velshi. join me, please, 8:00 a.m. tomorrow. "deadline: white house" with nicole wallace starts right now. hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. welcome to the first day of the rest of donald trump's presidency, most of us still digesting the mueller report, 400-plus page account of elaborate and successful russian meddling campaign that sought to elect donald trump, as well as donald trump's pattern of obstructive conduct, conduct so troubling that the special counsel could not and would not say that crimes had not occurred. the bottom line from a trump ally and witness in the investigation who i spoke to this morning, quote, the mueller report paints a classic portrait of donald trump and details how his impulsivity can lead to

criminal conduct. and calls out republicans for ignoring the findings so far. one thing is clear, donald trump's thuggish behavior will continue to accelerate. the president tweeting this morning, quote, watch out for people that take so-called notes. a reference to a devastating portrait of the president painted by his former white house counsel, don mcghan. from the "new york times," the white house that emerges from more than 400 pages of mr. mueller's report is a hot bed of conflict infused by dishonesty, defined by a president that lies to the american public and his own staff and then tries to get people to lie for him. and "the washington post"

reports, quote, mueller's report is singular for its definitive examination of the events and will not easily be dismissed by trump and his aides as fake news. the main actors are under oath and on the record, and the narrative they laid bare stands as a historical product. former u.s. attorney joyce vance is at the table along the political analyst rick stengel. msnbc analyst john hileman is back. and donny deutsche is at the table. and "new york times" chief white house correspondent peter banker and caroline nash, reporter for "the washington post." >> the front pages of your papers, i thought of offering to frame them and deliver them to

the museum myself this morning. for those of us covering this all day, i was on tv all day, it didn't hit me until i opened my door and saw your front pages just how seismic this shift was in terms of what we now know took place in the 2016 election on the part of russians and the one wittin unwitting conduct of trump and his aides. peter, let me start with you and the story you wrote for today's paper. >> its's a story his own aides tell. that's what's remarkable about this mueller report, the portrait of the white house comes from the people he chose to surround himself with, people like don mcghan, rob porter, reince priebus, corey lewandowski, and chris christie. these are people that told stories about what happened in

the first couple years of the presidency that today are being dissected by us and the public at large as we evaluate what kind of picture we get, we get a picture of chaos, conflict, and a pretty dishonest culture where the president does, as you read, lie about his own actions and tell his aides to lie to the public. >> carol, as an investigative reporter -- we're going to dive into the report with both of you because this is the first time i've had to talk to either one of you -- but as an investigative reporter, having been a white house communications director, we didn't always welcome your calls but when they came in we tried to respond honestly within the boundaries of dealing with classified information and whatnot, but what did this report reveal that you encountered as an investigative reporter covering this

organization, if you call them that, this gang of liars as they look like from reading the mueller report, what has that been like for those of you that cover them? >> i hate to say it this way but it's deja vu all over again for me. there's breathtaking detail about things we didn't know were being discussed inside the oval office but we had clue a and clue b but didn't know the dialogue that went along with it. for example, it brings me back immediately to july and august of 2017, when the press shop for the white house was insisting to us that it was not true that the president had dictated a statement from "air force one." he never dictated a statement we were told indicating in any way how his son should answer a question about a trump tower meeting with a russian lawyer. the president, we reported at

the time, that he was telling people a false story about this campaign event, except he was putting his lies in the mouth of his son. and we were told absolutely not the president didn't do this. well, robert mueller makes it clear that we were right. and it's sort of shocking the degree to which the president told people over and over again, make this story up, go tell the press this is what happened, and then later when it comes out that that's a lie, you know, no one apologizes or says that they lied. >> peter, i want to dive into the specifics and pick up this thread from caroline, because that they lie is something that those of us who cover them and call them and ask them questions and then are left with their responses to somehow weigh against the facts that have been unearthed and uncovered from other places, having encountered you much more than me and your

