dc. we'll be back. coming up next, mueller speaks. how special counsel robert mueller's words have changed the conversation around impeachment. but for now good night from new york. tonight, robert mueller speaks. >> the report is my testimony. >> why did he break his silence after two years of investigation? >> there is no obstruction. there is no collusion. there is no nothing. >> if we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a cite, we would have said so. >> mueller says his work is done, stoking new calls for congress to act. >> nothing is off the table. >> tonight we follow mueller's leads from a record breaking series of indictments to his clash with trump's attorney general. >> the letters have been schmidty. >> to mueller's final warning to america about russia's attacks. >> that deserves the attention

of every american. >> all that on tonight's msnbc special report "mueller speaks" starting right now. good evening. welcome to our special report on the mueller probe. rob mueller turned in his exhaustive report on russia interference and obstruction by president trump on march 22nd. and everyone wanted to know what it said. >> robert mueller has concluded his investigation. >> he filed his formal report with the justice department, which announced this news at 5:00 p.m. eastern on march 22nd. >> attorney general told the members of congress he's committed to as much transparency as possible. >> the attorney general did not live up to that commitment and mueller stayed on the job for 68 more days. quietly on the job until he stepped out at that justice department lek turn breaking his silence to address the public

for his only time as special counsel. it also left a gap for others to characterize his report. by the time bob mueller spoke, he was fighting misperceptions about his own work fed by his own boss who announced to the nation that mueller didn't reach a conclusion on obstruction, implying mueller handed off that call to attorney general barr who was then announcing his view that donald trump did not obstruct justice. but the mueller report did not end with a section for barr to fill in the blank. it noted that congress decides whether to accuse a president of obstruction, not the justice department. and mueller was so concerned by barr's summary, he wrote a formal letter of obstruction to barr the next day which remains undisclosed as of this weekend and a second letter noting that he was not accurately texturing the mueller report and objecting to the public confusion barr created which barr later

dismissed in the cattiest of terms. >> yeah. the letter is a bit schmidty and i think it was probably win by one of his staff people. >> blaming it on staff? well, that appears disingenuous because we knew, barr knew, mueller personally reached out. >> did anyone, either you or anyone on your staff, memorialize your conversation with robert mueller? >> yes. >> who did that? >> there were notes taken of the call. >> may we have those notes? >> no. >> why not? >> why should you have them? >> attorney general barr knew that mueller objected. he avoided that when also pressed directly about it under oath. >> reports have emerged recently, general, that members of the special counsel's team are frustrated at some level with the limited information included in your march 24th

letter that it does not adequately or accurately, necessarily, portray the report's findings. do you know what they're referencing with that? >> no, i don't. >> well, whatever mueller told barr in their call and those letters would give him some knowledge on that. barr knew what he was doing when he up staged the mueller report with his televised press conference also on the day it came out. >> the deputy attorney general and ic concluded that the evidence developed by the special counsel is not sufficient to establish that the president committed an obstruction of justice offense. >> mueller made it clear in writing he was not exonerating this president. and so the big obvious question becomes how different would things be and how different should things be if the first person america heard speak about the mueller report was mueller? >> as set forth in the report, after that investigation, if we

had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so. >> the deputy attorney general and i concluded that the evidence developed by the special counsel is not sufficient to establish that the president committed an obstruction of justice offense. >> kicking off our special tonight, former federal prosecutor john flannery, joyce van and eugene robinson. good evening to each of you. we have had some time to let it set in. eugene, what does it mean that mueller has spoken? but spoken after so many others. >> well, it makes a difference. though it didn't go beyond the four corners of his 448 page report, but it's important that we heard him speak those words, that we heard him say in his double negative terms i did not exonerate the president.

