>> malcolm nance an msnbc contributor and author of "the plot to destroy democracdemocra wraps it up for me. i'll see you back here tomorrow. "deadline: white house" with nicole wallace starts right now. hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. special counsel robert mueller speaks very first time since his appointment two years ago, and his message could not have been clearer. mueller underscoring the con lu collusi conclusions of his report and by doing so, showing how far attorney general barr strayed when he sought to spin mueller's findings before we ever saw a complete sentence from robert mueller himself. the three takeaways from mueller today, one if his 22-month-long investigation had found that the president had not committed

crimes, mueller would have said so. two from the outset mueller was restrained from recommending criminal charges against trump by a doj policy that holds you cannot indict a sitting president. and three, the special counsel clearly intended for congress, not attorney general william barr, to make the decision on what to do with the findings of his probe, particularly around the incidents of obstruction detailed in the second volume. here is some of that extraordinary statement from robert mueller today. >> if we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so. we did not, however, make a determination as to whether the president did commit a crime. the introduction to volume two of our report explains that decision. it explains that under long-standing department policy a president cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office. that is unconstitutional.

>> the opinion says that the constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrong doing. and beyond department policy, we were guided by principles of fairness. it would be unfair to potentially -- it would be unfair to potentially accuse somebody of a crime when there can be no court resolution of the actual charge. so that was justice department policy. those were the principles under which we operated. and from them we concluded that we would -- would not reach a determination one way or the other about whether the president committed a crime. >> laid bare in those comments, the elaborate spin and deception from attorney general barr who told a different story about mueller's conclusions. here's one example of barr's spin next to mueller's in his own words today. >> he was not saying but for the

olc opinion he would have found a crime. he made it clear that he had not made the determination that there was a crime. >> that was justice department policy. those were the principles under which we operated. and from them we concluded that we would not reach a determination one way or the other about whether the president committed a crime. >> and that is where we start today, couldn't make that up if you wanted to, with some of our favorite reporters and friends. joining us from the "new york times" mike schmidt. former assistant director for counterintelligence at the fbi, frank figliuzzi. and former u.s. attorney joyce vance. with us on set, msnbc national affairs analyst john heileman is back. and associated press reporter jonathan lemire is here. joyce vance, let me start with you. something i heard from the time that robert mueller was done to the moment his actual report was

made available on the doj website was the explanation on obstruction is really confusing, from doj officials i don't understand it, doesn't make any sense, he basically punted. robert mueller did nothing of the sort. he did not punt. he found he could not say at the end of 22 months that trump had not committed crimes but he was hemmed in, restrained, boxed in, whatever word you want to use by doj policy that said you couldn't indict a sitting president. that's pretty clear. >> it's pretty thinly sliced and nuanced here. mueller starts by saying -- at least from my point of view analytically the first step is, if i could have told you the president didn't commit a crime, i would, and i'm not telling you that. that's the starting point. then he says, doj policy, which is the law and that's where prosecutors like to start, understanding the law that they're looking at, says we really can't make a decision one way or the other here about whether the president committed a crime. we can investigate him, we can investigate others.

but what you won't hear from us in this report is that he did commit a crime. of course, we know the distance between those two. we can't tell you he's cleared, but we can't tell you he would be charged. when you read all the evidence in the report adds up to the conclusion mueller would have charged trump if he hadn't been the president. >> frank figliuzzi i've been dieing to talk to you all day long. i guess we're left with a bunch of questions about why barr did what he did. why appear seven times in writing and in person when robert mueller's report, it was always doj's plan to release a redacted version at least as soon as they could? what do you think barr's motive was in prespinning so much of this report. >> this goes back to why barr felt he needed to audition and wanted to audition for the job of attorney general, by writing an unsolicited memo in favor of the president. we can talk about an imperial