colleagues that cover this investigation, but these are lies that were exposed in the mueller report. the rational -- and examined by robert mueller. the rational for firing comey. the efforts to remove special counsel robert mueller from his post. the efforts to lie about removing mueller. the elaborate campaign to get mcgahn to knock down a story written by your colleagues, peter. the efforts to obtain hillary clinton's emails, the reasons for that trump tower meeting. the president's involvement in the trump tower meeting statement. business dealings in russia, campaign contacts with russians. just talk a little bit more about all of the coverage that is cited in the actual mueller report, not any of it refuted by a 22-month investigation. the only thing revealed is that the liars are the people in the oval office and those around him. >> i thought what was

interesting about the report was all of these journalistic reports over the last two years by carol and her colleagues and the post and my colleagues at the post, and around national weather service -- nbc, have been revealed time after time that revealed it matches things that have been written by robert mueller. but we no longer have to worry about anonymous sources, they're there. they're fbi interviews, notes all collected by a prosecutor with subpoena power and put together in a way that's hard to dispute. today you see the president lashing out at those who take notes but he's not disputing any specific instance in the report, because, in fact, there is an accumulation of evidence that robert mueller has presented that's hard to dispute. >> can we hit pause and celebrate this moment as another

norm obliterated. this is a human being, the president of the united states, attacking the practice of taking notes. which is a practice -- i take notes in my house to remember what i have to do. most people in the white house take notes to remember what a president said. this is a president so offended by someone keeping a record of him it raises all sorts of questions about his state of mind, about his own conduct, peter. >> it is fair to say that other administrations have tried to avoid taking written records of some things because they knew anything they wrote down would have to be kept as a presidential record, could come out, be subpoenaed by congress. it's not the first time the idea of writing things down in the white house is sensitive. but there's nothing in the tweet that suggests he didn't like it because it became testimony against him. it validated the stories that don mcghan and other white house aides were telling robert

mueller because they were able to point to pieces of paper where they had written things down at the time they were said. note taking at the time is always most powerful than somebody's post facto recollection. so people look for those kinds of documents because they're like gold in terms of trying to reconstruct events that happened weeks, months and years earlier. >> carolyn, the report on notes has this interaction. the president asked, what about these notes? why do you take notes? lawyers don't take notes? i never had a lawyer that took notes? don mcghan responded that he took notes because he's a real lawyer. i want to write this movie. and explained that notes create a record and are not a bad thing. then the president said, well, i've had a lot of great lawyers, like roy cohn, he didn't take notes. >> that's a nice softball for

me, nicole. i'll say the portrait that comes across about this white house counsel, don mcghan, is of a guy constantly blinking going, are you kidding me? is that really what you're saying? and the portrait that comes across as the president, as peter and his colleagues have documented today, the culture of dishonesty is of a president who's behaving the same way in the white house has he did on the 26th floor of trump tower when it's really like a family business. he likes to interview or talk to people one on one, so nobody can claim they know what he said. he doesn't like groups of people where everybody can recall exactly what was discussed. he likes to separate people. he likes to say this is the story, everybody, right? this is how it went? which is usually indicative for

most prosecutors of somebody who's trying to shape the story. somebody who's trying to get everybody to sing from the same himmal book. and that's something else that's in mueller's report, although he wasn't able to pierce the attorney/client privilege of the real lawyers that the president was relying on, it looks like the president scripted some of those attorneys to help to pressure and threaten and get other people to not contradict his account of events and to shape their story in a way most flattering to him. another big pillar of obstruction. >> the amazing thing about the president trying to make things look better for himself. today he's tweeting this lunacy that confirms the worst scenarios about himself pushing back calling the behavior about himself bull shit. the idea that i had more decorum than what's there. >> after he said it's a report

of exoneration. the irony -- >> he's been on six sides of the exonerated portion. >> i'm not a lawyer, but the whole narrative is a narrative of obstruction to me. the fact that -- >> absolutely. >> -- mr. mueller is such a boy scout about this and agonized about whether there was obstruction, then the narrative gives chapter and verse of obstruction. it's like a bob woodward book in the sense he was a little too sir couple specif circumspect. you used this word in the introduction which i tried to purge from the trump world, meddling in our election. >> too soft? >> they did an act of cyber warfare against our democracy. >> i stand corrected. >> scolded. >> meddling is out.

