set a little bit differently in this case than in that situation, when you have behavior of the president that's under the microscope. that's different from a personnel or a political decision related to a personnel decision. and i think thfrom that standpoint, it makes sense. >> if you think about it this way, mueller had reached the point where he thought he had enough evidence to do what he needed to do. throw it to congress and have a debate over high crimes and misdemeanors. he might have thought that that was enough. >> all right. we are out of time. my thanks to -- was that the buzzer? i'm so sorry! my thanks to -- >> you are out of time! >> the three pointer. nothing but net! >> that's it for our hour. you can tell, we're done. we're so grateful to you for watching. i'm nicole wallace. "mtp daily" starts right now. i know you didn't do it. >> i think this is a brilliant new idea by phil griffin. >> there's a story there. george bush insisted on a buzzer

with his debates with john kerry and it bombed. >> i usually just sigh when you're late. >> i'm sorry! >> thank you very much. >> thank you, nicole. good evening and welcome to "meet the press daily." i'm chuck todd here in washington. let's get right to it. the biggest headline from mueller report is not, no collusion, no obstruction, as the president, his campaign, his lawyers and his attorney general are claiming. the biggest headline is that the report makes the case that the president tried to collude and makes a detailed case of how he tried to obstruct. on collusion, which mueller report's says the president himself told the campaign he knew about upcoming wikileaks releases, he sought updates about them, campaign planned the communication strategy around them, the campaign was also receptive to russian offers of assistance, some tied directly to the government. so let all of that sink in. the president and his team did not commit the hacking crime, but they cheered it on and they amplified its reach. then mueller lays out a heck of a lot of evidence that the president tried to obstruct the

investigation into russian interference. mueller says president trump tried to influence the investigation and had a clear motive to do so. he lays out evidence that the president tried to curtail it, tried to control it, and ultimately tried to end it. then there's this head-turning line. quote, the president's efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the president declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests. the president also tried to prevent the disclosure of evidence and there may have been efforts to influence witness testimony. it's a ton of information to digest and we're about to get into as much as it as we can, including the escalating political fallout, as well. let's not lose sight of something really important that just happened. the legacy of this moment is that foreign interference in u.s. elections may have inadvertently just been normalized. that the new dark art of politics may now be considered acceptable. we've got an all-star team joining me. we've got julia ainsley is at the justice department for us.

mimi rocah is a form assistant dorn at the southern district of new york, and with me on set, andrea mitchell, our senior chief foreign affairs correspondent, former cia director john brennan, now an msnbc senior national intelligence analyst, benowit s wittes, and betsey woodruff, politics editor for the daily beast and an msnbc contributor. okay! all resumes have been read. we are done there. julia, let me start with you. because, wow, what a difference the report is from the version bill barr was telling us about. >> that's right, chuck. i think the big question for people today is can they trust the attorney general going forward, when it seems that there were large discrepancies between how he described this report and then what we actually found in it. the incredible lengths that this president went to, to try to at least fire his special counsel, successfully fire his fbi director, everything he did to try to stop this investigation

in its tracks. one thing that comes to mind is how two days after he tried to convince his white house counsel don mcgahn to fire special counsel mueller, that proved unsuccessful. he then went to corey lewandowski, who didn't even work in the white house, but had been part of his campaign, and asked him and had him dictate a message that he wanted jeff sessions to read to un-recuse himself. so why do you have these big discrepancies? we've been inside the justice department, talking to officials after some of this fire has died down, to say, so, what gives? why did the attorney general say that obstruction was just something that robert mueller couldn't prove? and they say that one thing that's key here is that they say that the office of legal counsel opinion, which sounds wonky, but really does matter here, that opinion that says that you can't indict a sitting president was one factor, but not the only factor that robert mueller included in his consideration not to charge the president with obstruction. and so today we heard very

careful wording from the attorney general in that unprecedented press conference, when he said he would not -- he asked robert mueller if he would charge with obstruction if not more that loc opinion and he would "no." but there were disagreements. and the attorney general even said so today, that there were disagreements between this justice department and robert mueller's team when it came to this issue of obstruction. and one thing that i think is really clear going forward is how this special counsel left a road map open for congress to come in here. and said it was completely within their rights and that, of course, again, counters what we heard from the attorney general here today, where he said that he was the final arbriter of that decision. >> the declaration of charges, especially when you go into it, particularly by the end of volume one, and why they chose not to indict donald trump jr., why they did not indict jared kushner, why they did not indict

a couple of other people. and ultimately it comes down to, they just didn't think, while they might get an initial conviction, they didn't think they could sustain a conviction. it just was an interesting way for them to word it. they were essentially saying, we've got all the circumstantial evidence. there's a lot here that smells. but we don't think any conviction we could put together would last. so, this is where we're at. you've probably had plenty of cases like this, where you know something smells fishy, you just don't have enough evidence. >> yeah, chuck, i found that fascinating. and, look, i think mueller and his team, quite honestly, took a pretty conservative approach on charging. prosecutors, as we all know, have a lot of discretion and you can look at a case and say, well, i think it's there, but, you know, this is somewhat of a novel legal question. for example, when mueller talked about the trump tower meeting and whether receiving, you know, the quote, dirt on hillary would