presidency, a powerful executive, whether barr sees this as his time in history to promote that. but the reality, we can't discuss the removal of a president without wondering whether we should be removing this attorney general. he has been disingenuous to the american public and i'm being polite saying that. he's lied to us. i don't understand why but he has. today mueller said look when the attorney general said i've been operating under a principle i could have charged and i didn't, he's been wrong. where the attorney general has been saying i found no collusion, he's been wrong. i did focus only on criminal conspiracy, and when it comes to obstruction and the attorney general saying that it was his job to make a prosecutive call of no obstruction, he's wrong. i said, this should go to congress. so we've got a disingenuous attorney general, he's not been an honest broker to the american people. i don't know how he ever again

stands up at a podium before the american people and says anything with credibility. >> mike schmidt you've covered every twist and turn of the investigation, robert mueller unlike attorney general barr started with his conclusions on obstruction. what stood out to you today? >> well, the thing about mueller's statement is that it's really not that different from the report. if you closely read it and study it. but the interesting thing here is we saw the power of it being done by him live on television. and you can see where the democrats, sort of galvanized at least some of the candidates running for president, saying they want to move forward with impeachment proceedings. you can see the democrats on the hill saying there was an eight minute statement by mueller today, look at how far it sort of moved the ball. imagine what we could do if we got him for an hour or so. the funny thing about it all is that mueller at the end of his statement today says there's no

reason to call me because i'm going to say what's in the report. but it was the power of him saying what was in the report that appeared to move the ball. >> you got everyone around the table nodding. who wants to go first? john? >> this is something we've been reporting for weeks that the president was terrified of bob mueller testifying. that he knew of the power of those images. certainly the president knows the visual media. he is someone who knows that robert mueller hasn't spoken publicly on camera in two years and america would want to tune in to watch and to hear him speak. and those words would carry a lot of weight. we're seeing it today even in the brief remarks. an hour long or so testimony would carry more. the president watched from the residence of the white house and his response for him was relatively muted. suggesting there's no evidence of a crime, so therefore, let's move on. mind you, saying there's no evidence is a shift in tone for

the president which was total exonerati exoneration. >> explain. the message did change today. >> we've known for weeks now, nearly two months since the summary came out, that the president has claimed total exoneration, there was no collusion, nothing to see here, move on. >> today it's like he took a sharpie to his no collusion. no evidence of obstruction, no evidence of collusion. >> handwritten notes on the tweet, right. we saw a similar message come from white house press secretary sarah sanders, the rnc, vice president, trump campaign all within an hour or so hit the same notes, no evidence of a crime -- >> which isn't what mueller said. >> it's not. it's a different message but it's still an inaccurate message. they're trying to suggest it's time to move on. they're latched onto the idea that mueller is retiring, he's moving on, he's getting on with his life so therefore so should democrats. >> he's retiring while issuing a

referral to congress to investigate or examine or hold hearings around ten well researched incidents of obstruction of justice it would appear. >> to mike's point and lemire's point, as mueller ends by saying i don't want to testify, i'm not going to testify, it's not up to him, he can be subpoenaed. i think probably he'll be invited to testify. i don't think him saying he doesn't want to is going to change the dynamic. his appearance in saying i don't want to testify, this brief appearance made a powerful case from a democratic standpoint, i would say from a democratic small d standpoint why he should testify. he's a careful man and takes pains to not appear political. sometimes frustratingly so to those of us who wish he would speak in plain language, because if he did, today he would have said anyone who read my report and says no collusion, no obstruction, anyone who says that is a big, fat liar.

>> if he had my potty mouth or yours. >> that's a potty mouth? >> for mueller. >> he basically said the president and barr have lied to you. let's be clear about what i said in my report. the main thing, of all the things he said today, i got focussed on, i got hung up on one word. the word is when, as opposed to the word if. mueller is careful the way he writes things. when he talks about the obstruction issue. he said the reason why we investigated the efforts to obstruct the investigation, the matters we investigated were important it was paramount to receive truthful information, when a subject of an investigation lies to investigators it lies to the core. he did not say if. which he could have easily written. if a subject obstructs an