a lot of people thought that he did. if you just watched fox news all the time and you read breitbart and you read the president's tweets and listened to him, you thought mueller had given the president a clean bill of health. and for some people that i have heard from in the last couple of days -- >> so gene, build on that point while i read to you what was known in public. if we had confidence the president did not commit obstruction, we should so state. we're unable to do that. this report does not conclude trump committed a crime, but it does not exonerate him, eugene. >> exactly. it was there in the report. it was reported at the time. it was in the headlines at the time, but it didn't have the same impact that mueller had the other day when he came out hearing it from his mouth. that being one of the few points in the whole report that he chose to emphasize. it changed the weather in terms

of how this report is understood. >> joyce, the weather also had a lot of clouds, which makes it hard to see the sun, which provides the light from the office of legal counsel opinion, classic analogy. but take a listen side by side. what we didn't have until this week is the way that barr treated this to the way mueller did when it comes to the central question america has been discussing for months, which is what do you do if there is a crime committed by the president in office. >> we specifically asked him about the olc opinion and whether or not he was taking a position that he would have found a crime but for the existence of the olc opinion. and he made it very clear several times that that was not his position. >> so that was justice department policy. those were the principals 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. >> joyce, now that mueller has spoken once and for all, what are we to take from it on that point? >> i think that there is some very fine legal arguments being drawn by the attorney general technically saying that mueller didn't go far enough down the road that the office of legal counsel memo compelled his decision. but those are really differences without a distinction. it is clear from mueller's comments. it is clear from the report itself that the special counsel's team operated in an environment where they knew from the get-go that they could not indict a sitting president of the united states, that the people ultimately with jurisdiction to do that would be prosecutors after trump left office or congress through its impeachment powers. all through this, barr acts not as the people's lawyer, not as we expect an attorney general would, with independence, but as

someone who is always focussed on one goal, protecting the president. >> john, mueller speaks in a certain way, as gene robinson just mentioned. >> right. >> but when you look at this, was it clear enough to you what he was saying, that congress is the one to take it from here? >> absolutely. and he said on page 2 that he could not, he felt he could not, as a matter of law within the justice department indict. so he's very clearly saying that the only open path is impeachment. and he specified a number of instances of obstruction. and what gene was saying a minute ago in my opinion. >> would he have said the word impeachment? >> i think he should have said the word impeachment. i think he was chosen by that dynamic duo, if you will, rosenstein and barr, to get to this conclusion that mueller would never contradict that proposition in the justice department, that you could not exercise the constitutional power to indict a sitting

president. >> john, take a look, then, at the sound of both of them now. we have again for the first time, barr and mueller on the idea that, yeah, some things go beyond the doj. >> absolutely. >> special counsel mueller did not indicate that his purpose was to leave the decision to congress. i am told that his reaction to that was that it was my prerogative as attorney general to make that decision. >> the opinion says that the constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing. >> joyce, when you hear that, is he nicely saying, unlike mr. barr's claims, this is up to congress, not barr, but saying it e lie lip.

>> i would sometimes find i didn't have jurisdiction as a federal prosecutor, and i would turn the case over to colleagues in the state system who might have a statute they could use. mueller seems to be acting very consistently saying i don't have jurisdiction. so i'm putting this in the hands of people who do. >> when he says "i," he means i, we, the doj. the report never says the special counsel can't indict but the doj can. >> i think that that's clear. and when mueller writes this letter and communicates to bill barr that he has concerns about the context, the nature and the substance of the way that the attorney general portrays his report to the public, that's an incredibly global criticism. and i think much of it stems from that clip that you just played where barr seems to say, no, mueller wasn't leaving it to congress. mueller's intent seems to have clearly been to leave it to congress.