>> let me just come back to you on that because it's a good correction. this was a trump ally and long-time republican who said the most stunning thing, 24 hours later, is that not a single republican has embraced just the russia content. and as far as he knew there was not a single principles meeting scheduled at the white house to delve into the conduct of an american adversary on our democracy, which was -- >> and there's unanimity with people who's iqs in three figures and honorable with the action of the russians attacking our elections. it's indisputable. the first sentence of the mueller report is about the extensive scale of the attack against us. to me the thing we have to figure out, apart from donald trump, is what do we do about this going forward? it's happening right now, every day, we talked about it before. right now there are russian trolls attacking our twitter accounts. they're being invented every day at the internet research agency

in st. petersburg. that's still a functioning proposition. >> joyce, it was so clear -- i read more of it last night than i was able to read before i came on the air this hour yesterday -- it was so abundantly clear, and i was told by current and past justice department officials that all that mueller was doing was investigating and prosecuting crimes. he wasn't writing a book report. this wasn't evidence on both sides of the obstruction question, this was evidence of obstruction, attempted obstruction of justice, and this was reliance on an olc memo that said you can't indict a sitting president, did i miss anything? >> no, you're dead on the money. this is not what attorney general barr presented it as in his precursor press conference. this is what prosecutors do, they write memos that document the facts and how the facts are applied to the law in order to justify their prosecutive

decisions, do you professisecuto do you prosecute, if not, if so. i know people feel unsatisfied or unhappy about what we saw yesterday. i'm not in this camp. i think there's a clear picture here of the evidence that mueller put together, and it is strong evidence even though he believes he's not the correct person to bring obstruction charges. i have to say one thing not as a l lawyer but as a mom as i saw lie after lie, confirmed lies, the president, people around him, as a parent one of the most important things you do is teach kids to be truthful and part of that is looking up to the people in charge and we all of a sudden can't do that. there's no principle meetings, nothing in the republican party, where's the outrage from yesterday? >> one thing we can't take as new information as donald trump

lying. there's been 10,000 of them. the fact he's lying any step of the way is a given. my concern with it is he has normalized so much. imagine if we didn't know any of this, ranging from the the russians interfered, trump knew it, he didn't care. he was meddling and he tried to interfere with the investigation, all the above, everybody's hair would be on fire. my concern is it's baked in on both sides. i felt the report ended where it was going to be. i think there was a lot of learned helplessness from democrats, the mueller report is coming, it's the end of the world. i think we saw more depth to things we knew -- >> i felt that way until i started reading it, donny. you read the first 27 pages of the obstruction report and it is taking a criminal lens to what you described. we know the behavior and we know

his hair is a mess and he's overweight. that's baked in, that's who he is. but when you read how he functions as america's sitting president -- i'm not arguing with you on cause and effect, i think 40% doesn't care, 60% is deeply alarmed. but in terms of contextualizing how he -- >> that surprised you? >> that shocked me. floored me. >> the other night right after michael cohen, we were both saying, this is him. i guess i am so -- jaded. i understand this animal, this beast that's there. that to me it was like, yeah. as i said, so for me at least it's so normalized, hopefully i'm at the end of the spectrum -- >> you're one of the most upset people i know as an american. >> i'm beyond upset. but there was nothing in there that was surprising or shocking. >> i'm going to call you tonight when i'm reading it and read it

outloud. >> donny is on the far end of people who understand and know things about president trump. >> that's true. >> there are two things about it super striking. the first is as we step away from a day -- having a day reflection and read the whole thing now and absorbed it. one is we talked about -- peter was talking about a couple things, one it's a bob woodward book. i've read all those books. >> me too. >> it's the best book as a picture of -- as a piece of nonfiction narrative, what's the white house like? what's donald trump like? as a picture -- forget about the legal issues. just as a picture of what is the functioning white house -- the course of the last two years, the picture it paints is vivid and incredibly well established. the proof is there in a way that no journalist could ever get because we don't have subpoena power. and it gives you a picture of just how much chaos and evil -- i say evil in a particular way.