investigation. instead he said when. which to me is there to suggest this president obstructed. or it was a frud yan slip. >> i don't think freud and mueller exist in the same. >> we know about bob mueller, how careful he is, i think it was a purposeful choice of word. if he wanted to write it in the conditional he could have. i think bob mueller thinks donald trump obstructed justice. and he's saying, congress, please by god, do your work. >> mike schmidt pick up on that. >> we saw the democrats running for president wanting to move forward with impeachment. but you saw pelosi with her statement, which kept her position not to do that. we have to see what happens in the days that follow. is this a blip? something that pops up and we go back to the regularive narrative

or does it actually change things? we won't know that for some weeks. >> frank figliuzzi let me hand this off to you as well. to heileman's point, mueller is saying when someone obstructs justice, donald trump was the subject, the target, whatever you want to call him of the obstruction probe, mueller making abundantly clear that he attempted to obstruct the investigation, if you read the report and the footnotes and witnesses to those ten incidents, it's clear he did commit criminal obstruction. if he was anyone but the president he would have been charged. >> look, i know a lot of people are frustrated. i see it in social media. they wish mueller would have come out and said it in plain english. let me get you insight from someone like myself, sat across the conference table every morning, 7:30 in the morning, getting the briefing, getting

him briefed up for the day, reading him, his language, body language -- heileman is right, what he said today, as measured as it was, what mueller was telling us was look, this guy did it, i couldn't possibly even go down the path of drawing up charges because it would be unconstitutional for me to do so. i understand that there's another way to address this man, and it's congress. and that's the way it should go. that's what he's saying. i feel the need to interpret muellerism and style, but that's what he's telling us today. >> joyce, two former justice department officials pointed me back to the incidents of obstruction. we've been talking about what mueller said about obstruction but it's been a while since we've gone through how donald trump sought to obstruct the investigation or the flash points. we pulled up a few of them, the conduct regarding the flynn investigation. the firing of james comey, viewed in some circles as an act

of obstruction or part of the efforts to work with or support russia. the events to remove mueller. after that, the direction to don mcghan to lie about it and create false records when that story was covered i think by the "new york times." efforts to limit the mueller investigation and pressure on sessions to do something chuck rosenberg tells me isn't a thing, un-recuse from overseeing the mueller investigation. can i ask you what those incidents would look like if congress would do what everyone agrees mueller is asking them to do, which is to open an investigation, take the football football, which is the text and letter of his report, tour guide to witness list, possible lines of questioning, a lot of those transcripts are in the mueller report, volume two, what would it look like if mueller were to examine those six incidents in public hearings? >> it would look like

obstruction of justice committed by the president of the united states. it's just that simple. there's an effort to obstruct, it's related to ongoing proceedings, and it's done with a corrupt intent. the corrupt motive that prosecutors talk about to influence the outcome of those investigations. so it's not exactly rocket science here. something, nicole, we haven't focussed on but probably should be thinking about, we're going on the basis of what's available to us in the redacted mueller report. mueller said repeatedly this morning that it's the report itself that contains his testimony. that everything we need to know is in the report. but we still haven't seen that report. now is the time for bill barr to make that report fully available to members of congress, to make as much of it as possible available to the public, there will be some restrictions for national security and ongoing crimes, but congress at a minimum should see all of the evidence available to them in pursuing mueller's charge.

>> i believe negotiations are either stalled or are being someti stymied or stonewalled by attorney general william barr. attorney general william barr had a very, very, very bad day in the press today. getting no love, no safe harbor from folks at fox news or close trump ally former federal prosecutor, candidate for attorney general himself, chris christie. here he is. >> yep, it is. listen, i do think those comments by bob mueller about the other processes, obviously impeachment being the only constitutional way to accuse the president of wrong doing, definitely contradicts what the attorney general said when he summarized mueller's report. and he then had to draw the conclusion on that. mueller clearly contradicts that today in a very concise way. >> here's fox news where he doesn't do much better.

