruction of justice in part the president wasn't involved in an underlying crime with russian election interference. does that make since if the president hypothetically was trying to obstruction the investigation not because he was part of russia's social media efforts or hacking efforts targeting the dnc but instead because of some other thing, because he thought a full investigation of those matters might turn up evidence of him being compromised by a foreign power or him having lied about business dealings with a foreign power or discussed some sort of quid proquo. does it matter if he obstructed justice not specifically related to the crime committed by the russians?

question eight. were the president's business activities and financial history part of this investigation as to his potential compromise by a foreign power or some foreign entity having leverage over him? the intelligence said congressional investigators were told there were no deconfliction problems, there was no crossover they had to worry about if they wanted to look into the president's business history and finances. that suggested to the intelligence committee that the special counsel wasn't looking at any of those matters when it came to investigating the president's potential compromise. well, is that true? did they look at that. are we now allowed to know that? question number nine. now that the special counsel's office closed its investigation, do we get to see the full unredacted memo that laid out the scope of stuff they were authorized to investigate? question number ten, do we get to see the president's written answers that he submitted to the special counsel? he didn't do an interview but submitted a take home test. the president says he believes this investigation has exonerated him and he did

nothing wrong, if so he should be pleased to show his written testimony to the public so far the president's lawyers are indicating there is no way that will happen but what are they afraid of? there is a big picture of where we go from here. what will be cut out of the mueller report before we and congress are allowed to see it? and when will we be allowed to see it? this is number 11. probably my favorite because on this, this is one thing that unites all of us. everybody from the super conserconzes conservative right wing editorial board to the new york times editorial board to 420 members of the house of representatives that voted unanimously to the president himself today to tons of republican senators supportive of the president, everybody is all on one page, all in agreement that we all now need to see not william barr's description of the mueller report but the actual mueller report. so that's the big unifying question for the country. when does that happen?

and how much of it is going to be cut out before we're allowed to see it and who will decide who will be cut out before we're allowed to see it. six democratic chairs wrote saying they want a full and unredacted copy of the report by next tuesday, by a week from tomorrow. we shall see but worth noting that the president called for it to be fully released. number 12. will mueller testify to congress? will the justice department allow him to testify if congress asks him to be there or if they subpoena him to be there? if the justice department tries to block mueller from testifying and answering questions about the investigation, how will that be ajudjudicatadjudicated? question 13, can democrats in congress get the underlying evidence from mueller's investigation in addition to the mueller report itself? remember the truckloads of evidence, van loads of evidence the ken star investigation drove up to accompany that sorted

written report the star investigation did about bill clinton? will this congress get access to the underlying evidence, too, or just the report or worse than that, just the redacted report or worse even than that, just william barr's assertions about what the report might say? 14. in real terms, not just in technical law school textbook, in real terms, does the disillusion have effects that derive from their work? it's a long list. there is a lot of people still awaiting sentencing and a couple trials on deck and pending investigations reported from the u.s. attorney's office and the southern district of new york and los angeles and in the eastern district of new york and eastern district of virginia and d.c. u.s. attorney's office not to mention the new york state investigations and the inaugural l committee investigations that started in the offices of new

york state attorney general, excuse me, new jersey's attorney general and. did d.c. attorney general. does the disillusion have effects. does the investigation collected by the special counsel that may relate or help all of those other investigations, does that get perceivre preserved and shae last one while on the subject of ideal versus real, on the subject of pie in the sky, or real world secircumstances, whe it comes to the bottom line for this moment in american history. when it comes to the bottom line we have been through a remarkable thing, we have been through a circumstance in which a hostile foreign adversary launched a complex and sophisticated attack to interfere with the presidential election to get the favorite candidate into the white house

and he in fact got into the white house. when it comes to that bottom line, now that president trump is praising robert mueller as an honorable man and talking about what a great country this is and expressing such great satisfaction with what barr says are the findings of the mueller report, does this mean that president trump agrees with mueller's findings about russia attacking our election? can we expect president trump and the trump white house to finally accept the underlying factual record that russia did in fak atta-- fact attack us anu don't do that to another country because you're their friend? i know. i'm getting crazy. the barr report has given us just this whirlwind of questions. i mean, the mueller report if and when we see it should answer most of them but ticktock. how long do we have to wait? stay with us. how long do we have to wait?

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the special counsel had two areas of focus, whether the president committed obstruction of justice by firing the fbi director after the election. moving those out of the justice department chain of command over to a special counsel was supposed to give we the american people confidence in the investigation. on the first part, the russia part the attorney general says the special counsel investigated that and reached a decision. but why on the part that is arguably about the justice department itself, why in the second part of the investigation, why would the special counsel kick that part back to the justice department's own top brass. why would the attorney general take that part for himself to decide whether or not there was criminal behavior? that to me makes no sense. joining us now is a veteran of the justice department from the national security division.