constitute something of value under the statute. and he did an analysis where he says, look, it could be considered a thing of value, and he goes through and you kind of think he's going to say, it is a thing of value, but he says, no court has directly addressed that and you kind of get the sense that he doesn't want to create a sort of -- go to this novel issue of law, in this case. and i can understand that. we should have two standards for higher higher-profile defendants and non-high-profile. but on the other hand, i think mueller in general, as everyone has said for the past 18 months who knows him, takes a conservative approach, and he seems to have done that here. i think other prosecutors could have differed. and -- >> let me interrupt you on one thing. because, i'm not a lawyer. but one of the basic facts we're taught all the time in life is, ignorance of the law is not a defense. apparently, unless you commit

campaign finance crimes. because what was amazing here is that apparently that is a defense on campaign finance law. that if you don't know or understand the law, you can say, oh, i didn't know that i couldn't accept this unvalued piece of material from a foreign government. >> right, well, you're still right that ignorance of the law generally is not an excuse, but there are certain crimes and campaign finance crimes are one of them that do have a slightly higher standard of intent for prosecutors to prove. they don't -- you don't have to show that they knew exactly what the wall was, but that people had a general sense that what they were doing was wrong. we've talked about that actually a lot in the context of the other campaign finance violations case, involving trump. and where there seems to be pretty ample evidence that he, you know, is aware of what the limitations were there. but i guess here, mueller seems to have concluded, as you said,

that even with that heightened, but still general, level of intent, he wouldn't have been able to show it. but, again, i think this goes to exactly the point we were just talking about. i think he was taking it -- took a pretty conservative approach, which goes against, of course, this whole idea of a witch hunt. and i think highlights what you and julia were talking about in obstruction, where he seems to me to have said, whoa, there's a lot of evidence of obstruction here. i'm not saying charges or no charges, because that's not my role in this case where the president can't be charged, and i'm tossing this to congress. so i think it actually highlights how much evidence he saw of obstruction here. >> all right. i want to try to first have a discussion about volume i and then we can have -- which is the conspiracy and the hacking itself, since we've got somebody who may have finally can reveal some of the stuff that you may have learned, mr. brennan. and then i want to get into the obstruction bucket, second. let me put up full screen one,

guys, and what comes from the report on page 173. in sum, the investigation established multiple links between the trump campaign officials and individuals tied to the russian government. those links included russian offers of assistance to the campaign, in some instances, the campaign was receptive to the offer, in other instances, the campaign financial shied away. ultimately, the investigation did not establish that the campaign coordinated or conspired with the russian government in its election interference activities. but it feels like there's a huge "but" here, ben wittes. >> yeah, the huge "but" is basically that the standards of conspiracy require that the two conspirators or multiple conspirators have some kind of meeting of the minds, but if there's just kind of ships that are sailing in the same direction and kind of doing favors for each other and, you know, both enjoying it, that's not going to get you there. and so i think, you know, the president wants to say "no

collusion," but the real lesson here is that there's a lot of collusion that's legal. >> john brennan, knowing what you saw, the report you were getting when you were in the job in the summer of '16, reading what mueller came up with, reading this, it seems as if mueller's theory of the case was, boy, the hack itself was not a conspiracy between the trump campaign and the russian government. but, boy, if they could have, they would have. if there had been other information, they would have. they certainly intended to try to do whatever it took. and the rnussians were certainl looking for ways in, but they never matched intent with an action. >> i think the mueller report signs a light on many of those things that we were watching in 2016. and as the report points out, there was a lot of very aggressive russian efforts to try to make contact and to engage with people who had influence with donald trump or with the campaign itself. and there was a receptivity to those types of overtures.

and these were the things that greatly worried myself and jim comey. so, for claims that the investigation, the criminal investigation that was undertaken, as of 31 july and 2016, was not predicated. that is totally false. >> no, this is a huge pile. i mean, there's a lot of predicati predication. >> absolutely. and it goes back into 2014 and before that. so i think it just demonstrates that there's a corpus of information here, even more so that bob mueller has been able to uncover, that really underscores the importance of the work being done by the fbi, cia, nsa, and others to try to understand what the russians were doing. and for the fbi, who on the u.s. side, might have been actively working with them. again in a witting or unwitting capacity in terms of what the intelligence services were ultimately trying to accomplish. >> andrea, i'm still just sort of gobsmacked here that basically, multiple members of the trump campaign knew the russians were up to some, basically interfering in our

election, and they were so concerned about it that they kpra created a campaign plan to take advantage of it. they did not call the fbi. they did not -- this is something here that seems to be getting lost. today, where's all the -- >> where's the outrage. >> where's the outrage, yeah, on this aspect? >> and you opened the program talking about the normalization of russian interference in our campaign. where are the patriots who called the cops, who called the john brennans, you know, the fbi, at least and said, wait a second. vladimir putin, according to this report, from 2014 on, was trying to interfere. in 2015, michael cohen was, during the u.n. general assembly meetings and putin was in new york, calling repeatedly and saying, my boss, you know, donald trump wants to meet with vladimir putin and a woman from the embassy saying, that's not according to proetocol, you kno, he's not a hand of state. >> it's so funny, the ham-handed nature at times, the trump campaign was begging for russian meetings.