>> this was not, as the president says time and time again, no collusion, no obstruction. it was much more nuanced than that. it was not anywhere as clear cut as attorney general bill barr -- in fact, it was almost exactly the opposite, not clear cut. >> it was a parting shot at his soon to be former boss, bill barr, who basically whitewashed what mueller said in the four-page summary he distributed back in march. >> what those guys said! >> when you've lost fox news. >> and chris christie. >> and chris christie, yeah. the trump base and most republicans have opted to stay with him. we heard some reaction on capitol hill today, lindsey graham to no surprise is staying with the president on this. it's a far cry to insufficient evidence. people around the president are

asking what's next? how does he react? we haven't heard from him or seen him, aside from one tweet -- will we see or hear from him -- >> you can feel the ground rumbling already as the longer he holds the cable remote control, the more the other starts to twitch. it's not long. >> as a trump ally told me in the last hour or so, whether it's tonight or in the morning when the president has time to soak up the cable news coverage we'll hear from him again and hear from him differently than this. >> one other thought for you to chew on. the president loves people who do his bidding but he likes those people to get good press while doing so. there's nothing he hates more than a man getting slammed in the media. >> i think that barr -- the president hasn't lost fox news, tonight one way or the other, sean hannity, and the others will figure out a way to rally

around trump. the smart conservatives -- andrew mccarthy was on today on fox news, the smarter legal analysts who have sometimes defended him, sometimes criticized. the person who lost fox news is bill barr. and that i think is for barr's standing with trump -- despite the fact that barr has obviously gone to extraordinary lengths i would say potentially to impeachable lengths as the attorney general to lie about the report, do everything he's done. we know that trump, the most loyal defenders, those who have thrown their bodies on the train tracks for trump, as soon as they get bad press, they're on shaky ground. if i'm bill barr i'm looking at the way fox news and the conservative legal is turning against him. he's a big target right now and it may be hard for nancy pelosi and others in the democratic house to want to impeachment donald trump on the politics on it. not as hard to try to impeach

bill barr. >> and barr is giving his first network television interview to cbs later this week. he'll have a chance to spin it his way tomorrow and friday. >> frank figliuzzi i'm old enough to remember when house republicans drew up articles of impeachment for deputy attorney general rod rosenstein, they were so mad they were ready to impeach the dag. it's interesting after grabbing the ability and right to declassify intel from the cia and getting the president to do that for him, after putting his finger on the scale in what is blatantly political in the mueller report and reuping s spying, an accusation only heard on fox news and donald trump's twitter feed, the democrats still find the barr calculation murky. >> it's far less murky for me today. look, this is the guy that's going to run the investigation

of the investigators. what did we hear mueller say very answer the generally today, his team acted with integrity, it was of great importance, it went to the core of democracy. that's a message, if you mess with why we investigated this and what our results were, you have a problem on your hands. yet barr is still there, going full force. there's another sentence in mueller's statement today that we haven't talked about. that's his reference to the fact that -- his reference to the fact that his -- let me recall it here. that barr is -- now i've forgotten my thought, nicole. there's a reference in mueller's statement that hasn't been talked about that goes to the heart of a problem with barr and between barr and mueller. and that's something we need to focus on. >> what i think it is. he defends basically, this comes

from two doj sources i talked to today. he defends the origins of the russia investigation by pointing out that every american should be concerned about -- we've spent the first 22 minutes of this show talking about the obstruction volume but there's something in here i know a lot of former law enforcement types have seized on, and that is mueller, as john and others have said, makes it clear that the origins of the investigation were to probe russia's attack, which mike hayden called a 9/11 style political attack on our democracy, he goes out of his way to defend the origins and integrity of the russia probe. >> indeed. the statement i'm now recalling is -- it has to do with the team work-product. he says he's resigning today and the decisions about what of our team work-product are being released are handled outside the team. he's talking about doj and barr. so now barr is the one calling the shots. what gets released as a result

of investigative interviews, reports, surveillances all out of the work product of the team. >> mike schmidt let me give you the last word. in announcing his resignation, he's announcing the end of the special counsel probe, are there people giving up office people, are parking spots opening up? what's going on where all that focus was for 22 months. >> many of the lawyers working on it have disbeursed over the last several weeks, going back to u.s. attorney's offices and some of them going to fancy law firms and such. we new there were a few still there, looks like he had a press person working with him, but they were sort of finishing up, they did the redactions, which was a big process for them. they spent a lot of time on that, worked with the justice department on that, but it

