within the case and the district of columbia. >> fancy lawyer speak. i'm asking you about the conduct that is describing. were you prepared to have to defend your client from trying to fire robert mueller which was under scrutiny for in months trying to get jeff sessions unrecused. >> robert mueller completed his investigation and was not fired. >> ari melber. >> jay, good afternoon to you. >> hey ari. >> given you represent the president, i would say as a legal matter, congratulations there is some good news in the report for you and for your client. >> thanks. >> let me drill down on two important points we would love to learn from you. the white house counsel received this early copy of, at least a redacted version of the report. if the report is fair and good for you, is it really appropriate for one side that was the subject of the probe to get that early version and when did you receive it and number two, while there is good news.

mr. mueller makes clear in this report that attorney general released that quote, investigation established several individuals affiliated with the trump campaign lied to the office and congress about their interactions with individuals on related matters. those lies impaired the investigation of russian election interference. is your position that you accept that finding and if so, does your client, the president, condemn these kind of lies that interfered with the justice department o department's probe. >> give me your first question and i respond. >> the first question is when did you receive the report and is it appropriate for the white house to get an early copy before congress? >> of course the white house -- i didn't receive it as the white house would have, as the private counsel. i want to be clear on that. the white house would have received it and i don't know the details of how they received it. it's all article two.

that's how they would have received it. >> i suppose i'm looking for a date when you and they received it? >> we put in a request, i believe it was thursday of last week that since our client was the subject of the report that we should be given an opportunity to review it. not to edit it, not to change it, not to redact it, to review it. under practices under the office of government ethics act, we were allowed to see it. we reviewed it on tuesday late afternoon and wednesday morning. >> you as the lawyer for the president received this on tuesday with others? >> yeah. some on tuesday. some on wednesday and with a team of lawyers. >> you don't see any appearance of inpropriety given your client is the subject? >> precisely because of what you said. since our client was the subject of a lot of discussion in the report, that's the practice under government ethics.

>> does the president condemned the lies that interfered? >> i know which ones i believe you're talk about. the president doesn't support any one telling lies. let's be crystal clear on that. in the course of this investigation, if people were under oath and made inconsistent statements or statements that were material, there's a standard that applies under false statement under 1001. i'm trying to not be that technical nicole. there's a standards that applies. no one supports someone talking about perjury or shaping testimony. >> it's interesting to learn from you when you learned this on air tuesday. >> tuesday and wednesday to be clear. >> getting you on the record as well as having the back and forth with brian and myself.

on big news day for your client, attorney for the president of the united states, thank you for joining our coverage. >> thank you. all right. ari, what have we learned in. >> you heard the news there. a lot of debate over when we're going to get this report. i think every one knows about that. this is why interviewing people can yield information. just confirmed they had this report on tuesday. chairman nadler said he viewed this process as inappropriate and suspicious. it will be interesting and newsworthy to hear other leaders like chairman nadler who have oversight react to that as well. the questions now are about if parts of the report are positive or fair to the white house and we've been reporting some of them are like what i reported on don junior, why such a suspicious roll out and why a selective release. we'll see what other officials say about that. >> former u.s. attorney barbara

mcquaid joins our happy family. i found something notable, page 158, the president's efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful but that's largely because the persons surrounded the president declined to carry out orders or recede to his requests. >> that's an interesting comment because to obstruct justice, you do not need to succeed. it's simply the attempt to obstruct justice that is the crime. we are fortunate, i suppose, that there were those around him who had the courage to not be enablers in this instance but that does not exonerate somebody from obstruction of justice. it might take away from reading as much as itch and it hasn't been all of the report that robert mueller was looking to make a traditional prosecutorial decision was a technical violation of a statute committed. they also say a sitting president cannot be indicted.

cannot fit into that narrow frame work. instead, what i would have expected is to share all this information with congress, for congress to decide whether high crimes and misdemeanors have been committed. i see unpresidential behavior. one is, a big chunk of it is redacted but relating to the coordination with wikileaks. that page looks like this. the koords naticoordination say not rise to the level of a crime because as we saw in the julian assange case where there was effort to hack into the computer and he was charged because the trump campaign did -- was not involved in the hacking phase then they could not legally be charged with the distribution phase. that may not technically be a crime or doj policy to charge it that way but if those facts suggest that the trump campaign was involved and staging and

releasing those stolen e-mail, i think that is still very troubling conduct unbecoming someone who becomes president and one could argue has procured the presidency by fraud. >> matt miller, that's interesting. they say they are the customer, the recipients of this information. what would have to be proven to change that charge that somebody went in with a wrench in the back of a mainframe computer and went after stuff? >> that they actually knew about the hack. they cooperated in the hack. they were involved in the actual hack of documents. that applies to wikileaks as well. you saw wikileaks was charged separately last week. it was for trying to hack into a government computer. i picked up on the same thing barbara did. i thought it relates to what the attorney general said this morning. his wording around this section of what bob mueller found was very careful. when he went through the kind of series of potential charges. he said they found no collusion with respect to the internet