>> and then jumping forward to obstruction down the road, the president's lawyer was telling michael cohen in august of 2017 or 2018, you don't have to congress about that, take that off your prepared testimony. telling him, take that 2015 approach from trump out of your prepared testimony and multiple calls over and over during the days preparing that testimony. and if he weren't, the president would be, they said, it was lawyer/client privilege, which is correct, so there's so subornation of perjury during that grand jury testimony. but the russians are everywhere. that seychelles meeting where they just happen to bump into each other in the bar, the head of the sovereign wealth fund of russia clothe to putin in the seychelles island. there was a three-hour meeting with the whole economic team with kellyanne conway, with bannon, with ross, with mnuchin, all before -- the day before erik prince buys a ticket and

goes to the seychelles and happens to run into this russian oligarch. >> you brought erik prince up, i'm trying to figure out how erik prince isn't dealing with a lying to congress charge. what he said to congress, and essentially, what he clearly, more concerned about what mueller knows, so he seems to be a bit more forthcoming here. this is two different stories. >> there is all sorts of detail about the extent to which what erik prince told congress seems quite inconsistent with what we know from what's on paper. my colleague, eric banco and i did extensive reporting on the erik prince portion of this probe over the last year or so, found lots of documents showing the communications that he had, the way he was briefed for this meeting. he told congress that he kind of bumped into these folks in a bar in the seychelles, that it was a coincidence, that it was casual conversation over beers. but we knew months ago that he received a sheet telling him who he was going to be talking to. that members in those conversations had talking points, where they were talking about how to try to improve

u.s./russia relations, in ways that would appear to be totally outlandish to mainstream foreign policy. >> and he met steve bannon at bannon's home on the way back. >> exactly. the idea that this was a random happenstance absolutely strains credulity. >> and both erik prince and steve bannon say, i can't find any messages before a certain date. essentially admitting that they've -- well, look, they didn't say they've destroyed evidence, but it certainly seems like they couldn't access evidence. >> yeah, i mean, and that's not the only time. i mean, mueller mentioned, specifically, in the report, that, you know, there were instances, actually, he uses the word destruction of evidence. not specifically to bannon here, but that that seems to be a running theme, and i don't want to get us off this topic, but, again -- >> but i feel like -- >> -- it goes to the

obstruction. >> i go back to this. it feels like the two are related. some of these charges didn't get brought on conspiracy, not because they didn't think it happened, but because the evidence was missing. fair? >> right. and that seems to be a theme of this report. i think mueller says it pretty explicitly, not as explicitly as we are saying it right now. but it seems to me that the various efforts of obstruction here worked, to some degree. and that's part of what's so troubling about barr's ultimate conclusion that somehow, you don't charge obstruction when the underlying crime has not proven, when in fact, it should really be, well, the same, if not the opposite conclusion. >> well, let me move to obstruction, guys. full screen four here, from the report. the president's efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful. but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the

president sidelideclined to car orders or accede to his request. the president did not tell the acting attorney general that the special counsel must be removed, but was instead prepared to resign over the president's order. lewandowski and dearborn did not deliver the president's medicatimessage to sessions that he could combine the message about future election meddling. and mcgahn refused to recede from his re-elections about events surrounding the president's direction to have the special counsel removed, despite the president's multiple demands that he do so. so julia ainsley, how did bill barr come to this conclusion again? and how did he exonerate him when he says, i guess, he did not technically exonerate, but wow, is it a misleading phrase. >> i'm sorry, was that to me? >> i'm sorry, julia, i know you've got a million voices there. ben wittes, take it.

>> the president is ineffective, as an executive. and he -- you know, his people don't do what he says, if there's a trade agreement on his desk, somebody's spirit says withdraw from a trade agreement, somebody spirits the letter off of his desk. if he tells you to obstruct justice, you don't do it. and i do think the report is pretty compelling as to his desi desire, his intention, his pretty consistent behavior towards obstruction, and by the way, that is generally enough. you don't actually have to, you know, giving the order itself an obstructive act. but i think it's very striking that this investigation was able to proceed to fruition, to completion, despite this very sustained public and private

presidential effort over a long period of time to prevent it from happening. and one thing that is a testament to is how ineffective donald trump is as president. >> well, there were west wing guardrails. turns out don mcgahn was a guard rail against the rule of law. >> i'm struck that in this report, there were two phases where the president's obstruction can be viewed in terms of his intent. pre-comey firing and then after the appointment of the special counsel. perhaps before -- they're suggesting that before comey was fired and all of these surrou surrounding issues, perhaps that rises to the kind of sbripdescrn that william barr i think very disingenuously. but after that, the president engaged in a second phase of conduct, including public attacks on the investigation, non-public efforts to control it, efforts in both public and private to encourage witnesses not cooperate with the investigation, judgments about that nature of the president's motives in that phase require a

