on this wednesday night. thank you so very much for being with us. and good night from our nbc news headquarters here in new york. awaiting the mueller report. this morning a redacted version of the special counsel's final report will be released to congress and the public, but only after a press conference by attorney general bill barr. plus, north korea claims to have tested a new tactical guided weapon raising new questions about the prospects for another summit between president trump and kim jong-un. and after this week's devastating fire, france announces an international competition for architects to design a new spire for tnotre dame cathedral.

donations for rebuilding the cathedral tops 1 billion euros. good morning, everybody. it is thursday, april 18th. i'm yasmin vossoughian. we start with top house democrats calling on the justice department to cancel this morning's news conference on special counsel's bob mueller's report. attorney general bill barr is set to speak before reporters at 9:30 a.m. eastern standard time. but he does not plan to release a redacted version of the report until more than an hour and a half after that. and as "new york times" reporter put it yesterday unless doj releases the report between now and 6:00 a.m. journalists will not have had time to digest what is in the report before atending this press conference and asking questions. sorry, but this is not a press conference it's an opportune for barr to put a spin on the ball or defend himself. no one can ask real questions here.

the news conference will have a notable absence while deputy attorney general rod rosenstein is set to accompany attorney general barr this morning a doj spokesperson says special counsel mueller will not be attending. and in joint statement late last night the chairs of the house judiciary intelligence financial services oversight and foreign affairs committees demanded that attorney general barr cancel his news conference and quote let the full report speak for itself. a source telling the "new york daily news" the house judiciary committee can subpoena the full report and underlying materials as early as today. jerrold nadler said subpoenas could come in short order and slam barr's conduct. watch this. >> the attorney general appears to be waging a media campaign on behalf of president trump. the attorney general is taking unprecedented steps to spin mueller's nearly two year

investigation. one, he summarized the report and cherry picked findings his march 24th findings to congress. two, he withheld summaries written by the special counsel that were intended for public consumption. three, he has briefed the white house on the report before providing congress a copy, which has helped them prepare a rebuttal response by the president. joining me here on set danny cevallos. also joining us from washington editorial director at politico. danny, i'll start with you. talk to me about this decision by the attorney general to hold a press conference before the mueller report is even released. how unprecedented so far are his actions on something like this? >> this is unprecedented that it doesn't happen very often.

but it isn't sound to have a press conference. it's a press conference not unlike prior press conferences when we didn't know what the mueller report contained. it gives the attorney general and department of justice an opportunity to put their spin on it. those tweets we showed earlier they put it out perfectly. that's the challenge for journalists is finding out what questions to ask about a document that nobody has been able to see. frankly, even if they released it calong with the press conference it's several hundred pages long. >> let's talk about the democrats rebuttal, their preparation for that. what we could hear from the democrats once this is released. we had reporting that indicates the white house has been briefed as to what is inside this mueller report and they too are preparing their rebuttal. >> well, exactly. the democrats are furious, and

it's a little difficult because they are groping in the dark. they don't know exactly what they are angry about. right now they are angry about process and angry at attorney general barr and i think they will be looking for any daylight between what barr says in what is now the second summary even though they say it's not a summary of the mueller report. they will be putting their own spin on things, and the democrats are going to be looking at the fine print. they will be looking at the footnotes when the report lands and see if there is anything the attorney general has used to describe the report that's different from what actually is in it. they are mad about several weeks of time that the white house has had to prepare its response and the public has been left with the impression there was no collusion and no obstruction and total exoneration as the president puts it. the report will have some damaging things and it's up to -- it's up to us to figure out what those are. >> lay this quickly out for us because you alluded to it for a

moment which is the fact that there are two versions of the mueller report that are going to be released. one will be publicly released this afternoon, it seems. there's another version a second version of the mueller report that will be released to congress as well. tell me what you know in that report that second report will be less redacted for congress. >> right. on friday there will be a version of it that protects some things in the roger stone case because that's an ongoing case. we don't know what exactly is going to be protected. but the justice department has been telling us that they expect the redactions to be minimal in the report that's released today and even less so in the report that's coming out on friday. members of congress will get that and expect the public will get a leaked version of that quickly too. >> all polls indicate that american people want the least