research agency, the social media activity. they found no collusion with respect to hacking. when he talked about the dissemination of iminformation, -- information he said a crime wasn't committed. they felt like he was spinning ahead of time. >> a lot of toner goes to this. >> that entire section is blacked out. i suspect it relates to the ongoing roger stone case. if so, that's something the justice said they will show to congress. i'll be interested to see if members of congress are allowed to see this material and if their interpretation, they may agree with the attorney generals and special counsel's legal interpretation that no crime was committed but i want to see if there's other information about knowledge of the dissemination before or ongoing. there are references in the narrative section of the summary to very curious timing of the wikileaks dumps.

>> nicole, jay played in amateur rob band. i presume there won't be passes. >> i appreciate he called in. it's always valuable to hear what their take is on things. i think he was a much more honest broker than william barr. it was abundantly clear. the only line i was trying to per sue pursue is where was the bar. the bar was my client escaped by hair of his chiny chin chin. that would have been a much more honest place for the attorney general to start. to see the inversion where the president's defense counsel gives a more honest take on -- the headline today from team president trump is he escaped criminality on the two prongs of mueller probe, not what barr did. i laughed at the assertion that the president doesn't want people to lie. this report is riddled with

people who lied and efforts that donald trump made people to get to lie. >> the eft sasection i said he saved by the integrity of the people around him. >> the obstruction turns around efforts successful and unsuccessful of get donald trump getting people the lie and do things that were not within the scope of that which is legal or horrible, ethical or really the work of the federal government. the picture in here of donald trump's efforts to obstruct the investigation, not just obstruct but obscure it. to get his entire national security apparatus to say he wasn't under investigation is stunning. it's the why. we escaped criminality on the two central probes. >> we have two people waving at their crameras. julia you waved first. to you and then to ari.

>> we're having a great conversation about obstruction but there are some things on collusion that i think are worth pointing out especially as we can expect republicans and the justice department to be focusing on this idea of how this origins of the investigation started and whether or not they should have opened up this investigation into coordination. there's a lot of smoke. donald trump's junior's contacts with wikileaks. he was asked if the campaign would dissemimate a leak. he was asked if his father, the candidate at the time, could tweet a link and he was also asked about a password to a website that had not yet launched these were communications between donald trump and wikileaks and robert mueller decided it wasn't clear that wikileaks had been hacked or was doing these hackings with the backing of russia at the time. he cleared him.

there's a lot of connection there. t there are also connections with jared kushner going to that meeting. there was an agreement on this reconciliation and he passed along that information just days before the inauguration in january of 2017 to steve bannon and rex tillerson. michael cohen was a witness to a conversation between donald trump senior and the son just before the meeting that they had in june of 2016 with russians to get that dirt on hillary clinton. from michael cohen's testimony to the special counsel, he said it seemed the president or the candidate at the time already knew the out lines in what this meeting would be about. i want to point out how much smoke there was on collusion. this wasn't something that mueller brushed aside. there are more details on these conversations that we have been reporting on for years now that

now coming to light and showing why there were concerns to open this investigation in the first place. >> all right. over to ari melber. >> this is new reporting from the obstruction section. it picks up on the discussion nicole was having with the president's lawyer. with your blessing i'd like to read an extended portion. i think this will give you a flavor of both what mueller found r found, why these obstruction questions are close calls and the environment. i'm about the read mueller's account of don mcgahn talking about crazy s, crazy s being his slang, his obscenity for what he refused to do. let me read for context. mcgahn tells mueller he felt trapped because he didn't want to plan to follow donald trump's directive to follow mueller. he didn't know what to do the next time he would get pressure from president trump.

mcgahn decides to resign. this is the environment we're in in this white house with a very conservative, very loyal republican white house counsel. he then has to call his personal lawyer. mueller says he calls his personal lawyer and then his chief of staff. then he drives to the white house and quote packs his belongings to submit his resignation all to try to avoid in what he thought might be a crime of obstructing and firing mueller. mcgahn spoke with the president and he talks about he understood this direct ef and mcgahn says he has to quit because this would be akin to the saturday night massacre that contributed to the end of the nixon presiden presidency. he calls his lawyer. i'll read on more of this. mcgahn says he call and demanded they contact the department of justice and he avoids telling, this is very interesting. he avoids telling every one what donald trump asked him to do which is evidence that mcgahn viewed it as criminal and being