different standard. zbl >> julia ainsley, i'm still trying to figure how bill barr, where he found in the report, somehow that the president's, you know, was just -- he was just so upset about being a target and that was the explanation. i mean, how did bill barr know his state of mind? i don't think mueller does. >> reporter: he didn't. and another reason why we know so little about his state of mind is because the president was not forthcoming. he -- they tried, the special counsel's office tried for a year to get him to sit down. he did not agree to that. and then it's clear that from the answers that they gave, the written responses to the special counsel's questions, they were not forthcoming at all. they had over 30 times where the president said, he did not recall, did not remember, or did not have independent verification of a certain event. and the special counsel's office said that this was not adequate. but they did not ultimately subpoena him for more information, simply because it would have been a very lengthy

litigation process. so, that is where robert mueller stood on that. so for the attorney general to then say, well, then, this must not be within the president's head, that's hard for a lot of people to get their heads around. i think, at this point, what the attorney general is hanging on is the fact that robert mueller did not make a decision on obstruction and that he did have the ability and the authority to do so himself. but it's not clear that he completely presented all of that information in the most transparent or accurate way. >> let me put up full screen nine, guys. because it does seem, and i'm just curious for the table here, if whether we think mueller's intent, essentially, was that this was up to congress. here's what he writes. under the office of legal counsel's office, congress with per missably criticize certain obstructive conduct by the president like fabricating evidence. because those raise no separation of powers questions. constitution does not authorize the president to engage in such conduct and those actions would

transgress the president's duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. john brennan, it certainly seems like mueller thought he was writing this report for congress, to decide whether to bring charges against the president of the united states. >> i think bob mueller's team realized that they're writing the report, not just for the attorney general and for donald trump, but for congress and the american people. and that he was not going to wing, decide on his own whether or not something as profound and important as this was going to be in his hands. i think he wanted to present as much evidence as possible, particularly on the obstruction side, and then to say, this is both a political and a legal determination, that really needs to be looked at very, very carefully, and so, i do believe that he was expecting, not william barr, but in fact, congress and the american people to make that decision. >> there's something kind of amusing when he's talking about the obstruction question, which is mueller's team raises this question whether or not you can obstruct justice in public. and specifically addresses the fact that they cite so many of trump's tweets as evidence that could be used to build a case of

obstruction against the president. they specifically say that -- that just the fact that he's doing it in public, even though it's unprecedented and doesn't make very much sense at all, still counts as evidence that could be used. >> and mimi rocah, do you think bill barr went over the line in deciding, making the unilateral decision here, now that you've read everything, making the unilateral decision that no charges should be brought on obstruction? >> absolutely. i mean, i thought so before, but after seeing the report, i think mueller did the opposite -- barr made it sound in his letter and even today, right before releasing the report, like mueller just sort of couldn't decide, threw up his hands, couldn't decide. and in fact, i think mueller did something very deliberate. he did something -- he didn't throw up his hands, he made a decision, the decision was, because of the loc opinion and the fact that i cannot bring charges against this president, i'm not going to say, here is enough evidence or not enough evidence.

i'm going to lay out the evidence and he cites -- i mean, he cites to the articles of the constitution that enable congress to exercise its power here. so, i think very much barr overstepped and misrepresented quite explicitly what mueller had attempted to do. and now we know. and the question is, wt's congress going to do with it. >> julia ainsley, i know you wanted to chime in on this. >> reporter: there's a key graph here on page 157, that i think is really illuminating about the president's conduct and intent as we talk about this. it says, in this investigation, the evidence is not established the president was involved in underlying crime related to russia election interference. it says, but the evidence does point to a range of other possible motives, animating the president's conduct. and he says, he includes concerns that continued investigations would call into question the legitimacy of his election and the potential uncertainty about whether certain events like wikileaks or the june 9th meeting, referring

to trump tower, could be seen as criminal activity by the president, his campaign, or his family. so a great question here, i think, is, is it that the president is trying to cover up what he may have seen as a crime, regardless of whether or not it was. does that establish intent? and does it establish intent to a level where if he wasn't the sitting president of the united states, we may see charges? because it seems to me that robert mueller is laying out some very clear reasons, he can't prove them all, but he's saying, these could be reasons for the president's activity on obstruction. >> he did seem to introduce the idea that he was just afraid of a lengthier -- that there was a motive and that there was a lengthier reason. just because it was humorous to me, i want to put up, guys, full screen six and the president's speech that he drafted for jeff sessions, in the speech that jeff sessions never gave, but corey lewandowski is furiously writing this down. and apparently this was the speech that he -- that the president wanted sessions to

give. full screen six, guys, page 91. i'm going to read the proposed speech that the president directed. i know that i recused myself from certain things having to do with certain areas, but our potus is being treated very unfairly. he shouldn't have a special counsel prosecutor, because he hasn't done anything wrong. i was on the campaign with him for nine months. there were no russians involved with him. i know it for a fact, because i was there. he didn't do anything wrong, except he ran the greatest campaign in american history. i have to say, i would have love to have seen jeff sessions try to deliver that speech with a straight face. >> it would have been memorable. that said, sessions made some public comments during his time as attorney general where he used very trumpy language. and now, we're seeing the current attorney general, bill barr, do the same thing. the comments he made, just quite recently, saying that he believed the trump campaign was spied on, that could have been drafted by trump. and it's important not to overlook the fact that he should take barr at his word when he says he's putting together a team of people in the justice department to investigate the way the mueller investigation