david ran that under president obama and through the entire first year of the trump administration. thank you for being here. >> good to see you again. >> so first of all, let me get your gut reaction what we learned from attorney general william barr? >> it's important to hear the decoloration, with respect to the russia interference. he set it out it's hard to discern from the snippets he included in the special counsel report whether the special counsel found no credible evidence of collusion or coordination with the russian authorities or instead more likely didn't find sufficient admissible evidence to determine that a crime was committed. they set it out declaratively after an exhaustive investigation. i have the highest admiration for mueller and his team and if that's what they found, so be it. if they conducted it on an kpustive investigation and the evidence wasn't there, we would

have that gratitude for that piece. as far as the obstruction piece goes -- >> on that point, let me ask you if they did come to significant findings about involvement with the russian attack on the election that maybe didn't rise to the level of something they were going to be able to prove in a court of law or other important findings in terms of people being under the influence or compromised by a foreign power, would you expect that information would be briefed to the intelligence committees or included as the finding of the counter intelligence part of his remit? >> it's likely that all their counter findings would be briefed and might not be included in the quote unquote mueller report that's the subject of the letter. there is likely a classified addendum and classifiying information. >> in terms of the obstruction of justice, what is your reaction? >> i was shocked and remain

bewildered as to why the special counsel did not conduct the customary balancing test set out under the principles of federal prosecution, guide book for all prosecutors by assessing whether there was sufficient admissible evidence to charge the president with an obstruction and if so, whether there were considerations, policy, likely defenses to be presented risk of disclosure of classified information, a bucket of variables applied in determining what pledrecommendation to make. exhausted factual investigation not to engage in the careful balancing of factors and we just don't have any visibility into what his reasons were for that. >> is it possible he didn't believe he had the option, that he believed it was his job to layout the facts but not convey a recommendation to not make a prosecution decision? >> it is a possibility but in some respects why go through the

exhaust tiive effort of conduct one of the investigations in the history of the department of justice and leave it in an unresolved state and committing it to the description of two in the department of justice who filled that void by substituting their judgment for the judgment we expected the special counsel to exercise. >> would you have expected given what robert mueller did and again, we don't have access to it before and don't know why he didn't make a prosecutor decision and felt constrained or a judgment call or whatever it was. given that that's what he did and only conveyed factual information and no recommendation, was it proper for william barr to jump into the void and say i'll say there is no crime here? is that his job? >> i don't think it was improper for attorney general barr and rosenstein in that circumstance to under take the work they probably expected the special counsel to do, which is render

the decision up or down on whether to recommend the charge. certainly within the scope of their responsibilities, nothing in the special counsel regs that preclude them to bring it within the umbrella of department of justice. what congress does is another story. but it would have been almost equally bizarre to leave the obstruction piece hanging out there without any kind of resolution but again, we don't have any visibility into the reasoning that barr and rosenstein employed in determining there was insufficient evidence and reaching policy considerations and not required to write a report so it's going to await further investigative journalism or congressional investigations to peel that onion to find out what their reasoning was in addition to the reasoning the special counsel brought in determining not to engage in the balancing. >> ultimately, when this next part of this process happens and

they decide what can be -- what should be extracted from the mueller report before it's further conveyed to congress, are you confident what we're going to get will answer questions? >> i think it will answer some of the questions. i mean, it's going to be customary for them to excise grand jury information and a classified addendum and limits to what we see and when we see it but over the course of time, i expect because public interest in this matter, we're likely to see more rather than less. >> david laufman, sir, thank you very much for being here. >> nice to see you. >> more questions from the investigation and we think some more answers just ahead. stay with us. we think some more answers just ahead. stay with us

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know you have a lot of mutual respect. >> my old league, and i do certainly respect him. >> the thing that's been greeted with the most surprise from barr's statement, barr's report as it were, saying that the special counsel elected not to make a prosecutorial decision on the issue of obstruction of justice, and so the attorney general decided he'd do it instead. does it surprise you the way it surprised david laufman that mueller would not make that prosecutori prosecutorial decision? >> it does surprise me. like david i have the utmost respect for bob mueller. i worked for him. if he didn't do it i'm confident he didn't do it for a good reason. what's frustrating to me is i just don't know what that good reason is. >> i doubt it was because he was shirking the responsibility because it seemed like a hard call. that appears to be -- it's frustrating to me because that attorney general william barr appears to be -- something wrong

with mueller, that he didn't want to do the work. >> impossible to me. >> more unlikely, mueller felt he was constrained from being able to do that and therefore went up to the line and laying out factual concerns, didn't make that a prosecutorial declaration for a reason. >> if we can take barr's letter at its word, no pun intended, bob mueller did not shirk from making a recommendation on that first bucket, whether or not there was interference in the election and anyone conspired with the russians. he did make a recommendation there. so it seems incongruous to me. >> what do we make of this? >> because you cannot charge a sitting president, maybe mueller and his team thought that you shouldn't sort of attach the same stigma by saying you would have charged that person, but for the fact that he's a sitting

president. meaning, you know, we're just going to stay away from this issue all together. by the way, every sitting president, one day becomes a former president, and could conceivably be charged then, even with a new administration in power. >> i have one more question i want to ask you on this subject, chuck. will you stay with us? >> absolutely. >> back with chuck rosenberg right after this. ed at chart pa. i've even built my own historic trading model. and you're still not sure if you want to make the trade? exactly. sounds like a case of analysis paralysis. is there a cure? td ameritrade's trade desk. they can help gut check your strategies and answer all your toughest questions. sounds perfect. see, your stress level was here and i got you down to here, i've done my job. call for a strategy gut check with td ameritrade. ♪ if your moderate to severeor crohn's symptoms are holding you back, and your current treatment hasn't worked well enough it may be time for a change.

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rosenberg. we don't have the mueller report. we have barr's assertion of what its principal conclusions are, there is widespread appetite across the united states and across the ideological spectrum we ought to see mueller's report. in part that may be decided along the question -- alongside the question of whether or not mueller can testify to congress. if the justice department doesn't want to let mueller testify, how will that get adjudicated? congress sends him a subpoena, the justice department says no, he's not testifying, who decides that? >> normally it's done by accommodation, negotiating his appearance and the terms of what he can and cannot say. if they actually have to litigate this thing, rachel, that would be a long, lengthy mess. and so when this has happened. this standoff, you carve out portions that are acceptable and those that are off limits and off you go. that's probably how it would happen. >> under normal circum