redacted version of the mueller report possible out there. i think pretty understandably so. let's talk about what's being reported what's inside this report and one of those things is sort of the case that mueller has laid out for obstruction of justice and the conclusion he didn't come to on obstruction of justice which attorney general bill barr came to in his four-page summary memo. the issue that mueller is up against in reaching this conclusion is intent which we've talked about on air before this in the last two years that this has been coming to a conclusion, which is proving intent in a case of obstruction of justice is difficult even if you have all the information that mueller and his prosecutors have. >> it is and isn't. in the garden variety obstruction of justice if you lie and a material lie to federal investigators for reg citizens that's an obstruction of justice. it gets more hazy when the

president takes an otherwise lawful action that only would be criminal if his intent was corrupt. and that's the key here. you can always obstruct justice without an underlying crime but the absence of any underlying crime can go towards intent. that's what barr said in his top line report to congress. >> when we had that reporting a couple of weeks ago that actually the lawyers were arguing within the mueller probe what conclusion to come to when it comes to obstruction of justice it's feasible the argument could be over intent, whether or not he had malintent. >> it would have to be a corrupt intent. the huge spectrum of burden of proof. probable cause is only a threshold inquiry for federal prosecutors. they have to believe they can secure a conviction beyond a

reasonable doubt. that's a huge tent that they had to live. >> i suspect you'll read the whole thing. i'll talk to you tomorrow about it. have it all wrapped up for me, danny cevallos. let's head overseas, everybody where north korea has conducted a test of what its state media is calling a new type of tactical guided weapon which carried a powerful war head. kim jong-un, who is set to meet with vladimir putin in moscow next week apparently observed yesterday's test of the unspecified weapon. some experts say they don't believe it was a ballisticic missile as that would doom talks between the regime and the united states. the ap is reporting a south korean analyst says it could be a new type much cruise missile. while viktor cha says it could be an anti-aircraft pep. the test appears to breaks a promise that trump said kim made

to him back in hanoi. >> there's no more testing. one of the things importantly that chairman kim promised me last night is regardless he won be doing testing of rockets and nuclear, not going to do testing. so, you know, i trust him. i take him at his word. >> with all this both trump and kim recently said they are open to a third summit with trump adding quote that he looks forward the day when north korea becomes one of the most successful nations of the world. let's talk about this. joining me now live from beijing nbc news correspondent. good morning to you. thank you for joining us on this. what is this purported test mean for future talks between north korea and the u.s.? >> reporter: this was mostly a sign of displeasure on the part of north korea with the collapse of the hanoi summit and the lack of any working level meeting since. there has been no communication whatsoever. you'll recall that president trump's refusal to budge on

sanctions was the deal breaker at hanoi and a big embarrassment for kim jong-un. this test today while we should stress we don't know what was tested there's no indication it velocitied a intercontinental ballistic missile. it was some kind of anti-aircraft weapon. but two messages are being sent. kim jong-un showing his own domestic military officials that even in waiting for some sort of dialogue with the united states, north korea does not look weak. secondly, it's a message, of course, to the united states that the north korea will not sit back and idly let time go by, that it is going to push ahead with its weapons development. >> talk to us about this new reporting with regards to north korea wanting secretary of state mike pompeo out and replaced. not sure that's going to move the needle here in the united states but tell us about the

motivation here if this, in fact, is true. >> reporter: this has been percolating over the last couple of hours. a top official in the regime is calling for pompeo to be replaced as chief negotiator. a statement accusing him of reckless remarks, of being self-indulgent with regard to expectations for talks and ultimately a deal that he goes to pyongyang and says one thing and then publicly says another. so they are saying in this statement that if north korea is going to return to the table, if pompeo is involved then quote the table will be lousy once again. >> thank you. good seeing you. still ahead, everybody, there's a big money race between the 2020 democratic candidates but at least one white house hopeful is taking the lead in big donor support. plus what white house adviser and first daughter ivanka is saying about the long awaited