>> and, gene, where do we go from here? >> well, there will be a lot of questions about william barr and his role in this. i mean, in most of those clips, he parses his words very carefully. in that last one, that is just a lie. he just lies and says that mueller wasn't saying leave it to congress when, in fact, that's clearly what mueller was saying and any intelligent person would understand that. where we go from here is that congress has a decision to make. congress has to decide. and there are of course political dimensions to that as well as legal and moral and constitutional dimensions. but it is now in the lap of congress. mueller has outlined what looked to former prosecutors. and congress has to deal with that. >> gene robinson, joyce vance, thank you both. john i will have you back later

in the special for something we want to get into. up ahead, we broke down some of mueller's key decisions. i'm thrilled to tell you for this special, presidential h historian john meacham is up next. and then mueller speaks and he speaks at this man, calling out vladimir putin's attacks on our democracy and telling americans what to do about it. michael mcfaul is here. you are watching an msnbc special report "mueller speaks." it's not just easy. it's having-a-walrus-in-goal easy! roooaaaar! it's a walrus! ridiculous! yes! nice save, big guy! good job duncan! way to go! [chanting] it's not just easy.

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he assumed great responsibilities. he was chosen with great care. and he has my full confidence. >> i know everyone here joins me in saying you will be remembered as one of the finest directors in the history of the fbi and one of the most admired public servants of our time. >> two presidents who disagreed on war and peace, on politics and constitutional rights but agreeing on the character and service of robert mueller, a decorated marine with experience in vietnam. mueller would register as a republican but follow a path of public service. building the credibility to draw appointments from both parties and bipartisan confirmations by the senate. he found himself serving in his sixth administration, the trump justice department with this

special independent role that so upset the president. >> i think he is a total conflicted person. i think mueller is a true never-trumper. he's somebody that dislikes donald trump. >> i want to bring in presidential historian john meacham. good to have you. what era did bob mueller come out from? was he in a different standing than the way things work right now? >> he absolutely comes from a different era. you would argue that there is a line back to the founders of people who were ambitious and fallen and frail but were also given to public service. there is the kind of cold war bipartisan establishment that emerged after 1945. when you look at director mueller, you can see george herbert walker bush, can't you? they are from the same ethos. they are people without

saintfying them, they are people who believe in a system larger than themselves. they believe in a system above self. one of the reasons we're in the moment we're in is too few of us share that sense of national purpose that will actually outweigh personal gain. >> when you watch this all transpire, particularly as we have discussed in our special tonight, this 60 plus days between him finishing his work and ultimately speaking, do you have the view that mr. mueller expected a different reception to his written work? >> i do. i don't have any particular insight into his mind. but it would be -- it is not unreasonable to think that if you have given your life to law enforcement, if you spend the number of years he did on this report that he would think that the clarity of his prose in the

report and the clear sense of what he found would have received a more receptive -- would have met with a more recentive reaction. what's so interesting is it is almost as though mueller comes from an age where reason had a chance. fact had a chance. but we're living in an age of unreason and reflectionive ideology. that's not to rom row mant size past. the '70s was no picnic. the '80s, people like to think that ronald reagan was this wonderful figure now. a lot of democrats thought that he was an absolute force for hill. so we don't have to row mant size the past to say there was more respect for fact than there

is today. and that comes straight from the top. the president understands the reason he's president in many ways is that he understands that enough people want to hear what they already believe or something that fits into what they already believe as opposed to confronting the difficulty of changing their minds in the face of contrary data. >> let me push you on that because we have engaged in a little bit of a kol -- colloquy. you are speaking about one element of it, which is the ideological agreement, and that may go to what people want to hear. what about the other element that i think trump understands in some ways of this era, particularly online, which is the sheer simplicity, the case closed tweet, the no collusion line that he fed to his own attorney general because even before you get to your ideology, we all know at times it is easier and calmer and feels better to just have the simple

as opposed to the nuanced. and mueller's speech for those who liked it or didn't like it, was nothing if not nuanced. >> absolutely. it is hard to diagram some of those sentences. i have a hard time quoting them sometimes. i think you are exactly right. i don't want to fall into the trope of the left likes nuance, sort of the old john kerry line, and the right likes simplicity. that tends to be true right now. but if the -- one of the things we will have to deal with going forward in the country is if everything is reversed politically, will that tendency be reversed? it is an interesting question. i do think that one of the reason sound bytes work is they capture truths or at least they capture, as you say, they seem definitive. and the president is a master marketer. and, in fact, i would argue that he wouldn't be president if he