the president trump, it is a picture of a guy trying systematically over and over again to commit crimes, sometimes he's successful, forget about mueller's standards. you're like this guy is trying to commit crimes himself orget others to commit them. sometimes people refuse to help them, sometimes their incompetence keeps them from committing the crime, but it's amazing to see the president on the two fronts, the obstruction front and the russia front broadly defined. the other amazing thing is the thing that peter mentioned a second ago. which is that in the course of our careers, we've seen so many white houses where the rule has become, you don't take notes because it will expose you to criminal liability or gets you sucked into something, you're going to have to pay lawyers forever. in this white house you see people taking notes because of the fact they're trying to protect themselves because what's happening around them is

so crazy and they recognize in the moment that it is potentially poses legal inju jeopardy, they're doing what everyone is trained not to do, don't make a record, they're going, this is so messed up, i have to make a record because i'm going to end up in legal jeopardy and this is the only way to save myself. this is off the charts. >> you've written a couple of vivid, compelling narrative accounts and short of subpoena power, i would argue that you got more than most people get in terms of painting the pictures. what stood out the most for you? >> again just now we go into the realm, the realm m of a script writer, that first scene, my presidency is over i'm f'ed, slumping back in the chair, incredibly written. that will be in the mini series.

whatever happens the next two to six years that will be in the mini series about donald trump's presidency. it's the moment you realize that donald trump, conditifronted wi the possibility, now the fact, of a rigorous, fair, fact based inquiry he says my presidency is over. that's the ultimate expression of consciousness of guilt. he knows he's being investigated and he's like, i'm cooked. everything is going to come out. that's the predicate for obstruction of justice. everything that flows from that is he recognized he has to somehow shut this down because if it comes out in the public, he's over. >> i said this on the show, whatever you can imagine a human doing on the evil side, he's capable of. that's why this stuff, i'm telling you this, the depths of this man is capable of doing that to me this was sprinkles.

i'm just being honest. >> peter baker, carol lenox, to you and all of your colleagues, congratulations on a body of work that more than held up when we saw what robert mueller was able to find with, as john hileman said, subpoena power and witnesses. and thank you both for spending time with us on this important day. we're grateful. after the break, the steps that robert mueller took to investigate the president's conduct while witness memories were fresh sounds like preserving a crime scene for after trump leaves office. we'll go inside mueller's effort to safeguard the evidence. and did attorney general barr go over the top? questions about why barr mischaracterized mueller's findings. ongoing criminal probes, more than a dozen of them and they remain redacted, what we know about all we cannot see.

those stories and more coming up. t see. those stories and more coming up xfinity watchathon week has sadly come to an end.

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you inspired us to create internet that puts you in charge. that handles anything. that protects what's important. and reaches everywhere. this is beyond wifi. this is xfi. simple, easy, awesome. the special counsel's findings have an extended shelf life, they'll live on through trump's presidency and beyond. perhaps that's the point as the "new york times" notes quote citing a justice department view that sitting presidents cannot be indicted, the special counsel said it would be inappropriate to analyze the evidence while trump is in office and running the country, because it would be unfair to not give him an opportunity to clear his name in court.

contrary to what attorney general barr asserted, the report does not let trump off the hook by a long shot. the times story, the conclusion that congress may apply the laws accords with our constitution of checks and balances and no person is above the law p. so while the report doesn't recommend prosecuting the president it makes clear it can be re-examined by other institutions even go so far as to state that the investigation was conducted, quote, in order to preserve the evidence when memories were fresh and documentary materials were available. robert mueller making the larger point crystal clear a few paragraphs later in a section largely mischaracterized by the sitting attorney general wrote this, quote, if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state.