an able lawyer, he did not want to spread that around and involve other people which gets to the crazy s and people on the internet can say the word. i won't. mcgahn says the president asked him, according to reince priebus to do crazy s. rhymes with hit. mcgahn didn't tell me the specifics because he was trying proprotect priebus from what he didn't need to know. priebus and bannon urged him tot to quit and he returned to work that monday and remained in position. he had not told the president that he told to resign. translation, in this section of the report, you see the potential hanging of a thread of the trump presidency and the lengths people went, mr. mcgahn being credible to try to save the president from himself from what he called the potential

saturday night massacre. it's gripping prose. >> which is probably why the fake praise from mr. sekulow that i'm sure mr. mcgahn is a nice person. >> we know mcgahn spent 30 hours testifying. once you read this it's clear it was more than that. he's on almost every page. he's a real e republicrepublica. he was in there trying to protect the president from himself. what i think history will determine is was don mcgahn the difference between criminal obstruction or not. was don mcgahn -- did he serve two masters. was he informing robert mueller the entire time of all this conduct as is clear from every footnote in the obstruction section and laying his body on the tracks to sort of push donald trump away from some of these actions that almost certainly would have lead to his

impeachment. firing mueller, getting sessions to unrecuse. it's hard to imagine trump being more brutal but it seemed like mcgahn nudged him to the other side of complete abuse of his sitting attorney general. it will take a longer read and wider perspective to determine whether mcgahn in serving both mueller and trump, spared trump from criminal obstruction. >> it wasn't just on mcgahn. i'm reading through another section next to that. the president was casting about the administration but outside allies as well looking for someone who had delivered a message to the justice department. he listed at one point cory lewandowski to meet with the attorney general that he needed to give a speech saying there shouldn't be a special counsel. i know the president didn't do anything wrong. in jeff sessions wouldn't do it, he should deliver message he's fired. >> i think it was on the fourth of july holiday. >> he wanted to have the meting,

set it up. it had to be cancelled. lewandowski tried to find someone closer and deerborn said i'm not going to do that. he told lewandowski he had done it but didn't do it. either they wanted to protect the president or themselves from criminal liability not to carry out a very, very troubling order. >> joyce vance, what have you found? >> as we read through this information and as i listen to the conversations that you are having in new york, i'm reminded of one of the first conversations that ari melber and i ever had about this when the investigation was young and we talked about the fact there was some conduct that was not illegal but there was still inappropriate for a president. we talked about the notion there was conduct that was lawful but awful. to the extent that's what bob mueller's report tells us today, there's so much awful conduct by

this president whether it's the obstruction conduct, whether it's the blind eye that he turns to offers of russian help. that one is left with the conclusion this president has failed to uphold the oath of office that he took on that inauguration day. when he said he would faithfully execute and he would take care to ensure that the laws of the united states were upheld. it's very difficult to see how this report does not end up on capitol hill and provide a powerful road map for what comes next. >> let me ask you this. what report do you think the attorney general was describing this morning? >> not the one that i'm reading now. funny you should say that and when you and i first talked this morning, we talked about how barr had strongly presented that the white house had fully cooperated with the investigation. there's a place early on in this report, i think it's on page 10

or thereabout where mueller says there were a lot of impediments to a full investigation and one he identifies is the fact that so many key witnesses lied to him repeatedly in the course of i ve investigating. notes it might be the out come of this report could be different. that the evidence, the information he was unable to obtain could shed new light on the investigation or could present some of its events in a completely different light. that i think is fairly chilling. >> joyce, we'll continue reading. no nicole wallace. >> i think we're joined now by eric swalwell. your initial thoughts and reaction to what you're reading for the very first time. >> good afternoon. first, i hope once and for all the president of the united states will acknowledge that russia attacked us and when you read through the multiplicity of contacts that are laid out of russians in the trump campaign,

russians and the transition team, russians and the administration, it's clear that our democracy has been compromised and this president needs to acknowledge that. otherwise we won't do anything to protect this from happening again. second, the investigation lays out that the trump team, the president himself, lied and obstructed in ways that impaired the investigation. just because you may bury the evidence deep enough we can't find everything you did, we have recourse in the united states which is obstruction of yfs. this president is a double digit obstructer which leads me to attorney general barr. you can be the attorney general of the united states and represent all of us or you can represent donald trump. you can't do both. because attorney general barr wants to represent trump, i think he should resign. >> you calling for the attorney general's resignation today?