didn't understand the vernacular of reality television. >> aren't they the most in touch with that? i mean, forget politics. wasn't it johnny cochran who said, if the glove doesn't fit, you must have quit. a tweet before twitter that captured something, not something that accurately proved accurate in the legal sense but something that proved strategic in the courtroom. >> i think that's exactly right. and i do think it is a fair -- i think there are two fair criticisms of at least two of director mueller. one is the office -- we talked about this earlier this week. the office brought a knife to a gunfight or as you said a twitter fight. >> brought a knife to a twitter feed. >> they did not have a johnny cochran -esque summary of this. and that can be a problem. i've always thought that one of the things that historically

we're going to look back at president obama for instance is he was less given less to piffy remarks in large measure because he saw all the complexity of it. you remember, tear down this wall from donald reagan. you remember, this will not stand from george h.w. bush, so you do need that. what i think he did was i think the one criticism is did he really -- could he really not come to a prosecutorial judgment, which is an interesting question. but on this particular point that you are raising, did he fail to serve his own cause in the sense of the cause of justice by finding a way to present the report in a way that would resonate more in an echo chamber where i sometimes think of where we are now as we're dealing on the right with chi ron conservatives, folks who get most of their view of reality or

a good bit of it from whatever fox news puts at the bottom of the screen. i think that's a fair criticism. >> yeah. at the end of the day, he did this great work, but it is not accurate to only look at the report. you have to look in the wider context as people are trying to understand what happened. what was the reception of the report? why was he privately lobbying barr in it? i have to fit in a break. thank you for being on this. >> thank you. >> mueller's warning about vladimir putin and why he says you should be paying attention sglrchl. but first a tremendous historical breakdown i will show you ahead. you ahead.

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i hope and expect this to be the only time i will speak to you in this manner. i do not believe it is appropriate for me to speak further about the investigation. >> bob mueller took a very careful approach to the challenging task of investigating a sitting president, a task that a small handful of attorneys have ever tackled. while they had different titles and operated under a range of different rules, they faced the same core challenge. how do you investigate the sitting commander in chief? when do you defer substantive

limits? the constitution grants him extra powers and legal protections. but when do you confront him anyway? because no person is above the law. prosecutors who chose the path of confrontation did so in public, speaking, cajoling, criticizing, even leaking. >> the president repeatedly tried to forward the legal process. >> the president chose deception. >> the white house lawyers filed a motion to file kenneth starr in contempt of court. >> in an interview published in content magazine, starr concedes on some occasions he spoke privately with reporters about the case. >> mueller did not refer to donald trump by name when discussing his obstruction probe. during iran contra, a prosecutor was willing to publically name, shame and condemn the sitting president. >> president bush's pardon of kasper wine berger and other iran contra defendants

undermines the principal that no man is above the law. the iran contra cover-up has continued for more than six years. they are part of a disturbing pattern of deception and obstruction that permeated the highest levels of the reagan and push administrations. >> consider to win the white house rejected mueller's call for trump's testimony. he took no for an answer. want to be prosecutor confronted the nixon white house's rejection of his demand for those oval office tapes calling a press conference to explain to america why he would take his case to the grand jury and if necessary to the supreme court. >> this afternoon i received from the white house a letter declining to furnish the eight requested tapes. it therefore becomes my duty to promptly seek subpoenas and other available legal procedures for obtaining the evidence for

the grand jury. >> the watergate prosecutor's office ultimately won that before but not before the saturday night massacre firing of that man, which explains the blowback, a man that lived up to this pledge to, if necessary, stand up to nixon's attorney general. >> and what would you do if the new attorney general, now the attorney general designate tried to interfere in any way with your pursuit of the investigation. >> i'd march him down to this congressional committee if he and i couldn't work it out among ourselves. >> it wasn't laughs for long. what happened after that moment changed history, which we're going to get into with some special experts coming up. ou ne. nice. but, uh... what's up with your... partner? not again. limu that's your reflection. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty, liberty, liberty, liberty ♪