based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we were unable to reach that judgment. the evidence we obtained about the president's actions and intent presents difficult issues that prevent us from conclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred. accordingly while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him. the table is back. joyce i read those sections half a dozen times and keep trying to figure out how different the conversation would have been over the last three, four weeks if that paragraph had been in the original barr summary. >> you know, that's what this was all about. it was all about an attorney general who was the president's wingman getting out in front of what the prosecutors and what the agents actually found and spinning this so that for so many people the first thing they hear about the report is what sticks with them, what sticks with so many people is that the

president is not being charged and there's no evidence against him. when we read the full report there's a very different story. there's evidence on the obstruction count at least. >> i understand the impeachment piece -- we have breaking impeachment news, u.s. senator elizabeth warren tweeting, quote, the mueller report lays out facts that a hostile foreign government infeared with the 2016 election to help donald trump. she goes on, mueller put the next step in the hands of congress. congress has authority to prohibit a president's corrupt use of his authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice, the correct process for exercising that authority is impeachment. so impeachment, one process, but this "new york times" story makes clear that the evidence has always been preserved for perhaps prosecuting the president when he's out of

office. >> the mueller report is clear, it talks about the fact that the president is not being considered for charges because he's the president. it's equally clear they've put together a case so if down the road prosecutors need to consider a criminal case either because the president is in impeached and he's no longer president or he's out of office, there's legal needles that need to be threaded involving statute of limitations and other issues. i don't know how much clearer mueller could have been to say this is not over. >> i'll tell you one way he could have been clearer. which is to say but for the office of legal counsel guide lines not being able to indict a president -- >> they all that say that. >> why not say that? you have to say that. >> let me tell you why not. this is hard for people who haven't been inside the justice department.

people who are prosecutors take their ethical constraints seriously. this is a tough situation. i think they went as close to saying that as they could without running afoul of this notion the fact that you can't indict a president means you shouldn't consider the ultimate question because that hangs that thread of prosecution over his head. they walked a fine line here. >> that's a knob sentiment. i think it's probably lost on most people. people see the president as being unfair and mueller erring on the side of fairness. >> it would have run afoul of olc. they knew if they put it to the table, those of us who have been in the department would get to the table and eat and explain to the american people what it means. it means that they believe obstruction evidence exists. >> is it not also the issue, it strikes me the issue here is if

you can't indict the sitting president -- if you're not going to indict someone, they then -- you then go to court and they have the presumption of innocence, right? in this case it's not just that he couldn't indict the sitting president. the fact he couldn't indict him meant he would be making a case against trump and trump would not have the ability to answer. that i think was the ethical issue that mueller was confronting. again, to see it from his point of view. he leaves trump defenseless. there are people out here that say who cares because they hate trump and think he's guilty. but from mueller's point of view, that was weighing on him -- >> that would be like you indict them and you, in fact, cannot go to trial, because this person is not indictable and doesn't have a chance to vindicate his name. there's no actual indictment. >> that would be the point. what would be the forum --

>> twitter is the forum where he can defend himself. >> let me put another legal question on the table for you. william barr talked about the absence of an underlying crime. and there's some references to that in the mueller report in the obstruction section. but donald trump is an unindicted co-conspirator in the hush money case. that case was learned about by mueller, it was sent to sdny, but for the fact he's the sitting president he's an unindicted co-conspirator in the southern district of new york. >> there doesn't have to be an underlying crime for there to be an obstruction charge. we can all figure that out for ourselves. if you had to have an underlying crime, then the people that are the most successful at obstru obstructing would get off scot-free. it's not clear to me how broadly

mueller considered obstruction. i'm not sure if it was related to the russia allegations. i suspect it was more narrow than the full scope and there could be other prosecutors looking at other forms of obstruction. >> can i go to the elizabeth warren tweet? where do we go from here. that's the question. there's a challenge for democrats. do you go full-blown into this, we have to protect the constitution or is the game to beat trump, we have to get back to the voters what matters to them, health care. to me i think there's a way to do both. i think the drive to impeachment is not the way. keep the process going. position this as one more example of the big guy screwing the little guy, the same way he wanted to take your health care away, wanted to you screw on taxes, now the rich people don't have laws. so package this among things that happen to voters.