>> yes. he's lost the credibility of the american people. he's not recused from an investigati investigation. he's embedded deep into the trump team. that effected the credibility that the attorney general must have. >> he wants us to think it sounds like that is the case. special counsel writes although the president has broad authority under article two, it coexists with congress article one power to enact laws to protect congressional proceedings, federal investigation, courts and grand jury against corrupt efforts to undermine functions. usually they function in harmony but the president under article two to protect against corrupt acts. when the president's actions come into con flick, any con gregs tension is reconciled through separation of power analysis. do you hear that as a call to duty to commence impeachment

proceedings, something nancy pelosi has said is off the table? >> our investigation is already begun. we have a meeting this afternoon on the judiciary committee and we are first seeking to bring bob mueller in to testify to the full report because we paid for this report. we should see all of it including what's redacted as long as it doesn't affect anything ongoing. aside from the investigation and looking back ward, we also now have to have the imagination to put into law prohibition against so much of a conduct that the president and his team did. just because congress in the past did have an imagination to prohibit a campaign from working in such a fashion with russians doesn't mean we shouldn't put in new laws to protect our democracy from any campaign doing that in the future. i think that's the best way to go forward. >> does the future include commencing impeachment proceedings based on what you're

seeing? >> i'm going to leave that to chairman nadler. there are concerning contacts the team had with the russians. the president acted guilty. >> always a pleasure to get to chat with you. >> thank you. >> to frank who has zeroed in on an exchange between manafort and his deputy gates. >> i want to follow up on something that joyce va nnce mentioned that it may not be criminal but it is not acceptable. pa page 123 says manafort told gates he talked to the president's personal counsel and they were quote going to take care of us. manafort told gates it was stupid to plea saying he had been in touch with the president's personal counsel and

repeating they should sit tight and will be taken care of. gates asked manafort if anyone mentioned pardons and manufactured samanafort said no one used that word. the mob boss isn't saying the magic words and counsel is not saying i'm going to pardon you but you'll be taken care of. american people and congress need to decide whether this is what we want from our president. whether dangling pardons, promising that you'll be taken care of is acceptable conduct. then i want to just follow up on the congressman's statements about barr and where we are with him. if i'm christopher wrey right now, the current director of the fbi and i'm interacting every day with this attorney general, i need to ask myself will he have my back when i present him sensitive corruption cases and on any given day the fbi is

operating hundreds of public corruption cases at all levels across the country. if i share that with the attorney general can i trust that's not going to the white house or not going to the republican target of a corruption investigation? some hard questions need to be asked about whether there's continued effectiveness possible from this attorney general. >> i'm reading about the president's public statements during the manafort trial. speaking of stuff out of a movie, including during jury deliberations had the potential to influence the trial jury. quote, the potential to influence jurors who learned of the statements which the president made just as jurors were considering whether to convict or quit manafort. that's a screen play. >> the timing of this, the

public watching obstruction and tampering take place in plain view as this plays out is again in my opinion evidence of criminalalty. we understand that attorney general took that call as his own and made the call but there's increasing reasons and increasing basis in this report to have congress say we've got to take this on ourselves at this point. >> barrett, you and i have been reading the same section which is about the fact that mueller is limited to the president's written responses. it's been surmised publicly and directly this wasn't the president up late at night in the residencewriting out his

responses. these are your attorneys writing what you want to say. there's a bit of a power listness in the remarks on mueller report here in that they were limited just to that and they couldn't ascertain more because there was no interview. >> that's right. if you look at the report special counsel's office says multiple times that the written answers were inadequate, were insufficient. they didn't feel they got a full accounting of what the president knew for this. they also say pretty clearly they weighed this possibility of whether they should go forward with the subpoena of the president but they decided it wasn't worth the delay that would cause to the investigation. they say there's 30 instances that the president doesn't recall or doesn't remember. that's the work of lawyers there and it's scripted.

it's just disheartening that the special counsel's office had to concludes their investigation without getting satisfactory answers on these basic questions. it goes in direct contradiction with what barr said about how the kwhous was fully cooperating with this investigation. i just don't know how you call this full cooperation when the special counsel's office is saying the written responses were insufficient. >> that is a great point. a great point in summation. >> that's the what are the i was focusing on is what was russia up to. a couple of things that were not important is the person to whom paul manafort gave that polling data that we talked about

earlier. the special counsel supports the fbi's assessment that he was affiliated with russian intelligence. they say based on their witness interviews and e-mails obtained through court ordered search warrants they have concluded the fbi's assessment is correct. he was a messenger of russian intelligence. even if we can't make the link that a conspiracy was committed here as a matter of law, that we have the trump campaign sharing polling data with russian intelligence. i think that's something that congress needs to consider very seriously. he didn't just make that statement to the public. he said it repeatedly. michael flynn said he requested it of staff and flynn reached out to peter smith who set up a company and hiring security

experts to try to obtain all of these e-mails so they could be weaponized and used against her. but for incompetence, president trump would have kplcommitted t crime of conspiracy. >> it wasn't just in response to katy tur's question in public that the president said in effect russia, if you're able to find those 30,000 e-mails. >> yes, according to the report page 62 of volume one, it says trump asked individuals to find the deleted e-mails. michael flynn said he made this request repeatedly. as a result flynn took it upon himself to contact multiple people in an effort to obtain the e-mails. they took it as a directive and acted on it. forming company and taking hiei hiring security experts to find those e-mails.