unfolded. that's something that the president's allies of fox news have been calling for for almost two years now. barr's not joking around when he says he's going to do that. >> and it's also interesting in this chronology that's in the mueller report, at least, the dossier had nothing to do with the origin of the investigation that john brennan and his colleagues launched in 2015. >> that's what i find about one of the most outrageous things about bill barr's press conference this morning, to say that donald trump cooperated with the special counsel's office. for 22 months, very publicly, in all of his tweets, he zpardispad that special counsel effort and said it was a hoax and a witch hunt. and now we see how much he was doing behind the scenes. but thankfully people like don mcgahn and others stopped him from halting him in his tracks. how william barr could say that with a clear conscience, that donald trump was cooperating, it's well beyond he. >> and mimi rocah, i want you to have the last word before we run to break here. mueller explains why he didn't

subpoena the president, makes it clear he could have. but they didn't want to extend essentially extend the investigation another year. but the fact, what john brennan just brought up, it was a very uncooperative set of answers that the president gave in those written answers. in hindsight, should mueller have, you know, timing be damned, not getting the president under oath in front of that grand jury, i just, is history going to be kind on him for making that non-decision. >> look, i think probably -- i think it probably was a mistake to not try to subpoena him. i think that the reason, though, is that mueller indicates in that explanation, that part of the report where he explains why he didn't pursue the subpoena, and if you sort of take it altogether, it seems to me that what mueller is saying, well, we didn't need that evidence, because we already had evidence

of obstructive intent in plenty of other places. and so, i think what the reason we're looking at it now differently and saying, well, wait, maybe you should have pursued it, is because of what barr did, okay? if barr had not come in and said, no, there wasn't enough evidence of intent, we would be looking at this differently. we would be looking at it, as, mueller is pregnanting the evidence that there is of obstructive intent. and he thinks that i think that there is plenty of it. and then, you know, there are arguments you can make on the other side of that. but because barr rendered this decision saying, not enough intent, it looks like you need that. but i blame barr for that. >> that's a -- no, it's going to be a great hindsight question for bob mueller when he gets brought before congress, which is, had you known barr was going to make this decision, would you have subpoenaed the presidents. julia ainsley, mimi rocah, betsy woodruff, thank you all. andrea mitchell, you have to stick around. up ahead, we'll get into the

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all right. let's get back into this. joining us now, democratic congresswoman, madeleine dean of pennsylvania. she's a member of the judiciary committee and this is going to be the question he's going to get from constituent after constituent, reporter after reporter. congresswoman, welcome to the show. and let me ask you this question. based on what you've seen here, do you think the judiciary committee should start impeachment hearings? >> thank you for having me on, chuck. i'm sorry the reason for it, frankly. i think what we have to do is do our job. i'll get to impeachment in a minute, but number one, we have to look at this report. i've been beginning to read through it. i brought it with me on my car ride down here. it's a very interesting, very disturbing read that does not exonerate this president. so what the judiciary committee has to do is make sure we get

the full report, unredacted. that we have mr. barr come before us and explain his mischaracterization of the report and his excuses for really siding with the president instead of being the independent voice that we would expect of an attorney general. and then we have to speak to mr. mueller. i think it's critical that we do that. we are in a process of oversight. it's our constitutional obligation. and if the things that are revealed h this report are as troubling as they appear, and that other things come up as a result of our oversight, whether it has to do we moll yuith emol campaign finance errors and paying off porn stars and things like that, we have oversight to do. and there may be enough evidence that amounts to an impeachment proceeding. we're just not there yet. >> you said you believe bull barr mischaracterized this report. how specifically do you believe he mischaracterized it? >> he mischaracterized it by

allowing the president to try to claim exoneration. and also, by saying that this -- in this report and with the work with special counsel mueller, the president fully cooperated. let's take a look at what the president actually did. he fired jim comey, because he didn't believe he was loyal enough. he tried to have mcgahn fire the special counsel himself. i don't call that cooperating. mcgahn rightly refused to do so. he then harassed and mocked his own attorney general, jeff sessions, for months upon months, because session did the right thing in the instance of recusal. he also failed to come before the grand jury, refusing to come in to testify. and then he handed in some written answers and would not respond. when attorney general barr characterizes the president as fully cooperate iing with a spel investigation that he was not a part of and he knows these

underlying findings, that's mischaracterizing the president's participation and the report. the report itself does not exonerate this president. we know that. special counsel said, if he found reason to exonerate the president, he would have clearly stated so. but that didn't happen. >> do you believe, congresswoman, that mueller's intent was to let the decision on prosecution be up to you guys and the judiciary committee? >> i think that's possible he believes it is and i believe there's a part of the report where he says it is on the congress, on the judiciary committee, as well as other oversight committees. but certainly, the duty is on us in judiciary to make sure we complete the investigation and put a light on it. just, let's see the whole thing. do you remember in march, the president said, let the people see it! you remember when barr testified for his confirmation hearing, what he said to the senate? he said, i don't think it would be in the public interest for me to summarize or partition, i'm