my concern is forget the actual legality of it and the process of it is getting this guy out of office. and if the democrats cannot properly walk and chew gum at the same time they're going to fall in a big pothole. >> i said this yesterday at some point. i was in a white house, turned over all my emails four times when they investigated the energy task force, the firing of u.s. attorneys, the leak of valley clem's name and the pat tillman. an investigation is not the same thing as impeachment. you can -- here's the deal. i think what hurts trump, if this doesn't bother trump, if this didn't endanger him politically, he wouldn't be acting like a hit dog. he's crying like a newborn. so the idea that there's no -- i mean, there's a principled

reason to examine what robert mueller found was so grave he couldn't exonerate -- >> don't take your eye off the ball. >> let me finish the sentence. >> sorry. >> donald trump is the sitting commander in chief, i think even his base wants the information. they may vote for him, but they want to know if he's a big fat liar and a big, fat breaker of laws while he's the sitting president. >> i hope those 40% are with you on that. i do. >> i think we have to trust voters to be smart enough to take in the information. i think they don't want to hear from us what to do with it. >> i will say, it's worth noting. elizabeth warren is the first candidate to come forward and say she's for impeachment. there's a lot of pressure on the left side to do this. the pressure that nancy pelosi is facing.

now that elizabeth warren has taken this step, how many will follow? it's an interesting piece of strategic and game theory. we could well now see a rush -- not of all the democratic candidates you can see a lot of them in this position because it's not a coordinated thing. all of these candidates are acting in their own interest. she's taken a position that will get her action with a large segment of the electorate. >> she's poised to do it because she's running on policies. no one is going to accuse her of running on issues of inequality -- >> she's the most policy forward. has the most -- the most policies, the most articulated set of policies, most progressive set of policies. >> now she's on impeachment. >> the cbo came out a million people lost health care an hour before this since 2016. we can't take our eyes off it.

>> no. when we come back, barr does back flips to spin the mueller report in the president's favor. but did those back flips backfire? flips backfire ♪ ...but true character doesn't. ♪ wow, you've outdone yourself this time. hey, what're neighbors for? it's beautiful. nothing runs like a deere™. run with us. save $300 on x330 and x350 select series lawn tractors. at participating john deere dealers. every year, our analysts visit thousands of companies, in a multitude of countries, where we get to know the people that drive a company's growth and gain new perspectives. that's why we go beyond the numbers. t. rowe price. invest with confidence.

if you got nothing to hide, why do you have to set up the report first? officer, before i open the trunk of this car, i'd like to first give a short speech about what you're about to smell. >> stephen colbert exposing the attorney general's press conference yesterday for what it was, spin aimed at getting ahead of damaging information on both counts. but the spin appealed to the man in the oval office, "the washington post" reports the president reacted with glee on twitter. and told advisers that jeff sessions would not have done so well, that's according to white house aides.

barr's actions have been so over the top they're raising eyebrows among republicans. one trump ally told me today, quote, barr made a mistake mischaractering the memo. here's what he said yesterday which is untrue, the president took no act that, in fact, deprived the special counsel of the documents and witnesses necessary to complete his investigation. that seems highly debatable. the president never agreed to sit down for an interview with mueller's team, even the written answers that trump/his lawyers gave to the special counsel were lacking. the president didn't remember anything asked of him. from mueller's report, quote, we noted among other things that the president stated on at least 30 occasions that the president does not recall or remember or have an independent recollection of information called for by the questions. and i point you to volume two of the mueller report, an entire report on nearly a dozen efforts