>> are you finding why the president may have tweeted ten times before we read this? >> i think what is clear, we try to go back forth between the trees and the forest. the forest that's been clear for many months is even clearer now. if the president wasn't sweating this out, he would not have acted the wap y he acted yesterday, or every morning where he tweets no collusion, exclamati exclamation, exclamation. i find it hard to believe that the president has a nuanced understanding of the narrowness of the question mueller was probing. it doesn't suggest he had some awareness that people in his campaign were doing all things we have been talking about. all the things this are made clear in this redacted version of the mueller report. they were collusion curious as some reporters have described it. they were dabbling. they were open to collusion.

they had to knowledge that the wikileaks dissemination was not something they were free of or innocent of but it wasn't a crime. they were looking for their client to escape these very, very high bars of criminalalty orn conspiracy with the russians and it would occur he did. it does not mean his campaign wasn't dabbling in collusion the entire time. it doesn't mean as an administration we have done anything differently to prevent something that looks exactly like this from happening in 2020. mueller found he was obstructing all day every day around the attempts the fire mueller,

around the attempts to get sessions to unrecuse. it proves those things happened. sean hannity said two years ago that richard nixon wouldn't have had to resign if he had fox news. that might be true. this conduct is as sort of impeachable looking if you put it in a time capsule as nixon's conduct. nixon didn't have an over drive social media. dedicated to amplifying what is a very subjective read of a report that in the end if it exonerates them, why are they so upset by the details? >> i want to go back to the

forts into the one of the trees because there's something rather remarkable about when the president first finds out about how serious the investigation is and how he finds out about it. on march 9 of 2017, comey goes and briefs the gang of eight leaders and there's been a lot of speculation that devin nunes was a back channel to the white house. what it does find is the senate intelligence richard burrwas a back channel. he has a meeting or phone call and informs them of the targets. the president in reaction to that, potus is in panic, chaos. two things i take from that. one, it's a real breach of appropriate behavior by richard burrwho was thought was behaving

responsibly. >> a model of proper behavior. >> for him to go and feed information back channel to the president is really inappropriate. i think he's going to have to answer questions about that. second, that gives you something about this president's state of mind early on before he fired jim comey. he finds out just what the fbi is investigation and he goes into a panic and starts to take the obstructive acts that we later see. >> reporter: this is another time we see the remarks not panning out. that's on the issue of white house cooperation. the attorney general said the white house is fully cooperative. they answered all the questions and the president was extremely forts coming. that's not what special counsel mueller laid out.

they said in december they informed the counsel of insufficiency of those aspects. they noted on more than 30 occasions said he does not remember or have an independent recollection of information that they sdds him about. they also said in the informed responses they do not -- they demonstrate the inadequacy of format. they went back and forth and they requested an in person interview limited to certain topics and the president still declined. that shows there was this push and pull. we reported on this last fall and into the holiday season about the holiday season that the president was so unwilling to sit down for an interview. we knew he was doing these written responses. it's something the legal team would suffice but it's clear mueller didn't think it would suffice. when you're trying to prove an obstruction crime, you need

intent opinion you need the information and the person you're investigating to try to give you a window into their frame of mind. it's clear the president just shut down on those issues. >> when the president called mcgahn a second time to follow up on the order to call the department of justice, mcgahn recalled the president was more direct saying something like call rod. tell rod that mueller has conflicts and can't be special counsel. remind our audience, this conflict that became so large in the president's mind. where did that start and how small a level did that start? >> reporter: well, the conflict, the idea from the very beginning that the president was upset on the day he was told they would appoint a special counsel. he was furious of jeff sessions for recusing himself and allowing rod rosenstein to be in

position to appoint robert mueller. that's where you get the heated conversations that are detailed about the president using foul language. leaning back and saying this is the worst thing that's ever happened to him and could ruin his presidency. that's where the key to that frustration andbegan. he started the take it out on his attorney general and his legal counsel. he wanted this to go away. he was very frustrated by the fact there are protections that keep him from doing that. i think you see that again and again and mcgahn would stand up and try to say, i will resign or i'm not going to do this. i'm not going to follow through on that order. another key that was piece is john kelly told mcgahn when he went into a meeting with the president and the oval office that he could not resign no matter what happened. you need to sit there and take this from the president because he's very unhappy with you.