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you're watching msnbc. bob mueller's departing remarks on the russia probe agree not only to the impeachment debate, but we wants to make something clear, a warning about what happened in the election and what could happen again. >> russian intelligence officers who were part of the russian military launched a concerted attack on our political system. the releases were designed and timed to interfere with our election and to damage a presidential candidate. >> experts warning trump's administration not doing enough

to prepare for this in the next election. trump's own chief of staff warned the homeland security chief to avoid bringing up election interference because it might anger the president. i'm joined by the former u.s. am bar d -- ambassador to russia. you may be one of the most visible former united states ambassadors to russia because of how central this has been, sir. so big picture, what did you see as important in mueller's emphasis in putin's activities during that press conference? >> i'm glad he reminded the american people of the fact that we were attacked by vladimir putin and his agents and his proxies and his military intelligence officers. i would go further to say and to remind your viewers that the mueller report only talked about some aspects of what the russians did because he was focussed on criminal activity. but in addition to stealing data

from the dnc, from john podesta and publishing it in a way to hurt hillary clinton, they also had a big effort with disinformation on social media. and then another piece that the mueller report didn't talk about is they had conventional media. russia today, sputnik on youtube and other platforms trying to influence the course of this outcome. that is a big deal. i'm glad he reminded people of it. >> this should be the least political and partisan of any of this. even understands there is politics on both sides when you investigate a president. we just showed some of that in the show. but this is about a foreign adversary. yet, even here, there are experts who say that mr. barr seemed to down play that in a political way as compared to mueller who was the one doing the fact finding. take a look. >> the central allegation of our indictments, that there were

multiple systemic efforts to interfere in our election and that allegation deserving the attention of every american. >> during campaign, foreign governments make -- and foreign citizens frequently make a lot of attempts to contact different campaigns. >> the attorney general obviously has a key national security role and now has new classification authorities. what did you think of the way he put thriit there? >> he's completely down playing what happened. it is not the most important thing that happened. and by being so nonchalant about it, he's not identifying the national security threat. i'm glad you mention that. it is not a republican threat. it is not a democratic threat. it's a national security threat. and what's troubling about it is that we haven't done much to protect us in 2020. and i just want to remind, you

know, the attorney general and everybody else why are they assuming that the next foreign adversaries are going to be on the side of president trump? what about the iranians? facebook just took down a bunch of stuff the iranians did. do we think they will be weighing in in favor of president trump? this is a national security issue. we have to get serious about it before the next electoral cycle. >> right. and he's held the post. he's been in the room, the fbi director and his one and only remarks here breaking his silence this week was hammering putin for anyone that was listening. thank you so much. >> thanks for having me. >> up ahead, a conversation i'm very excited about. federal prosecutors getting into what mueller did, didn't do. this is everything you need to know for every cocktail party debate about the mueller probe from now until the end of time. that karl brought his karaoke machine?

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welcome back to msnbc special "mueller speaks." now we're getting into it. we close our special report to tackle some of the biggest questions unanswered in the mueller probe. i'm joined by former federal prosecutor who worked for mueller directly in the d.c.