mueller report and the scrutiny around her security clearance. as we go break yes it's mueller day but i want to give a special shout out to my friend, my co-host who i miss, ayman mohyeldin who is celebrating his birthday today. he has been taking some well deserved time off to spend with his little baby boy. we got the pictures. oh, my god, those are so cute. he was born earlier this month a couple of weeks ago. he's doing great and getting lots of athe tension from his big sister. that makes me want to cry. so cute. happy birthday ayman. consider yourself lucky we didn't make him to wake up to make the call as i had to do when i gave birth. all right, guys, we'll be back in a moment.

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welcome back. one rumored democratic contender for the 2020 race has pulled himself out of consideration. former virginia governor terri mcauliffe announced last night he won't be running for president ending moves speculation and explaining his decision, mcauliffe says he'll be focusing on winning contests at the state level. >> why in politics to help people? we'll have the biggest impact on people. the leadership of virginia has been reaching out to me in the last two and a half months. i spend until 4:00 in the morning on saturday morning with state party chair all night talking. i invested a lot in that state and i love that state. we have to win the house and senate because we can change it and take it to the next level. i listened to virginians and i'm going to help virginians. i could travel around the next six months or spend the next six months helping people.

>> hundreds of the democratic parties biggest donors are placing their bets on the party's 2020 candidates. kamala harris has an early and significant edge against the competition. harris has received donations from as many twice as many obama and clinton fundraisers as her next chloest competitor, cory booker. politico says so far 176 top democratic donors gave money to harris with booker in a distant second with 80. kirsten gillebrand lands at third with 67 donors with senator amy klobuchar with 61. and mayor pete buttigieg rounds out the top five with 51. the network of donors helped kamala harris post the second best fundraising total of any democratic presidential candidate at $12 million. most of that coming from donors who gave at least $200. large donors accounted for 80%

of the money raised by senator booker. while senators amy klobuchar and kirsten gillebrand has secured more donors than pete buttigieg he's outraised them. mayor pete will have more on his candidate along with tim ryan coming up later on "morning joe". big show ahead. while washington braces for the public release of the redacted mueller report senior white house adviser ivanka trump remained unphased while out promoting women's rights in africa. >> i knew that there was no collusion. i knew that there was no obstruction. and this was affirmed in the mueller report, and attorney general barr's subsequent summary. so i have no cause to be concerned. i never did. >> ivanka defended her previous statement that president trump had nothing to do with her or

her husband jared kushner to obtain security clearance. >> 100% i stand by the statement that i previously made. i have no evidence to the contrary. unfortunately, since i made that statement there have been highly politicized inquiries into this very issue pertaining to numerous people in the white house. so, the white house counsel' office has instructed us not to speak further on it, but i 100% stand by the statement that i made. >> have you been asked about it? >> no. intentionally. >> why is that? >> because i appreciated the fact that it was going through an ordinary process and i didn't want to disrupt that. >> i meant since the report came out. >> no. >> all right. let's get a check now on your weather.

>> good morning. we have a big weather day across the country as we track this severe weather. the great news is we haven't seen any tornado warnings or watches issued but this is a major squall line across eastern texas here causing some severe thunderstorm watches to be in place. d today throughout the afternoon temperatures are in the 80s with dew points in the 80s. really juicy atmosphere that's currently in place. that will allow for these strong storms to spark. 19 million one risk across the deep south. now we do have a change in the forecast. if you have travel plans tomorrow or you'll see disruptions as this storm system makes its way east into the carolinas, into charlotte as well. into the northeast, washington to pittsburgh, 43 million under that severe weather risk. so we're talking about holiday weekend people traveling major delays. >> thank you. still ahead, everybody, we're following the very latest in the

investigation into the fire that tore through notre dame cathedral in paris and what president trump is now saying about it. we're back in a moment. we call it the mother standard of care. it's how we care for our patients- like job. his team at ctca treated his cancer and side effects. so job can stay strong for his family. cancer treatment centers of america. appointments available now. on table ten. ♪