>> thank you. >> first of all, from my perspective i'm struck by page 56 of volume two in which the president opens his daily briefs with the intelligence leadership not by trying to understand the threats facing our country and our world but by directing them to put our prez statemensuppres saying there was no collusion. he called the deputy director of nsa and they said it was the most unusual request and concerning request they had received in 40 years. they documented it and put it in safe because they thought it was so inappropriate from the president. i think that's very telling about the president's state of mind a mind. the largest issue in volume two is opening set of paragraphs on page one and two. what they say very clearly is

number one is they are abidesing by the olc guidance that you cannot prosecute a sitting prosecute. the prosecutorial decision was made in that light. second, that they are preserving evidence because presidents can be prosecuted after they leave office. how ominous is that. it would have been unfair the allege crimes even though they count prosecute the president because the president in this proceeding couldn't defend himself like a typical defendant could clear his name in court. they concludes we're not going to judge the president's conduct through thecriminality. we're not going to say whether the president engaged in crimes. that's whiy i say it raids difficult issue. no not at all. the special counsel is saying the exact opposite. >> to nicole wallace.

>> i have a question for you. you have been part of all of the conversations that we've had over the last two years about the president's incredibly curious and until today exmy kabl contact around vladimir putin. whether it's trotting out a line that most russians don't even accept. the soviet invasion of afghanistan was noble and whatnot. is there anything on the conduct that led former acting fbi director to open a full field investigation that included the president in that early quarter, first quarter of his presidency. any answers around any of that contact that so alarmed the fbi this they added the president to an investigation? >> good question. long before russian hacking there was the trump tower of moscow bdeal.

the details the origins and the great lens that was gone through to finalize the deal. in december 2015, just weeks before the iowa caucus, the russians said send us the passports for trump and cohen. michael cohen made copies, sent them over to russia. it was ongoing dialogue. trump asked about it. in this report michael cohen refers to it as quote billion dollar deal. it would have been most significant deal in the history of the trump organization, the recent history of the trump organization. the financial ties between the trump organization and the russian fed ration atouch upon. >> it also leaves the schiff investigation into whether or not the president was compromised. not what mueller was examining which is whether or not he was a winning conspirator but whether

or not the president was compromised by all those financial ties. is that still a worthwhile open question. many of us thought it would be to look at two big issues. criminality and national security threats. the fbi, the justice department does play a role in defending our country from security threats. that's what the national security division does. they are part of the intelligence community. it seems that bob mueller looking at whether or not crimes have been committed. he did that. it leaves open the question which are the ongoing threats of national security. what leverage does russia have and that's for congress. >> jeremy, i'm reading just page 158. the end of part one. president attempted to remove be special counsel. he sought to have the attorney general limit the investigation. he sought to prevent public

disclosure of information. he used public forums to attack parab potential witnesses. you hear all that and says that sounds substantial. the last sentence is judgments about the nature of the president's motive would be informed by the totality of the evidence. this just is a slap shot over to congress. >> it is. it's saying to congress, it is really up to you to analyze whether or not the president abused his power. whether he can be trusted with that power. it's a constitutional question. it goes to the president's fitness for office. whether he engaged in conduct pertaining to his office that might be con trued strued to be crimes and misdemeanors. >> jeremy bash, thanks. because people come and go so quickly around here, we have been rejoined by the former

solicitor general of this great country. >> who needs parents when we have you have brian and i. >> we have yet to speak to you since the issuance of this. i expect you have gotten through quite a bit. your impressions. >> i think the most important thing is on page 2. the last hour of the discussion on the other network that i was on was basically does this exonerate the president and the president's lawyers are going at it and saying page 2 says something really important. it says barr said he wasn't relying on whether a sitting president can be indicted. mueller relies on it. he says i'm bound by that. i can't indict a sitting president. on page 2 he says because of

that, even if i thought there was evidence that could implicate trump and call him a criminal, i'm not going to do that because it would be unfair. i can't indict him and he would have no opportunity to defend himself. this is entirely a hand off to congress. that's what this document is. anyone who says this is an exoneration of the president is flatly misreading what mueller has said in this report. >> that said, when congress reads this, what's in this, that if you're advising house judiciary you would go after one by one. >> the most important thing has to do with obstruction of justice. in particular, what was said with the president said, what the president told mcgahn to fire the special counsel and mcgahn is the president's lawyer. it's like one step under god. like the top lawyer for the executive branch.