attorney's office and john fl flann flannery. my first request: should bob mueller have done more earlier to be the public face of this probe? everyone remembers the press conference when he did announce the victory about indicting russians, but he announced it on paper. the person who spoke to america spoke on tv was rod rosenstein. >> we need to work together to hold the perpetrators accountab accountable. we need to keep moving forward and preserve our values, protect against future interference and defend america. >> john, should bob have been out on that podium that day and other days? >> yes, he should have been. and he should have known by that time that rosenstein was not an honest broker and rosenstein was going to protect the president just as barr was going to do. if he was going to be faithful to his charge and conduct the investigation, he should have been conducting the coverup

within the justice department in concert with the white house. and this was known and we saw it during the senate hearings in which barr became the attorney general. we know from the report that came out that mueller was in a position to know that rosenstein was on an honest broker from the beginning because an investigation indicated he laid the ground work for the firing of comey and then lied at the time that his report was being misused when, in fact, in truth it was being used exactly for the purpose that they hoped. and trump, in his clumsiness as a criminal, went on the air and said, yes, i fired comey because of the russia investigation and high fived the russians in his office in the white house right after that saying, well, now that's behind us and that's no problem. little did he know. so, you know, the problem here is that we have never had the fair investigation we wanted. and there are several ways to corrupt an investigation.

one of them is to choose a person who will do what you expect him to do even if he believes he was doing it honestly. in this case it was mueller who was not prepared to indict under any circumstances. you may remember rudy giuliani said he's not going to indict because he's going to be okay. >> yeah. i think it is an academic question, should bob mueller have been more visible. the bob mueller that i saw give that nine minute statement to the media was the bob mueller that i have always known. he was the bob mueller who taught me how to be a federal homicide prosecutor right here in washington, d.c. he was never one to want to speak to a camera or he would never try to make the story about him. i actually think he was remarkably circumspect, professional. and he went about doing the business that he was assigned to do really in a completely a

political and nonpartisan way. >> no one is debating that. the implication he never got out there and battled in public is not asking him to be more political. people agree it is nice to have more nonpartisan folks in law enforcement. someone has to speak. he's not a monk. knowing what you know now, would it not have been better to have mueller make the case in public, which was valid and possible? it is not illegal, as opposed to privately write these letters? >> here is what might have been better. if someone had been able to manage the public's expectations a little bit more with respect to what we could expect from the mueller report when it was issued. i mean, he has set out now that the olc memo prohibited him from indicting the president even though he made it clear in volume two that the evidence shows the president committed multiple felony obstruction of justice offenses.

>> let me get john's response. >> well, my problem with this whole thing is it is not about controlling the public. we had barr and trump and rudy ghoul yiuliani unleash the mons let the cracken out there. what we have here is a situation in which the management of the public was to deny the truth to them. it seems to me that mueller had an obligation to step forward and say what he's saying is a lie. if they can do it about buzzfeed, they should be doing it about the central act of the investigation, which is it was offtrack and he was being managed and doing the best he could. >> this is not a criticism of character, but it is a look at the results and the performance. i don't think any public official is above that. what you are saying is they did come out and talk reactively. so they're chasing buzzfeed's miswritten story and not telling the public what the score was. >> exactly. and i think that's a major

problem here. what we see in the days since you have rightly characterized this as one of the historic moments that mueller finally comes forward and speaks, we're seeing everybody is revisiting the first propositions of this investigation, which is, okay, he wasn't cleared of collusion and not having evidence doesn't mean there's none. not saying dwoent have a major problem about the influence of russia for one candidate and that was trump. >> i want to ask about the interview. i gave you as always a fair legal debate. a rebutle before that. >> i think rarely do you hear me use this phrase. if bob mueller made one mistake it was trusting barr to be an honest broker and to accurately tell the american people what mueller had reported out. barr didn't do that and yes, the truth has forever been playing catch up. >> i don't think i have heard glen put those words together. mueller and mistake. the catch up part is important.

it is fine to say bob mueller takes the discretion very seriously. i don't think it's been the criticism. the fact that barr did things that we reported from day one. i remember they brought the letter. i said this is not the mueller report it's barr's view. we have to wait for the report. boy, 68 days until mueller spoke. i want to go into the other big. should mueller have demanded an in person interview with the subject of the probe donald trump who falsely claimed he would do it. >> absolutely. >> no question. >> i would love to speak. nobody wants to speak more than me. against my lawyers. most lawyers say never speak. i would love to speak. >> does it make you want to talk to mueller? >> would you be willing to speak under oath to give your version. >> 100%. >> if mueller wanted to speak. >> i would be glad to tell him what i told you.