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i off terrified help of our great experts on renovation and construction as i did in my conversation yesterday with president emanuel macron of france. i also wished both pope francis and president macron a very happy easter. a judicial source close to the investigation telling nbc news that an accident remains the likely cause of the fire and no criminality is suspected. a new jersey man was arrested outside of new york city's st. patrick's cathedral carrying gasoline. the 37-year-old had two gas guns, a lighter fluid and lighter as he attempted to enter the landmark cathedral last night while it was opened with visitors inside. he was stopped by security before entering and taken into custody shortly after gasoline spilled on to the floor while leaving. nypd officials say he did not make any reference from notre dame in his initial statement. st. patrick case they dollar rally maintains around the lock security and nypd presence which

has been increased in recent days. the cathedral is outfitted with a sprinkler system and flame retardant roof unlike notre dame which was undergoing renovations at the time of the fire. still ahead much more on what we can expect from mueller's redacted report and what we're learning about the discussions that white house and justice department officials reportedly had ahead of the release of the report. >> plus the house oversight committee want to speak with steven miller. those stories and more coming up next. xt because my body can still make its own insulin. and i take trulicity once a week to activate my body to release it, like it's supposed to. trulicity is not insulin. it starts acting in my body from the first dose and continues to work when i need it, 24/7. trulicity is an injection to improve blood sugar in adults with type 2 diabetes when used with diet and exercise. don't use it as the first medicine to treat diabetes, or if you have type 1 diabetes

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welcome back, everybody. i'm yasmin vossoughian. it is the bottom of the hour. let's start with the morning's top stories. in about four hours from now attorney general bill barr will deliver a prebuttal news conference before delivering the redacted report. the report was originally revealed by one of the investigation's subjects, the president. >> you'll see a lot of very strong things come out tomorrow. attorney general barr is going to be giving a press conference. maybe i'll do one after that. we'll see. but he's done -- he's been a fantastic attorney general. he's grabbed it by the horn. >> so white house aides say there are currently no plans for a trump news conference while the president's personal attorneys have been preparing a so-called counter report and now according to the "new york times" trump's lawyers have received an exclusive preview from the highest level of federal law enforcement, quote

justice department officials have had numerous conversations with white house lawyers about the conclusions made by mr. mueller in recent days according to people with knowledge of the discussions. the report says the talks have aided the president's legal team as it prepare as rebuttal to the report and strategizes for the coming public war over its findings. spokes people for the white house and justice department decline to comment, and advisors to president trump insisted they still don't know many details about mueller's findings. in his senate testimony last week attorney general barr dodged what information he had shared on the report. watch this. >> who, if anyone, outside of the justice department seen portions or all of the special counsel's report? has anyone in the white house seen any of the report? >> i'm not going to -- as i said i'm landing the plane right now. i'm just not going to get into the detail of the process until the plane is on the ground. >> and a justice department

official tells nbc news the redabted version of the mueller report will be delivered to congress on cd between noon and 11:00 today. the redacted report will be made on the special counsel's website after it's delivered to congress. pete williams reporting that once the redacted version of the report has been leased to the public the justice department plans to make available for review by a limited members of congress and their staff a copy of mueller's report without certain redactions. a second version including removing the redak shochb information related to the charges in the roger stone case. . this version of the report will not be made available to the media or in public settings. we also have some new poll numbers showing a majority of americans think congress should get a full copy of the mueller report. six out of ten people say the justice department should give congress the unredacted version