paraphrasing, this report. well, whose interest is he working for now? the duty is upon us in congress to complete the joefroversight. and i take that duty very, very seriously. >> let me ask you about the fact, though, that the special counsel couldn't find enough evidence to do conspiracy charges. as much as -- as distasteful as some of it looks, as maybe unethical as it comes across, when it's dealing with a foreign entity. if the evidence isn't there, what more do you guys think you can do? and what should your role be on that? >> actually, part of the language that i read in the report, the special counsel leaves the door open. that not all of the evidence was available to him. part of the lack of cooperation by the trump folks is that apparently, they destroyed evidence. and they destroyed e-mails. imagine that -- >> so do you believe the conspiracy question is an open question? that this is not -- that despite that it's simply -- it's still

an open question if your mind, whether there is enough evidence to prove that people associated with the trump campaign entered into a conspiracy with some russians? >> i'm reading the report for its face value. and early in the report, special counsel mueller says he did not find conspiracy. i take him at his word. i want to read all of the rest of the evidence to see what happened. you notice what else he did? he very clearly said to the american public and anybody who bothers to read this, he was not looking at collusion. so no matter how many times mr. barr or mr. trump say "no collusion" over and over again, that's not what we were looking for. that's not what special counsel was looking for. that's not a legal chargeable offense and it's a charade. >> you said said earlier you want to hear from bill barr, you want to hear from bob mueller. i take it you want to hear from bob mueller in particular before you make a decision on whether to open an impeachment inquiry? do you think that testimony is necessary before you make that decision?

>> i value his experience, his judgment, and the evidence he collected, the process he went through, so i really would like to hear -- i'm certain we will want to hear from mr. mueller. and i have a feeling mr. mueller will want to talk with us and tell the american public the truth and the facts. that's what the american public has a right to. there's an awful lot at stake. take a look at what the underlying investigation was. it was an attack on our democracy. an attack on our right to vote. and do you know what donald trump did today? did you read the recent thing that he has done? he has opened up a campaign finance where he's trying to raise $1 million in 24 hours, as a result of this saga that he has taken the american people through. >> congresswoman madeleine dean, i take it that this is going to be something you guys will be dealing with for quite some time. democrat from pennsylvania, thanks for coming on and sharing your views, much appreciated. >> thank you for having me. let's turn to more of the politics of this. with us now, dan ball is the

chief correspondent for "the washington post," andrea mitchell is city at the table, along the jeremy dash. ramesh panuru, bloomberg view columnist, and stephanie cutter. dan ball, what's your lead? >> my lead is that this is a very damning report about the trump presidency. i think you can look at it in two ways, chuck. one is on the legal side and there's certainly dispute between the attorney general and people who do not take his conclusions at face value. but on the issue of conspiracy, the mueller report gives the president a clean bill of health. there's obviously lots of contacts, but he didn't bring a conspiracy on the issue of obstruction. there is going to be a big debate about obstruction. but i would go beyond that and look at this report in another way. and that is, what does it tell us about the trump presidency? and in that, this report is quite damning about the trump

presidency and the way the president has acted. one of my bottom lines on this is that the trump presidency has been an exercise in testing the limits of extraordinary behavior. and i think what this report lays out is behavior that is beyond the norm that we normally expect of a president. >> guys, i want to play barr's -- it's number 11, guys. i want to play the sincere belief now, sound bite, after everybody has digested this report now, how do these barr comments hold up some -- what have we got? some eight hours later. take a listen. >> president trump faced an unprecedented situation, as he entered into office and sought to perform his responsibilities as president, federal agents and prosecutors were scrutinizing his conduct before and after taking office and the conduct of some of his associates. at the same time, there was relentless speculation in the news media about the president's

personal culpability. yet, as he said from the beginning, there was, informs, no collusion. and as the special counsel's report acknowledges, there is substantial evidence to show that the president was frustrated and angered by his sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents and fueled by illegal leaks. >> i guess "sincere belief," ramesh's translation for the "i'm f'd" comment, that the president is quoted as saying the day he finds that out. but it's hard to take the report we've been reading and match it up with what he said, with the tone of how bill barr expressed things. >> that's right. i think that the accusation that barr was misleading, particularly in his initial letter a few weeks ago, but also this morning, is not so much that he said things that were specifically untrue, but that he didn't convey sort of the

texture of the report. and the fact is, some people said at the time, when you have the full report and you have incident after incident, and you have, you know, you see how this white house has marinated in a culture of dishonesty, it adds up to a damning portrait. >> every authoritarian i've ever been briefed on from the intelligence perspective, and i've even met a few, had a sincere belief that they were under political attack. that their standing in their country was somehow under siege. that does not kplornt the president. that does not give them a license to obstruct justice or violate our constitution. >> and when mueller says that he cannot exonerate the president on obstruction, he's clearly saying that if not for the office of legal counsel, that he would have most likely come down on that side. but going into all of this, he accepts that prohibition as someone reporting to the department of justice, an app d appendage of the department of justice, if you will, not an independent counsel or an independent prosecutor, as we've had in the past, but an