mcgahn says i'm going to resign. it's quite astounding. >> that goes of a previous administrati administration. >> it does. when you look at this and congress looks at it, they have to say is this someone discharging his oath to faithfully execute the laws. >> control room is telling me they can put this portion up on the screen and we can read it. sessions told the president that a special counsel had been appointed. the president slumped back in his chair and said oh, my god. this is terrible. this is the end of my presidency. i'm -- use your imagination. >> starting with an f. >> that's the moment. >> there's that. there's the stuff mcgahn said. there's a lot of stuff in here. i think it is not a good day for the presidency or the president. >> yet, the attorney general seemed rather upbeat this

morning. >> you're looking at the attorney general and thinking to myself, this is probably the only good investment trump has ever made. it's paying off in putting his weight behind this attorney general. i think the attorney general sequenced the stuff in a way to make it and take some of sting out of the report. what he did two weeks ago hen he said i'm not relying on whether a sitting president can be indicted or not. he may not have been relying on it but mueller was and writing this report and then barr makes a legal conclusion that says, oh, i don't think there's enough here. well, mueller himself said i'm not even going to tell you whether or not crime was committed. >> how much did that determine -- it's my understanding from news accounts that john dodd who was three lawyers ago was made aware of mueller's decision to adhere to doj policy. the whole time they were goer negotiating responses, they knew it wouldn't end in an

indictment. what do you make of they detail in this report around considering a subpoena and ultimately deciding it would take too long and giving up on the idea of interviewing the president. >> there was already a fair amount of evidence that the president evidence, you know, that the president obstrubstruc justi justice, you could see a prosecutor saying, look, it's much more important for me to get this information out to the american people and the congress, rather than to fight for one or two years in the courts about whether a sitting president could be subpoenaed or not. and from trump's lawyer's perspective, once they know the president can't be indicted, then they're like, ah, party's on, i can do what i want, we don't have to show up, we don't have to voluntarily, you know, answer any questions we don't want to. and jay sekulow was just on tv saying, oh, the president answered voluntarily every question that was given to him that was within the special counsel's original mandate. absolutely not. the original mandate of mueller included not just the russia

piece but also obstruction of justice that was in the original mandate. it's expressly in the letter, it invokes those parts of the special counsel regulations. >> here's what i was try to get at with julia ainsley. the president -- the angry democrat tweets we lived through, when the president t k talks about the deeply conflicted robert mueller doesn't that go back to a deal where he thinks mueller was trying to become a member of a trump club and the deal collapsed but isn't that the derivation of that? >> that's the whopping evidence for the deeply conflicted robert mueller. >> played at his golf club or something. golf club. come on. >> wow. frank figliuzzi has another contribution having read on ahead of us. frank? >> yeah, i want to keep pulling on two threads, brian, that we've already surfaced. one is this notion that a question of whether or not the attorney general is accurately portraying the level of cooperation by the president and those around him. and then the other is this question of whether because

something is not criminal it means that we can't have it go to congress or that it's acceptable conduct by our president. so i'm on page 153. this all pertains to cohen. and we read, "there is evidence described below that the president knew cohen provided false testimony to congress about the trump tower moscow project." so that's not a cooperative president. that's a president saying, i have knowledge that someone's provided false testimony, my attorney has provided false testimony to congress and i'm not doing anything about it. we have to ask ourselves whether that's acceptable and whether that's cooperation. next page, the president's personal counsel declined to provide us with his account of his conversation with cohen." i think that's far less than cooperation. as has been characterized by the attorney general. and then the very next page,

"there is evidence that could support the inference that the president intended to discourage cohen from cooperating with the government because cohen's information would shed adverse light on the president's campaign-period conduct and statements." so we have to ask ourselves, is this cooperation as characterized by the attorney general? and secondly, is this conduct acceptable from an american president? >> it's a mob movie, as you have said so many times, frank figliuzzi. our thanks. over to ari melber. ari? >> a couple points, identibeen listening to your coverage with great interest including neal katyal. i want to echo this. the most important words out of this report at a basic level is what mr. katyal was discussing which is, quote, no charges can be brought against the president. no charges can be brought. translation, bill barr was wrong, was incorrect, was misleading, in his letter saying otherwise about mueller.