of mueller's report. 30% say the doj should be able to redact sensitive information beforehanding the report over to congress. when broken down by party most democrats and independents say congress should be able to see the full report. 55% of republicans say the report should be redacted. joining me here on set politics reporter for business insider and also joining us editorial director at politico. blake, let's talk first about the fact that we're hearing reports of the justice department official which you talked earlier today briefly the justice department tipping off the white house about what is inside the mueller report. is this completely unprecedented? how unprecedented is this? especially concerning the fact we heard from the president yesterday who revealed the attorney general will have a preconference this morning, breaking that story for all of us but then secondly revealing he knows what's inside this

report and all of the thing that are going to be coming out. >> well, i don't know how precedent it is. it certainly looks bad. imagine if james comey had given a briefing to the hillary clinton campaign before coming out in 2016 to trash her reputation and saying that she was careless with her emails. people would have lost their minds. and rightly so. so it certainly doesn't look good especially since, you know, remember it was president trump yesterday who in a radio interview announced that attorney general barr was doing this press conference in the first place and then after that the justice department put out a press release saying this was happening. it seemed behind-the-scenes the doj was scrambling to make things up as they went along. it looks to me and to other people who have been watching this like there's been a lot of interplay between the justice department and the white house at top levels than is despite the fact that journalists have been asking whether the white house had a heads up for weeks

and weeks and the white house and the justice department said no, no. now it comes out that there's actually been a lot of interaction. maybe people were just not briefed on this. it happened at a very high level. certainly dope look like the justice department is, you know, treating this with impartial independence that we traditionally expect of it. >> john, so blake brings up the fact of the optics of all this, the white house has been briefed on neurological report before its release is troubling to say the least especially for democrats on capitol hill. but it seems as if the president is enjoying it. enjoys the fact that he knows what's in the mueller report or at least acts as if knees what's in the mueller report despite the fact for the president it's not necessarily a good thing. it would look better if the president didn't know what was in the mueller report, right? >> it would look like this was a more impartial process and that's why we're seeing democrats up in arms about this. it's been highly partisan

process on behalf of the justice department. some that have theorized the justice department want to get democrats riled up. maybe it vindicates trump. we have to wait and see. best advice was given by adam schiff last night wait until you read the report until you draw your own conclusions. that's good advice. a lot of information has been coming at us at rapid speed. we learned a lot in the past 12 hours. if you went to bed and woke up there's been some changes. we need to take our time here today. it will be interesting to see how trump behaves after barr's press conference today. >> what can we expect, blake, to hear in this rebuttal from the white house, we heard giuliani talk the other night they've been preparing for this for quite some time. >> i call that the mueller retort. 34, 35 page report that giuliani

has whittled down from more than 100 pages. the latest we heard from him yesterday they are not necessarily planning to release that response. i don't know what that means. but certainly there's this large operation at the trump campaign and republican national committee to send out talking points and put surrogates on tv and put out their version of events. i think you can certain lie expect to hear from president trump. we don't know in what form he floated the idea of a preconference yesterday. i think the white house was surprised by that. maybe he won't be able to resist. maybe he'll make some remarks on his way to mar-a-lago before he gets on the helicopter. that's what i would expect. >> or twitter. let's not forget twitter. >> twitter. >> don't forget twitter. we were having this conversation off camera before we came back and i said to you is this kind of the end of an era because we're finally going to see the mueller report that we've been anticipating for two years.

you made the point it might be the end of that but beginning of something else. talk about that. >> i think we're closing one chapter and entering another. we'll have to see what information is redacted and whether dr. obviously democrats won't be happy regardless because they have demanded this full unredacted report. they are not getting that today. we've learned that barr might brief some members of congress but not sure whom. we need to recognize is this closing of one chapter and the beginning of another. the drama is not over that we could see. subpoenas issued based on how democrats have acted over the past 12 hours or so, you know, we saw pelosi say that barr has lost all credibility. i mean these are pretty astounding allegations coming from key democrats towards the attorney general. >> the attorney general who has only been an attorney general for a month. >> these are really strong allegations and strong words directed at the attorney general of the united states. i think this is just the