independent counsel under the later statute. and so going in, he's basically saying, unless there is a preponderance of evidence, overriding that constitutional prohibition, i'm not going to indict. but he does not exonerate. and i think the texture and detail in the second volume, abedded by the first volume of all of these russian engagements is overwhelming. >> stephanie, what do you tell democrats to do with this information? this thing, there's unintended consequences that they choose not to go full bore on this and there's unintended questions if they do. >> well, i think we don't have to jump that far ahead yet, actually. and the first thing that i would do is get bob mueller up there. and in a public hearing, so that not only can we hear from him -- >> do you think he'll give much, by the way? >> i think he'll follow on what he reported on, and having him say that in person will be a dramatic moment for this country. and we're essentially setting up, who are you going to believe? bob mueller or are you going to

believe lindsey graham? bob mueller or donald trump? and that's what it's going to come down to. and the -- let's not forget, every house democrat has said that we are going to continue our investigations. mueller said, you know, basically, i hit a stone wall because people were either lying to me or they destroyed information. we don't know what's going happen with this investigation continuing. we don't know what's going to happen when people are called to testify and once again have to go under oath. so we need to continue going down this road and doing an investigation. let's see what comes of it. it may very well end up with impeachment proceedings, but we don't know yet. >> the risk of investigation fatigue. >> i think right now, i think it's objectively true that republicans are less of a united front than republicans are. >> i know what you mean. >> steny hoyer saying, we're not going to go ahead with impeachment. >> congresswoman dean looked like she was not ready to go to impeachment, but not ready to rule it out. >> and you have a third group of

people who are ready to go there right now. i think there's going to be a process that's probably going to be pretty contentious of sorting that out. >> you know, dan balz, you brought up the trump presidency and sort of how it works. the reason the president is not -- that the impeachment hearings haven't begun, that all of this didn't happen is because he actually had a staff that protected him from himself. those people aren't there anymore. don mcgahn is not white house counsel, reince priebus is not the chief of staff. frankly, you start to see in here, there were a lot of good actors sort of -- people that had been political professionals inside the republican party that reince priebus clearly seeded in early days of that west wing. those people aren't there anymore. we now have a president trump without any of those guardrails. and i think there were people that didn't realize how many guardrails existed in the west wing the first 18 months of this presidency. >> yeah, i think that's a good point, chuck, that throughout the first 18 or so months, i think there were a lot of

questions about were there guardrails, simply because of the way the president was tweeting and acting and lashing out at different points. and now we see that there were some guardrails there. and your question is a good one. how much of that is still in existence? what is there built around him to take him through what is going to be a very contentious investigation. i don't know that it's ever going to get to impeachment. i think that's still a long way away. but they're going to use all of this in the way they want to, as a campaign effort. web talk about the legal side of this, but this is really now a political debate that will be carried out both on capitol hill, but particularly on the campaign trail, heading to 2020. the trump campaign is ready for that fight. >> and even hope hicks, on that june 9th meeting, not wanting to go with the adoption story that the president proposed, to describe it. don junior saying that it was about, you know, getting dirt on

hillary clinton. that initial cover-up. you're right. i think, also, that the politics are really tough for house democrats. as aggressive as they want to be, nancy pelosi is in a bind. she has to bridge that divide. but the candidates out there, they're not going to want to talk about this more than getting their instant reactions. they want to talk about health care, they want to talk about whether it's medicare for all or other kinds of kitchen table issues. and -- >> but i think they can do both at the same time. >> you know this better than i. >> i think they can perform their duties to investigate this president, which we now know, thanks to bob mueller, lied at least -- there's evidence that he tried to obstruct justice. he might not have been very good at it, but there's evidence that he tried. they can continue those investigations while also pursuing an agenda on health care or jobs or paid leave. >> but did william barr succeed in -- >> politically, he's neutered this thing, don't you think? >> for right now, for right now.

this is not a fixed debate. this is a dynamic debate. we don't know what's going to happen. if bob mueller comes before congress and testifies, we don't know what that's going to lead to. >> the opening of volume ii, the obstruction chapter, basically says that the president did commit president did commit obstructive actions but he cannot be charged. but he is not immune after leaves office of the it leaves open the door that this president could be charged criminally for these actions after he's president. and there's an amazing scene that we haven't heard much about. the president asked reince priebus to write an email blig the basis for the flynn call. this is a scene that involves the legal adviser at the national security adviser. all those people can be called to explain why the president was directing his team to lie. >> somebody will make a very argo-like film. there is a bit of kookiness to

this. >> i was reading this craziness to this. >> the white house, the trump administration are happier, more comfortable talking about this, talking about the witch hunt. they don't want to talk about health care and the tax cut, they're happy to have this fight. >> put up a full screen 15. i want to essentially end our conversation with an admonition i made at the top. let me read this. as you just pointed out, ecstatic is team trump. president trump, fully and completely exonerated again. the investigation conducted with the full cooperation of the administration. the american people can see for themselves, no collusion, no obstruction. total vindication, time to move on. americans deserve better than a partisan quest to vilify an