>> if you have a subject talking like that and you have the powers of the special counsel office, do you force the issue in court? >> absolutely. it was a constitutional conflict of major his tor importance. with foreign nations interfering. he wants to take and never does it. take it to court. if you lose it you're in the game. you can't win the argument you don't make. none of the targets were interviewed. and mueller was on notice for this. and rosenstein and barr who came lately to the game had done lots of things he was on notice. >> let's play it out. in fairness to the team, the report addresses this. the mueller report says we tried. it would have taken too long to litigate that out. is that a valid excuse or could they have given update to the public and said we are not currently planning on future

indictments, but we're going to the supreme court if we have to to get the testimony given the issues? >> i think if they had gone all the way to the supreme court, and the supreme court said yes, you can lawfully subpoena a president to the grand jury which i predict that's what the supreme court would have said. all the prosecuesident's lawyer to do is say fine we envoek the fifth amendment right. and that trumps the -- >> you know it so well. you gave us multiple peas of litigation and a strategy. what you make -- i'm hearing you saying the sitting president of the united states would then be forced to come out and say on the grounds he would incriminate himself of a crime. he won't speak after what we showed. which is him claiming otherwise. wouldn't that be a constructive thing for a probe? >> we cannot use as public

servants we are not permitted to use somebody's invocation of the fifth amendment right as evidence gens them. in the public sector sure. >> ha is true. that's what prosecutors do. but the congress might have an interest in assessing that. >> there's a big difference between somebody saying i'll assert the fifth and doing it. you should force him to assert the fifth amendment. and you have to determine what does it cover. the areas he talked about and exposed and so he can't insert the fifth amendment to things he already discussed publicly that he argues hurt him. it's not a simple question. saying i have the fifth amendment. >> not out to get anyone. do you think especially given the work you have done with congressional probes, would be it be constructive if that was the result? >> yes. i don't think it would be the result. he would have 100 people saying

you have a lifetime of complaining. complaining about oh people taking the fifth amendment. take it like monsters do. which is what he said mobsters do. that's an organized crime reference that fits this administration. >> last one lightning round. if mueller was never going to indict the president or conclude crimes. should he have made that clearer earlier? which would have avoided exploiting confusion. >> managing public expectation would have been helpful in framing what we now learned from the report. >> i think that that's what rosenstein figured. he figured this is the safer bet. if i appoint mueller if the president thinks he'll lose, the good thing is he'll never be indicted. he will not exercise the constitutional ability which is in the constitution that allows one to go forward. that star plooef allowed you to indict a sitting president as

happened with vice president when he was a sitting vice president. and they prosecuted him. >> glen and john, i defy anyone to find a more fulsome chopped up analysis of these very difficult issues. i will say for the record. discussing these challenges is not impugning the good faith of the many hard working people who wrestled with the issues investigating a president. thank you both. >> thank you. >> really fascinating to me. all the guests we had tonight. thank you for watching our special. mueller speaks. you can always catch me here on 6:00 p.m. eastern every weeknight on the beat. have a good night. liberty mutual customizes your car insurance, so you only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪

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leaks. secret tapes. special prosecutors and presidential paranoia. when i hear those words today, they have a familiar echo to me. 40 years ago i made the movie "all the president's men" about how "washington post" reporters bob woodward and carl bernstein chased the watergate story from break-in to cover-up to the first president to resign his office. the story of the scandal stayed with me. and a few years ago i produced a documentary about woodward and bernstein's detective story to uncover the truth. and it struck me as prophetic and worth repeating today. we thought watergate changed america and our political process. but did it?