raises the question of what they've been doing over the past 40 days or so. what is it that took so long for him to come out and speak, if indeed he felt there were these mischaracterizations in the report was not being taken as he had written it, why is it that we hear from him today and not at the beginning when barr cleared the president or 40 days ago when we got the report. >> as bob woodward says, the truth emerges. frank figliuzzi, mike schmidt thank you for starting us off. when we come back, one of the men on the front line defendi defending, weighs in. the former general counsel of the fbi joins us next. e former the fbi joins us next. uch more. you get to spend less time searching and more time loving every room, even the ones you never thought could look good. you get great deals on the things you need

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the indictments allege, and the other activities in our report describe, efforts to interfere in our political system. they needed to be investigated and understood. i will close by reiterating the central allegation of our indictments. that there were multiple systematic efforts to interfere in our election. and that allegation deserves the attention of every american. >> joining us now is gym bajim former general counsel of the fbi, a not at all vaileiled defe

there from robert mueller about the origins of the investigation. >> it was not a hoax, a coupe, an attempt at treason. it was an effort to defend against a concerted attack to interfere with our electoral process and hurt a particular candidate. that's something we should have taken seriously and as some folks had said, it would have been a dereliction of duty at the fbi on our part to not look at this activity. >> what you said seems so logical and indisputable but it is in dispute by donald trump and now attorney general barr, who just appointed a third person to investigate the origins of the russia investigation. where is that disconnect? >> i don't know. but i think people need to read the report. it's what robert mueller was saying, what justin amash said

the other day. if you read the report, you have a clear understanding of what we were up against, the intervention by russia in the election, and the president's conduct with respect to the investigation was not technically a crime, it is certainly should not be acceptable in this country for the chief executive to behave in such a fashion. >> robert mueller seemed to be trying hard to make that point today. not that he was sitting in moral judgment of the president, but his emphasis different than barrs. he said if i could have said at the end of 22 months that donald trump hadn't committed a crime, i would have. clearly he found that -- >> this was not exoneration. his report was not an exoneration of the president. if you read it, i think you come away shocked. it goes on for pages and pages and pages of what efforts the president took to interfere in one way or another with the investigation at the outset and then throughout. >> for someone that hasn't read

it, explain what that sounds like. start with the firing of james comey. what does mueller find in his obstruction report about the firing of comey? >> the firing of comey, which i was there for, it was alarming on the inside, it's mixed in terms of what he actually found in terms of whether it met the elements of the crime of obstruction as set forth in the u.s. code. so what he's left -- what we're left with at the end of the day is an assessment or a need for the congress of the united states to take a look at what mueller sets forth and assess whether that is acceptable or not, in a different fashion and that's what mueller talked about today. >> is there any doubt in your mind that the final product was intended to be a handoff to congress? >> i think it had multiple purposes but the way i read the second part, the part about obstruction seemed to me to be a handoff to congress. sort of like what was done back in the days of water gate with the road map where that was a lot more sparse, it was only 50 or 60 pages, something like

that. this had a lot more commentary, but it struck me as a hand off to congress, because mueller i think, based on what he said in the report, felt his hands were tied. he could do nothing else with respect to the powers that he had, the tools he had available to him. it's to congress to try to figure out what to do. >> we talked earlier, neither one of us can get to what barr's intent was, but the consequence, would you agree the consequences of seven efforts i think in person and writing to prespin, prejudge or preshape the way mueller's report would be received by the public, left a very different impression than mueller did today? >> i think so. people have taken it that way. i think some people have spun the attorney general's comments in a particular way, whether he intended it to be that way or not. but the attorney general's credibility is critical with the american people, he needs to be viewed as credible by all americans given whatever