to obstruct the investigation that barr said he helped. >> i would like people to stop saying barr spun or mischaracterized. he lied. >> you're right. >> he told lies about a variety of the things in the report where he said things that contradicted exactly what mueller said. these weren't just lies, the brazenness of the lies -- >> let me put them up and take us through them. >> put them up. barr on olc saying mueller was not saying but for the olc opinion he would have found a crime. >> mueller says exactly the opposite. >> he made it clear he had not made the determination. here's what mueller said, john. this office accepted olc's legal conclusion for the purpose of exercising prosecutorial jurisdiction. >> that's black and white. >> correct. >> it's black and white. to the other one we mentioned, i

don't know if you have other graphics you want to put up, but the super striking was this notion that he and rod rosenstein came down on the obstruction issue that trump had not obstructed justice, the whole second volume of the report is a chronicle of noncooperation, starting with he didn't agree to an interview, but the times he tried to fire mueller, get people to lie to mueller. yet barr said yesterday the dispositive issue on the obstruction issue was the full cooperation of the white house that donald trump gave him. there's at least four or five other examples that are just outright lies. and i think it raises the question of why. barr is not a stupid man. right. he knew that the lies would be called out and called out quickly. what is the strategic thing driving him? >> i completely agree with you. it wasn't subjective his points. it was objectively false.

lies. i think what he was doing, something we learned from psychology, if you frame the issue, everyone has to go back to the way you framed it. we're discussing it now, as opposed to the malfeasance and the obstruction of justice in the report. >> i understand why he did it. this is a man who for 30 years has been a legitimate guy. i'm trying to understand, is it the giuliani thing, i need to be relevant again. i need to be close to the sun and i will throw out any moral compass i've ever had. is it he's such an executive privilege zealot he feels he's on a mission. explain to me if you're william barr. that's what i can't get my arms around. >> joyce? >> i don't have an explanation. i was hired under a republican

administration, looked up to and admired attorneys general. and to hear an attorney general lie at the podium at the justice department is so stew fieing and, you know, the attorney general, he hugged rod rosenstein pretty tight during that presentation -- >> who looked like he was blinking in morse code. >> but it didn't have any legitimacy. what i had expected was whether you liked barr or not, he would not tell an outright lie about the report because he would have to face the lie. when we first learned that he was going to talk to reporters before they had the chance to see the report, it made you stop and wonder what was going on. and then when you compared the two, you realized it was exactly what you're saying. it was an effort to frame the conversation in a favorable way for the president. the president's lawyer, not the people's lawyer. >> exactly. really quick. >> to donny's point, the guy had

been attorney general once before, he didn't need this job, it was on his resume already. what was it that made this guy, who was supposed to be an institutionalist, why did he decide i need to jump in to save donald trump's presidency? >> i can't get that. >> i know i'm leaving the table -- >> last word. >> last word. people need to read this report because it's a portrait of weakness, donald trump's image about strength he's afraid to confront people, fire people, it's a portrait of weakness, chapter and verse and people should see it. >> to die it back to donny's commentin comment, that's why it matters. rick, thank you for spending time with us. when we come back, redacted spinoff investigations it might be one of the biggest mysteries of the entire mueller report and there are a lot of them. that story is next. a lot of tm.e that story is next considering?

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so as devastating as the portrait depicted in the mueller report has turned out to be for president trump, it's not the russia investigation that poses the greatest threat to his presidency. according to his closest allies but the investigation of hush money payments. it's called a criminal referral, and the potential bad news for trump is that it's just one of 14 investigations that robert mueller passed along to other federal prosecutors. that's according to mueller's report. but here's what's most likely to send a chill down trump's spine. 12 of the 14 criminal referrals listed are completely redacted, which means the prospect of untold scrutiny and even more indictments may still be looming over this white house. joining our conversation, emily jane fox. no one knows more than you about the president's favorite spinoff, the cohen case. he was tweeting yesterday -- you were covering him. take us inside the cohen story