now, they may disagree about this. what barr wrote in his letter, this is someone of the times i'll show you, brian, why we have so much paper. i have the original barr letter here that says, "mueller leaves it, quote, to the attorney general to determine whether there were crimes. now as mr. katyal and others noted, this may be one of the most important things you learn out of the report today, that's no what mueller did. mueller said doj policy prevents him, bob muleellemueller, the a general, anyone, from prosecuting a sitting president and the report was written with the premise to provide whatever works in the justice system potentially for congress. so that's a bright, bright siren here that mr. barr's misrepresentation of the mueller report began on that core issue in his letter. that's even before the controversial press conference. i want to echo that with that reporting. i also want to fell you some more of what we're finding in this report. you, brian, were talking about some of the more, shall we say,

spicy quotes that mueller unearthed. i want to put a few more up for context. i think this will help people understand what was unearthed here. as we mentioned, donald trump's initial reaction to this, "i'm f'd." mcgahn's view of what trump was trying to do was, "crazy s." rhymes with hit. he was trying to protect people from hearing worse details than swear words. trump saying, "mueller has to go." he wanted to knock out mueller. h this whole thing he had to fight, analyze potential corruption, it could spell, quote, the end of this presidency. brian, the saturday night massacre term a reference to a firing of a different prosecutor that ultimately led to the end of the nixon presidency. the end of the presidency. take that all together, you see what's on your screen are some headlines, story lines that mueller unearthed. i have one more new thing if we have time, that is wikileaks. one of the most redacted sections as i go through this report is the wikileaks section.

whole pages are redacted, fascinating for a lot of reasons. one part that's not, know, gates, number two in the campaign, late summer 2016, was detailing a whole strategy and messaging, "based on the possible release of those clinton emails by wikileaks." this is summer 2016 before later disclosures and mueller reports partially redacted with an ongoing matter, as we all know, that means with other investigations pending tonight, today. "trump and gates were driving to laguardia airport." partly redacted. "shortly after, the call," presumably a phone call, "then-candidate trump tells gates, quote, more releases of damaging information would be coming." now, the good news for trump is that was not deemed by mueller a crime. the bad news, and why i think there may be such a campaign here today, brian, is some of this is redacted by barr. a bunch of it was spun by barr at the press conference. i think, you know, our panelists can weigh in as well. what does it mean that mueller has detailed donald trump at the

highest levels of the campaign getting advanced knowledge of wikileaks, document dumps that came from illegal russian hacks which we know later occurred? >> especially a sentence following a redacted sentence. >> yes, sir. >> makes yoo you want to know what was written before that. >> remember, there was a lot of leaking by mr. barr to put out a narrative. the narrative was, hey, mueller couldn't really get the job done. didn't really make decisions. i had to make them for him. i'm reporting for you, that's false. now, mr. barr may reach his own views. he is the boss. he is the attorney general. his depiction of the mueller report i can report today is false in a very fundamental way. then number two, the other -- the other element of this story line, brian, of course, has been, hey, we're doing light redactions. and we're going to give you the summary, anyway, pay attention to the summary. i am very curious, and we're going to report on what we hear from, of course, members of congress as this plays out, whether congress views those as legitimate redactions, ongoing matter. may be. we know assange has been

indicted by the u.s. government. there may be legitimate redactions there or is it important for congress even if this isn't a crime to understand in more detail what the trump campaign was knowingly getting about advance knowledge of wikileaks dumps that go back to the criminal russian hacking? those are big, big questions, brian. >> ari, one more question, and then we're going to go to nicolnicol nicolle, if you're roger stone watching on tv today, what are you thinking? >> if you're roger stone watching, we've been covering this, number one, mr. stone has requested for a full unredacted mueller report. mr. stone and mr. nadler have complete agreement despite all their other disagreements that day want to see the whole thing. and so the question of what's under these redactions and ongoing matters be they in the stone case, he has rights as a criminal defendant, or the wikileaks case or other sections, i think there's that question of, wait a minute, what can i get out of more information? i've had texts coming in from mr. carter page and other people

as part of my reporting. everyone has angles on this. again, you can, if you're good at redactions, you can redact small things. it looks like there's only 10% or less redacted but might be the most important things. agains i'm not done reading this report, full disclosure. as i hit the wikileaks section, i found it striking that that is a place where there are whole pages, brian, whole pages red t redacted by the barr/mueller process, if you want to call it that, which doesn't tell us what's underneath them. >> thank you, ari melber. to our viewers, as we come up on 1:00, our graphics folks have done us the great favor of making a bound copy for us. for those of you without that benefit, you see the web address on the corner of the screen. n nbcnews.com. you can go there and crawl your way through this. exactly what we're doing. when we can grab moments to do the reading. nicolle wallace, what have you

found? >> i keep looking through the footnotes. i'm -- i'm so concerned that this report because of all of barr's conduct since the mueller investigation ended, r will so color what people think about it. no matter where you come down on the trump question, you should read it because everyone that they talk to was a trump loyalist at one time. and moest of them until they ha some criminal legal exposure or trump turned on them or in many of these individual's cases those two things happened at the same time, that cohen was a credible witness to mueller before, perhaps, even sdny is clear in how much of the story he tells about the financial entanglements and if you remember when the cohen offices and homes were raided, donald trump described it as an attack on the nation. when you see how much he knew, it's clear why donald trump reacted that way. and whenou