political stripes, given the awesome responsibilities he has. i'm concerned people have misinterpreted/spun his statements. it worries me. >> does barr have credibility with you. >> he does, i worked with him in the past and i have great respect for the attorney general. >> let me show you the disparity between his comments and mueller's. >> he made it clear that he had not made the determination that there was a crime. >> if we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so. >> i'm not a lawyer, i never worked at the fbi, they're not saying the same thing. >> they're saying different -- i think they're saying different versions of what is in the report, yeah. director mueller is saying he did not -- if he had been able to conclude there was no crime he would have said so. the attorney general said he didn't charge him with a crime and didn't specifically make that determination, thapt's accurate based on the report. >> if you take barr's body of

conduct that lines up with what trump said he wanted. he said in media interviews, where's my roy cohen, he sought to have matt whitaker to intervene in the sdny investigations, you take the statement from the president last week he has the effort to declassify intel, has the ability to strip national security -- >> that was the president. >> right. you take the seven efforts at presetting the public conversation around the mueller report and the two letters printed by the "new york times" that mueller sent letters not happy with the way the report was being described by attorney general barr. do you have any concerns this was distorted at the highest levels of the justice

department? >> i have a lot of concerns -- well, at the highest levels. what concerns me is that they are -- the department of justice and the administration are trying to walk too fine a line. they're being legal technicians as opposed to, you know, the attorney general really thinking of his role as the attorney general of the united states and not to be very lawyerly is what drives my wife insane when i go into that argument. >> code 1504, honey. >> it happens all the time. for my taste it's a bit too lawyerly. and then it lends itself to being misinterpreted, and i think the attorney general needs to be mindful of that, i just urge caution in that regard. >> because i know him so well, i can sense that john heileman has a question for you. >> i want to go to the top, the first thing you said.

it struck me from the first day, the report came out when we got to look at it and people rightly, naturally focussed on the obstruction stuff in volume two because it was the question, was he exonerated? all these examples of obstruction. people i think took their eye off the ball on volume one, you started here today pointing us back to russia in a way that i think mueller today did in his way, in the way mueller does. i talked before about how purposeful he is. the fact he opened with talking about russia, the severity, how serious it was to get to the bottom of the attack, and brought it up again, he closed, his kicker as we would say in the journalism business, he comes back and says i want to say again and brings up the russia point one more time. it's true there was no criminal conspiracy proven, no one argues about that anymore. the president says there's no collusion. that's not a word we use.

in fact, that's a word that bob mueller and his team, explicitly in his report say we're not talking about. what's your conclusion, for normal people, about what we should read in volume one? we know russia waged the attack on the election system, it wasn't criminal conspiracy but what was it? >> it's a hostile act -- it's a threatening act, it's an act of aggression. mueller uses the word attack. a concerted attack against the united states, against the most fundamental part of our democra democracy, which is the system of elections we have. if you read the constitution, a lot if not most of the constitution is about who gets elected and how that works. this was a fundamental effort to undermine our system. >> i guess i mean more, if the actions of the trump campaign, the president, his associates, didn't rise to the level of a criminal conspiracy, there's still a lot of untoward behavior that's described in the report on their part, and what are we

to make of those descriptions? maybe they don't rise to the point of criminal conspiracy, to a layperson and someone who's covered politics for a long time are extraordinary the details laid out in that volume. >> that part of it should be unacceptable in this country to engage in that level of discourse with a hostile foreign power with respect to an election. it simply should be unacceptable. i don't know -- obviously weer not going to have criminal prosecutions come out of it -- >> we did. paul manafort was prosecuted. >> not at the core of the alleged -- >> with the president. >> the conspiracy that was investigated. >> can i ask you a dumb question. if the president wasn't found to have conspired criminally with russia, why did so many people tell so many lies about so many russians and then forget about it and lie about it? >> i can't get into their heads, i don't know. but i think -- i would have to speculate. >> you're invited to speculate. >> you're invited to speculate.