yesterday. >> so cohen was mentioned, i think, more than 65 times in the report, which is a stunning thing. the thing that struck me that i kept coming back to was the obstruction part of the cohen stuff because it wasn't -- we know that cohen met with the special counsel's office for more than 70 hours, right? and he told them a lot of things, and a lot of them were enumerated in the report. but what was in there about obstruction had nothing to do with what cohen told him. it was what happened in plain sight. it was the tweets calling a cohen a rat, basically saying, paul manafort's not a rat because he's not flipping, but cohen's a rate because he -- rat because he is flipping. from my reporting, conversations i was having yesterday, it seemed like cohen was fairly happy that he played a part in this and that his testimony was taken seriously and that the

special counsel's office seemed to find him to be credible. but at the end of the day, in 17 days, he is reporting to federal prison, and he is the only one who was involved in the hush money scheme who is going to prison. a number of people in the southern district of new york were given immunity. the president, so far, has not been touched. his son, don junior, who signed at least one of the checks, nothing has happened to him. and so i think he feels like there has been a grave injustice where he is paying the price and no one else involved is doing any time. >> two things struck me about cohen that i wanted to ask you about. one, there were questions mostly based on the way the republicans abused him during his congressional testimony about his credibility. jim comey said to me when i interviewed him at the 92nd street y that a federal prosecutor doesn't put anyone's testimony into any sort of charging document or official document until it's been corroborated because once it's in their documents, it's sponsored by the federal government. so it wouldn't appear in writing

until and unless it's been corroborated either by other evidence, other documents, or other testimony. so it would seem that michael cohen -- and i know -- what i found striking was the same thing you did, that he didn't just appear in the collusion section. he appeared in the obstruction section. was he surprised that donald trump junior was never charged in the mueller investigation? >> i think that there was a level of surprise and a level of almost disappointment because he was involved in all this. >> you're getting a little bit of a different read. there was outrage after the -- >> what did don junior do? did he go to mueller? >> i don't know. i don't have that information. >> do you know? >> i don't believe so, but there are a lot of things that people say that aren't necessarily true. >> i was with michael last night, and the obvious feeling -- you know, it's like all of a sudden, don junior's not in there, ivanka's not in there.

nothing's happening to trunk certain -- trump, and he's going to jail, and he wrote a check to a woman on behalf of the president. his mind says i understand i did things wrong and if i'm collateral damage and i'm thrown in front of bus, but then it does some good, at this point he's feeling, wait a second, all i've done. >> where is the good? >> nothing is coming out of this. we don't know that. >> we don't know there's not a prosecution under way. >> joyce is fairly obsessed with this question of the 12 kisses that are still outstanding. we've been talking about it yesterday. what likelihood do you think one of those cases could really be related to don junior? >> you know, i think it really has to be, right, and exactly the set of facts you're talking about, this campaign finance crime. we know that trump said that anything that got into his finances would be a red line. presumably that would also include his payments to women. there's a little bit of advice that mueller gives the southern district of new york in this report, right? he talks about looking at a campaign finance crime and

rejects it because of a lack of knowledge as regards the trump tower meeting. sdny is probably wide open on this. >> all right. we have to sneak in our very last break or chuck todd will kill us. we're going to be right back. ♪ here i go again on my own

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to help turn your ambitions into action. what would you like the power to do? my thanks to joyce, emily, john, and donny, and to all of you for watching. thank you so much. that does it for this hour. i'm nicolle wallace. "mtp daily" starts right now. with steve kornacki in for chuck. >> thanks. if it's friday, it's the politics of impeachment. ♪ good evening. i'm steve kornacki in for chuck todd here in new york. welcome to meet the press daily. democrats have subpoenaed the full, unredacted mueller report. the president is attacking the investigation with profane language, and it looks increasingly likely that robert mueller will testify before congress. we are going to get to all of