opponent. best day since he got elected. nobody here seems to be angry that one thing mueller proved unambiguously is that the russian government successfully interfered in our election on behalf of electing donald trump. and there doesn't seem to be any concern or outrage from any major republican official i can find today. >> no. and you have not yet heard the president through two years of president s presidency unequivocally say he accepts that finding. he suggested he accepts it, at other times waffled away from it, and he is not probably going to go near that at this point. i think there's one other thing that's come out from the trump operation today, that's the notion of retribution. time to turn the tables, an yeep the trump campaign sent out earlier today, and it basically said it is now time to quote,

unquote investigate the liars. there's an effort on the part of the trump operation to fire up the base at a minimum by turning tables on those people that were in charge of the investigation. so you have the potential for the house democrats to push an investigation on one hand and for republicans to call for one in the other direction on the other. >> where's the outrage about russian interference? john mccain is not here to be outraged. he apparently was the last republican outraged. >> couple things are going on. one is passage of time, two is the incremental nature of the revelations. three, you've got the shifting of goalpost, not just by the trump administration but also when you have critics on the other side saying breathless things about russian agents -- >> they proved he is not a russian agent. >> number four, lack of courage, lack of patriotism, lack of

perspective what's in the national interest. where are members of congress from either side of the aisle that have that perspective. >> nobody on that campaign thought what's happening was wrong? >> and dan balz and i were part of that report where the two campaigns faced off off camera, what was supposed to be an academic, turned out to be a ferocious exercise. at one point at the end, said from the clinton team you gas lighted her. and he said you never saw it coming. i think portends the digital campaign. they spent $3 million last week in florida trying to advantage spanish language anti-maduro messaging on facebook. and there isn't a democrat in this campaign that knows how to compete on that level with what they were able to do last time,

and they did it with russia's help last time, they don't need russia's help next time if the democrats don't get up to line. >> the digital campaigning, taking maybe assistance of a foreign entity, you know as well as i do, campaigns are -- if you get away with this, another will try it. >> they take it and build on it. >> don't worry, it will mainstream this, normalize this. look at the democrats tested this in alabama. >> i think it is not as easy to do what trump did now because of the rules of engagement on the social media platforms. but still doable. and we know that trump is going to play that way again. >> i would not underestimate vladimir putin. >> we already know that's happening. andrea, i disagree that

democrats don't know how to use digital tools, we do. we just have a different message and use different tactics. and i don't mean to be poly annish, but we prefer to talk about the future, what the future looks like, laying out a positive campaign agenda. we're not afraid to call out, believe me, from personal experience, not afraid to campaign hard against people, but i do think that even the media coming into 2020, we have to call bs on this and shine a light on it, make sure people know that these tactics are happening. >> i get the sense there isn't this, you don't have people on capitol hill going we have to update laws, i mean, maybe that's what the burr warner reports -- i spent time understanding what the senate intel folks are doing, they're insisting this is their focus, trying to essentially help --

>> in 2017, you had a huge bipartisan volt capable of overveiting presidential veto to increase sanctions on russia. that now looks like a high water mark for bipartisanship on that front and we have had a polarization that has continued to intensify as the investigation has proceeded around all these issues. >> the other question is this time around are the intelligence agencies going to stay quiet if they see evidence of this. last time they were playing by the rules. we were under the old rules. now they know that there is not a president that's going to do anything about it or political party. i think maybe we might hear from them more. >> they've already spoken out, they spoke out through the hearing, you saw that from leadership. these are people that actually

have an incentive, are highly motivated to speak out now. >> dan balz, i want to go back to the larger issue here which is this feels like we've just opened pandora's box now. the fact this president believes he got away with something here and certainly accepted outside help, looked the other way. how does this not open the door to more of this? >> chuck, it certainly does potentially do that. i think part of the answer to that is what you all have been talking about which is there have to be some rules of how we defend democracy against this sort of thing. the fact that the senate intelligence committee has been working on this but hasn't come forward, the idea that the executive branch, we don't know what they have or haven't done. there are so many unanswered questions and we're heading into the campaign season. it is not as though this is not already on-going. so i think that's part of the

challenge ahead. but the normalization of this kind of activity is certainly something that everybody should be worried about, no matter what side of the campaigns they're on. >> and what about the perception of the rule of law in america? >> that is profoundly disturbing because people were waiting for robert mueller, both sides were waiting for robert mueller, but for the fact that a president is essentially above the law, unless there's overwhelming evidence and something to mobilize congress. by the way, the intelligence, senate intelligence committee has been above reproach, we all thought. this does have some information in this report that after the gang of eight was briefed by james comey that richard burr went to the white house and told the white house who the eight targets were, maybe not eight, who were the targets of the investigation. >> my hour is up before the buzzer gets off. i don't want to do that.

there's more to get to, which means we have more hours. thank you all. that's all we have for "mtp daily." breaking news coverage continues now with mr. brian williams. good evening, it is 6:00 p.m. on the east coast. i am brian williams at nbc news headquarters in new york. this continues now our breaking news coverage all day long of perhaps the most consequential day of this presidency thus far. and before we hand you over to the beat, we want to start with the host of the broadcast who also happens to be our chief legal correspondent, ari melber. ari, briefly at the top it is an unfairly wide ranging question to ask you, but what happened today? >> what happened today, brian, as you and i have been covering all day is that the mueller report came out in redacted form, it