please speculate. >> andy mccabe sat there and i asked the same question, why inside the organization would so many people tell the same lie about the same hostile adversary. >> engaging with a hostile foreign power like that on these terms, i don't think it takes a rocket scientist to figure out there's something wrong about this. whether it's criminally wrong or not, it's not appropriate, not what candidates should be doing, not what elected officials should be doing. you should know this kind of activity is wrong. and if the russians or somebody you think is acting on behalf of the russians comes to you in this context, you should go to the fbi. >> you don't say, if it's what you say it is, i love it. >> you don't say that. >> just to follow this last thing on this point. does it suggest to you this behavior isn't criminally illegal, it should be illegal. there are those who read the volume and said what mueller and

the special counsel office was doing was they didn't violate the law but this behavior is bad, so the implicit thing of that is we should change the law to make sure this can't go on ever again. >> that may be one way to do it. i think it would be hard to craft specific criminal statutes that might criminalize some of this behavior. but it should not be acceptable and people should not have their jobs at a minimum. the head of a campaign should send a clear message that engaging with foreign powers in the course of an election is unacceptable, you're out, i candidate x am not going to run a campaign we do that. and the same with any chief executive of any organization you shouldn't be engaged with hostile foreign adversaries like this. >> knowing director mueller you do, did he surprise you today, and what about speaking in front of congress. >> him not wanting to speak in

front of congress did not surprise me. >> why is that? >> i think he wants to speak through the complex and nuanced and forceful written work they've already produced. and you know, he's made his decision about how he sees the facts and i think he just doesn't want to go beyond that. i think he does not want to get sucked into some type of political -- >> do you think he would fight a subpoena? >> i don't think he would fight a subpoena, but i think it would be a hearing where you're trying to pry words out of him and it would be satisfactory. he would come back to his statement and the report. >> to your point and mike schmidt's point earlier, just hearing -- a former national security official made this point, robert mueller simply reading sections from the report would be the most powerful sort of testimony to what you said, the gravity and the forcefulness of the report available. >> what seems to have not

happened is that the american people, in large measure, have not been educated enough by our leaders about what is in this report. so i think director mueller took a step in that regard today. it's incumbent upon people like me to come out and talk about these kinds of things, and it's important for members of congress to figure out how to explain to the american people what's going on, not just launch on this investigation, that investigation. >> it's sequential. >> at the end of the day if they go down the road of impeachment, it's a political process and you need the political support of the american people. you better start explaining to them what happened. for example, i don't know justin amash's town hall the other day -- >> it's amazing. >> -- it's amazing. when it's clear and explained a lot of people come away with a different impression of what's in the report and the president's conduct. on the other side of the break i'm going to put you on the spot and ask you what we can do better in service to that.

stay with us. do better in service to that stay with us

under long-standing department policy, a president cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office. that is uncontusional. the opinion says the constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrong doing. >> that was robert mueller's way of saying congress, i'm passing the ball to you. here's how house judiciary chairman, jerry nadler responded today. >> mueller again highlighted this morning it falls to congress to respond to the crimes, lies, and other wrong doing of president trump. we will do so. make no mistake, no one, not even the president of the united states is above the law. with respect to impeachment question at this point, all options are on the table and nothing should be ruled out. >> heileman, leaving the door open but not going as far as a

lot of the democrats running for president have gone, the activists inside the democratic base would like them to go. >> the pressure has been ratcheting up on pelosi and the leadership over the course of weeks now. last week you recall there was a moment when it seemed pelosi's hold on the caucus was in jeopardy, then trump did her the favor of getting in a fight with her, which allowed her to put that aside and get the caucus to rally because it's pelosi versus trump. i think we're back in that place pretty quickly because of the fact there are a lot of democrats in the house now who, in their hearts, know that the president obstructed justice or believed he did, and impeachment is what they want to do, what their politics are telling them to do. they're trying to be respectful of nancy pelosi, but the numbers are moving in the wrong direction if she's trying to

steer the ship away from impeachment -- >> getting more popular. >> as we're seeing today from the campaign trail, in the end the fact that joe biden is basically where nancy pelosi is, he's pretty weak, milk toast place, bernie sanders saying it's up to the house, now you see elizabeth warren essentially all of the l of the