beginning of another chapter of drama. >> this is setting the stage, obviously for bill barr's tenure as attorney general. >> yes. >> thank you guys both. we'll talk to you soon after the mueller report is released. a top house democrat invited steven miller to go before congress to testify on the trump administration's immigration policies. house oversight and reform committee elijah cummings sent a letter to miller yesterday asking him to appear before that panel on may 1st. the move comes after president trump reportedly placed miller in charge of handling of immigration. in his letter elijah cummings said he's inviting miller because he's one of the primary moving force behind some of the significant and in his view troubling up integration policies coming out of the trump white house. cummings has requested miller respond to his invitation by

wednesday. still ahead as we await the release of the redacted mueller report there are new details surrounding another justice department report set to be unveiled focusing on the man as the focus of the dossier. a check of forecast and another day of potentially severe weather. we'll be right back. oh! oh!

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welcome back. another justice department report linked to the russia probe could come out as soon as next month. according to politico for the past year the justice department's inspector general has been examining the fbi's efforts to surveil a one time trump campaign adviser based in part on information from christopher stiehl a former british spy behind the dossier on trump's ties to russia. several people interviewed by the inspector general's office over the past year told politico the ig's team has been focused

on gauging stiehl's credibility as a source for the bureau. one former u.s. official left the interview that the inspector general's report will try to deeply undermine stiehl who spent over two decades working russia for mi-6 before leaving to launch his own corporate intelligence firm. president trump tweet this yesterday. wow. fbi made 11 payments to fake dossiers discredited author trump hater christopher stiehl. he tagged the one american news network and judicial watch before adding the witch-hunt has been a fraud on your president and american people. it was brought to you by dirty cops, crooked hillary and the dnc. all right let's get a check now on your weather with our meteorologist. >> good morning. good news this morning. we haven't seen any tornado watches or warnings issued overnight. we see about 1,000 tornadoes every year. 20% of those are nocturnal. people are sleeping across the

south here and we never want to see a squall line like this. this is causing severe thunderstorm warnings to be put in place. really what it's causing are these heavier pockets, downpours and two inches per hour. that's why we have flood watches that are currently in place. nine the next 24 to 36 hours we could see about two to three inches of accumulation from new orleans to montgomery to atlanta as well and this is really going to cause travel delays. a good portion from the tennessee to ohio valley. going to be dealing with flood conditions. thank you. still ahead, everybody, facebook grapples with yet another black eye over user's data privacy. herman cain is speaking out about the opposition over his potential nomination for the federal reserve. what he's saying about impossible uphill confirmation battle. we'll be right back. - [woman] with my shark, i deep clean messes like this.

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welcome back. republican opposition is apparently not deterring herman cain from withdrawing his name for consideration for a seat on the federal reserve board. he said he's very committed to continuing the white house vetting process as it mulls his formal nomination. he said i don't quit because of negative criticism or attacks. i don't quit because several senators expressed reservations. cain faces an uphill battle

after four republican senators expressed concerns. without their support or a change in heart among democrats and independents cain lacks the votes should president trump nominate him. u.s. and china are pushing forward on trade talks. good morning to you. talk to us about the timeline here and how could these new numbers impact talks? >> reporter: that's right. so in term of timeline we know that the president is planning a trip to japan reportedly at the end of may, between may 26 and 28th. that puts him in the asia-pacific region at the time these talks are expected to conclude. need terrify white house or embassy of japan would confirm that meeting will take place. administration official has told cnbc that holding the summit in asia would be china's preference

however president trump said he's open to the idea of having the summit on either continent. in terms of what will be discussed there's optimism about some of the thornier issues like a mutually and still the issue of removing tariffs will be a difficult hurdle to overcome. elsewhere just very quickly, facebook are back in the news yet again. yesterday they announced they unintentionally uploaded 1.5 million users' personal info on their web site that revealed some of their e-mail contacts. they have since then apologized, they said the contacts were not shared with anyone on facebook and they will be deleting them. it is just another instance of controversy really saddling this big tech giant since the cambridge analytical scandal and mark zuckerberg keeps dealing with these knocks.

