a writer at the new yorker he's out with a new book called true crimes and misdemeanors the investigation of donald trump in which he argues that the media's reporting during the moa probe may have actually helped the president let's find out why as jeffrey toobin joins me from new york i must say jeffrey this is your 8th book i've read all previous 7 i just thought of this one you have an uncanny ability to take legal problems and put it in layman's language i must salute you well and i salute you larry what a pleasure to be back on the air with you know you know idea i really view the beginning of my television career as with 'd you during o.j. at your studio and that all of our what i used to describe it is like a salon for o.j. people because you get everyone every every single person involved with the jay pass through that studio and i did some of my best reporting in the green room

there but your friendship and your support for my career was was 'd indispensable at a time when i had no great care at all and now it's all right thank you for it or let's before we get that a book and by the way i started the book and this is the kind of book you cannot put down you have such an ability to write well all legal it's fun to have an tak out way to read it all before what do you make of the cohen come alive horace appointment. well you know what i want to things i always get a kick out of is that you know we in the news media you know we make such a big deal out of these vice presidential selection but you know how many votes do they really change or i don't i don't think they may change any and you know the cliche is do no harm and i certainly think biden did himself no harm but it also is important to recognize the possibility that a woman of color could be vice president of the united states and i think even

though this was not a surprising choice the magnitude of that and the changes that's reflected in the country by that possibility is a very big deal and you know i'm out of the prediction because i don't know if they'll win but if they do win that would be a profound thing to have a woman in that position the 1st one the one time a vice president did count was when kennedy name johnson and won texas if johnson on that ticket nixon would have been president that's out i mean that's certainly that what i've always heard i think those days are pretty much over though where you could pick a cat you know our voice presidential candidate who could deliver a state you know or conall 6 or so nationalized now. that i you know you think about who the possibilities are that by and named i don't know that any of them could have the river to day but you know we'll said. chief justice john

roberts appointed by george w. bush or any of this month vice president my pont mike pence declared i'm a disappointment to conservatives is it is he tough to read the chief justice well i think you know this was a very different chief justice roberts term that we saw before i mean i don't think anyone should be under the impression that john roberts has turned into some kind of liberal he is certainly no ruth bader ginsburg who went to which high school. madison i think they were out of the light law many great americans write. the but so so john roberts has not turned it to some kind of liberal but it also true that this was a different john roberts this target no he voted to strike down the abortion law louisiana he strike he voted to you know say that title 7 the anti discrimination

law cover discrimination against gay people he said that the trumpet ministration you know had violated the rules when it tried to end the protections for dreamers and when it tried to put a citizenship question on the census that's different than the john roberts we saw in the previous 14 years he's been on the court and i think it reflects some real discomfort among mainstream republicans like john roberts with the direction of the trump presidency you know i don't think it's accurate to call roberts a never trump for but he is someone who 'd i think has been eliminated by how half how donald trump has conducted his presence. how far along in your writing this book did the coronavirus develop what was it was. very much towards the end i had to hand in my manuscript pretty much in april and as you

recall the the coronavirus hit in earnest in march and i you know i thought it was a revealing book at to to this story because a lot of the behavior that we saw from president trump the constant whining and the you know real restore sions of what's going on that we're if that that were in the mall or investigation and the impeachment investigation regarding ukraine they have continued with with with the tragedy of cove it so you know obviously this you know has been a nightmare for so many americans and people around the world but i think it's been a revealing one because the president's conduct has been of a piece with how he's conducted his entire presence the book is 2 crimes and misdemeanors the story of the mower investigation was the mole or investigation of

failure. i think that's unduly harsh i think they accomplished a great deal the. the the they pursued their their mandate with a great sense of ethics i think they were very factual 'd in their reporting 'd they won some very important 'd convictions against prominent people whether it's michael flynn the national security advisor all man afore the transformer campaign chairman roger stone the president's friend those are big deal cases and the report also. describes the russian efforts to manipulate the american electorate in 2016 with incredible detail and persuasive ness i think there were 2 big problems with the muller investigation one was his failure to issue 'd

a grand jury subpoena to the president and get his testimony i think that was a real gap and on the question of obstruction of justice how the president interacted with his staff. whether it was james comey telling james komi to lay off michael flynn whether it was telling his white house counsel. began to fire. muller that was obstruction of justice and i think mahler really made an error when he didn't say that. outright and and just spoke clearly about what he should have spoken clearly and said the president committed no crimes he didn't and he opened the door for william barter really distort mahler's find. by the way we don't hear about a much is would be giuliani in the book. oh he is a he is a protagonist in the book and giuliani is is i think if

a particularly fascinating figure because there are really 2 sides to him in this story in the muller investigation i think giuliani was actually a very effective lawyer he did 2 things he strung out the negotiations about the subpoena in such a way that he. managed to avoid having the president to to testify and that was very effective he also mobilized the conservatives against muller you know he turned this into a political fight instead of a legal matter but when it came to ukraine and. the giuliani's efforts to get ukraine involved in the new government of ukraine to try to you know sabotage joe biden's canvasses. giuliani was a disaster he almost single handedly got his client donald trump impeached which is