candidate box. it is not the right moment to do it is the reason to say that robert mueller seemed to think that while he didn't have the tools, congress has right tools. i'm not sure what other seal of approval you need if you're the democrats and you think there is something there, robert mueller saying we didn't have the tools but congress does, to the substance of it there are more than half a dozen incidents that could easily be transferred to a congressional investigation. >> you know you have been making thatee point from the get go, nicole. i think it is very compelling. essentially is says that sometimes you need to dot right thing without regard to the politics. here you have political cover for doing the right thing and it is important, i think, to

remember that nancy pelosi said if we get to the point where the presidentnt has actually commitd a crime he is said they as the report was being released. today mueller asked congress to reconsider whether or not crimes been committed and i think we will continue to see that on the point of the democrats today. >> the court kicked it to congress and he reemphasized that today. >> let's hear nancy pelosi on that today. >> nothing is off of the table but we want to make such a compelling, ironclad case that the republican senate which, at the time seems to be not an

objective jury, will be convinced of the path that we have to take as a country. we want to do what is right and what gets results. what gets results. >> it is certainly the buy in that the democrats are in. you should make a convincing argument. just doth right thing. if you think he should be impeached then follow through the right proceedings. i don't think many people think that the republican controlled branch -- >> so they're not going to pass any laws, why go to work. the democratic house will pass laws. if you pursue that then why get out of bed. >> if the senate is not going to remove him, is it damaging to us. are we seen as overreaching, that could help this president

like bill clinton was helped in the late '90s. that is what they're daring pelosi to do. we think the public will tire of this conversation. we know that donald trump likes to play the victim. that is a risk for them, too. the president himself is pretty nervous about it. he knows that would be the first line of his political obituary and he wants to fight this going forward. >> there is no doubt, and it takes no political genius to understand that today as we sit here, if we were called upon to vote of a conviction of the president. if you go into this process there will be dynamics that we cannot predict, evidence we have not yet seen, things will

change. it is a if you believe the president, if you're one of every transcript in the house of representatives. if you believe he obstructed justice, you have a duty to move to impeachment and make the pursuit of the and i think you cannot predict at all what will happen once the wheels of that start to turn and where senate republicans will end up. the only way to move public opinion is to do something dynamic to change the current state of play and the only way to do that that i can see is to get going. get on your horse, let's go. >> a lot of your form eer colleagues are being accuses of

treason, being accused of spy g spying, being called a mafia, what is that like? >> it is horrible, traumatic. we can't escape this, right? we went through this, people having actions taken, people being fired. we can't escape it. it is just very challenging, and the invective, the an mimosity d the hatred is hard to take. to me in my own personal circumstances, like trying to let go of anger, let go of hatred, make sure i'mo not hatg anybody, and to try to figure out a way to reach out to the president's supporters, ultimately to him and his family and to try to think about them in ath different way is a startg place for me.

but it is challenging, hard, and difficult. >> how do you explain it to young people that want to go to the fbi, how do you encourage them to go in and take the path you took if they could end up attacked on twitter by the commander and chief. >> if you want a great government, a great country, you need to step up and do something. public service is noble. to take a job in the national security field, a lot of people take jobs, but to be effective, make hard choices that the american people are paying you to make, you kind of have to let go and accept that it could be ruined. you don't have enough information, enough time, you're probably going to get it wrong at some point, and so you just have to suck it up and make the best call and you know if grow

into it assuming your career is over you will probably be more successful. >> there is a lot of piloting done in the career in politics. done in the career in politics i'm alex trebek, here to tell you about the colonial penn program. if you're age 50 to 85, and looking to buy life insurance on a fixed budget, remember the three p's. -the three p's? -what are the three p's? the three p's of life insurance on a fixed budget are price, price, and price. a price you can afford,

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♪ applebee's new loaded fajitas. now that's eatin' good in the neighborhood. i could talk to these friends forever. thank you so much for watching. that does it for our hour, i'm nicole wallace, "mtp daily" starts right now. ♪ if it is wednesday, robert mueller speaks making it very clear that the president was not exonerated by the special counsel investigation. two, mueller could not crime the president with a c