>> especially in the leadup to 2020, you're wondering if our media platforms are prepared, like what took place in 2016. let's talk about samsung. $2,000 this new folding device, it's going to be the most expensive smartphone on the market from samsung. early reviews are saying the price tag should be the least of prospective buyers' worries. what more can can you tell us about this overpriced, can i go out on a limb and say, phone? >> it apparently breaks as well. some journalists that have had access have reported malfunctions within one or two days of having them. they say the screen is cracking and flickering. so, yes, a lot of questions about that price tag, $2,000.

but samsung has said they're thoroughly going to be inspecting these unit's and they're not going to be delaying the launch dates. they're planning on selling a million units. >> good luck to them. coming up, axios' nick johnson has a look at this morning's "1 big thing." and coming up on "morning joe," a countdown to the release of the mueller report, but not until attorney general bill barr speaks about the document. "morning joe" will have expensive coverage with kristen welker at the white house, ari melber, julia ainsley and carol lee on set plus tim ryan and mayor pete buttigieg will join the table. an action-packed "morning joe"

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welcome back. joining us from washington with a looks at axios a.m. editor, nicholas johnson. good morning to you. talk to us about axios' "1 big thing" today. >> it's what mueller witnesses expect. in a couple of hours we'll have the entire report to ourselves and can read every word to. in the meantime, here's what investigators are telling us as well as their lawyers. they say watch out for a ren p -- relentless and meticulous accounting. what these details will show is what kind of information they had on the president's possible obstruction of justice. these kind of conversations with other lawyers and other folks in the administrations and other folks in agencies about the ongoing investigations are very

detailed, very meticulous, show how involved the president was in possibly trying to steer these investigations, and if at all, to obstruct and interfere with the probes. the question of how much will be redabtcte redacted. and we may get good details on that. >> what are you hearing about the motivation when it comes to the attorney general and having this press conference at 9:30 before this report is released. a lot of journalists up in arms about this because they're going to have to ask questions that are uninformed because they don't have the report. >> it's an opportunity to spin the report before anyone is able to see the detail. it's similar to the summary given out a couple weeks ago, attorney general barr breaking out his conclusions on the report but not releasing the details of it. people are concerned. a lot of journalists on social media say we shouldn't draw those kind of conclusions from

what attorney general barr says at first. what i'm telling my reporters is don't draw conclusions from what people say about the report, wait until we get the report and we'll be throwing it up on our web site so everyone can read it and make their clouonclusions. >> what are you going to be looking for? >> drilling down on the obstruction of justice details. it's certainly very key. the bar conclusir conclusion sa didn't have enough to draw a conclusion one way or another. and following up on that collusion issue. and then of course a lot of back to that meticulous reporting of what did the president say and who did d he say it to? how detailed of the reporting on this from the witnesses that led them not to make a conclusion on whether obstruction of justice would be determined one way or

another. that's what democrats will be looking at, too. >> this is my last question, is this the beginning of the end of an era when it comes to the mueller report or are we starting a whole new phase? >> everything is the beginning of the beginning of somebody else's end. i think this is something the democrats will use as a road mark for their investigation. we are just at the probe with the obstruction of justice, i think they will take this out and print this out, they were already preparing press conferences, they were out in new york last night. we are not through talking about this at all by a long shot yet. >> nicholas johnson, thank you so much. we'll be reading axios am in just a bit. that does it for us on this thursday morning. "morning joe" starts right now.

>> the people doing that investigation were people caught that were known scoundrels. >> it was a complete and total exoneration. >> i guess you could say they're dirty cops. >> so it's complete exoneration, no collusion, no obstruction. thank you very much. >> okay. >> dirty scoundrels. >> tough to square why a bunch of dirty cops, deep state, would totally exonerate the target of their witch hunt. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it is thursday, april 18th. along with willy, joe and me we have washington anchor for bbc america katty kay, and former chairman of the republican national committee michael steele, national security reporter for nbc news, julia ainsley is with us this morning. i want to frame the