something that i think no lawyer would want on his resume so the 2 sides of giuliani who is really a major figure in the book i think are kind of paradoxical and interests that could ensure that mahler. subpoenaed trump yes i think he should have and that's another big theme in the book you know muller was appointed in may of 2070 he started. telling trump's lawyers who at that time were led by john dowd and jay secular in the fall of 2017 i want to i want to interview the president which is something he should have done and they they got to the point where there was actually something schedule in january of 2018 an interview at camp david but ultimately john dowd pulled the plug he pulled the plug for the obvious reason that he knew as anyone knows that well that trump

would have lied the way he always lied including under oath in this circumstance and at that point in january of 2018 muller could have just pulled the trigger gotten a subpoena and fought it out in the courts probably to have it resolved by the end of june which only would have been a year into his investigation what doubt and then giuliani did was they sort of stretched out these negotiations and that. allowed. the trump team to sort of it run out the clock and mo they knew that mahler didn't want to spend 5 years the way ken starr spent 5 years and that compelled 'd moller to accept written questions and answers as opposed to. the the the real question an answer that would have been more appropriate if you're investigating experience was this

a tough book to write. this is the hardest book i've ever had to write. this was. a. moving target you know i agree to write this book in the in may of 2017 when miller was appointed but most didn't talk to anybody is that his staff didn't talk to anybody including me until they closed up shop that. presented a tremendous reporting challenge and then the ukraine story came out of nowhere i certainly didn't know that there would be a totally separate impeachment proceeding brought and i you know i had juggle all this. while while you know trying to trying to do the reporting and then the writing so it was a hard book to write but i'm very glad i got to tell the whole story you know it ends it ends with the president's acquittal in february 'd you know larry i mean the president was acquitted in the senate in february it's only august now but

doesn't feel like about 100 years ago i mean you know that has. come of it has so taken over our lives in the news that it seems like you know forever ago what it really wasn't that law and i feel grateful that i got to tell the whole story if this was. another great book from jeffrey toobin will be back with some more moments the book is true crimes and misdemeanors don't go away. is your media a reflection of reality. in a world transformed. what will make you feel safe. isolation or community. are you going the right way or are you being

led. by. what is true what is faith. in the world corrupted you need to descend. to join us in the depths. or a mate in the shallowness. that illustrates but exploited this time not just a but the style of. which never. eat. you think it hurts you much i'm going to pitch a slow boil on. the. president.

did. he push too much he gets more some. back jeffrey toobin the book true crimes and misdemeanors it's his a book and again as i said i just thought it's impossible to put down jeffrey have we ever seen anything remotely like trump you know larry i mean you've interviewed all these people including trump i know many times and i i just every day i remain amazed that donald trump as president of the united states i mean you know that it's not just the log breaking which i describe in the

book but just the violation of norms of how we expect presidents to behave you know the constant insults the the you know the the fighting with the media for no reason it's like not i mean you know to compare him to any other president is just impossible because he's not. it's just like no like no one else we've ever seen. but my goal cohen's book to come out before the election and do you expect to have impact. you know i do expect it to come out before the election impact you know i think the idea that michael cohen will you know i think the thing about about this whole election is how many undecided voters really do you think they are i don't think that trump trump is you know he has so

dominated the news and his he so much out there the idea that that a lot of voters are going to pick up michael collins book and say you know i don't really think he's such a good guy it just seems inconceivable to me. one of the thing with mail in voting being challenge to you expect a lot of legal challenges to this election it ain't over on november 3rd you know this is a huge issue larry and i'm spending a lot of time on it now and in my reporting you know there was just a primary election in new york city on june 23rd in new york state one of the races a close primary race was a result for 6 weeks because it took so long we count all the mail and. that gives you an idea and that's just a primary where the turnout is much lower than there is in a general election i think we are heading to a really scary scenario where. the vote counting is not just going to be

lengthy but highly controversial and and i worry that a significant part of the population will not regard the result whatever it turns out to be is legitimate i can't wait to read the rest in a book it's so great having you with us jeffrey continued good luck thanks kyle it's great to see you. on tuesday joe biden announced his running mate senator kemal harris of california doll trump wasted no time in criticizing that choice joining me now is someone who knows come on harris and has worked with her in the past she's act friend santa cruz county supervisor he also or done the braga obama and john kerry's presidential campaigns thanks via time to days out ok you know you nor as well as anyone you have supporter over the years what does she bring to

the ticket. one of the big things she brings us history right now larry i mean you're talking about the 1st black woman ever selected the 1st woman of asian american descent the 1st woman to have attended a historically black college or university so i mean this is history in the making right now and even south a lot of joe biden i mean she's young she's energetic she's got an amazing amount of talent in my experience with her she also brings a real incisiveness that i think is going to be really helpful from both the political side as well as the debate stage when she takes on vice president pence what was your relationship with her. when i was working at the santa cruz police department i work with her professionally both when she was d.a. as well as attorney general on some cases some mutual cases when i was with barack obama's campaign traveled with her when she was a surrogate and she really really connected with people especially in pennsylvania which was a swing state she'd a lot of outreach to youth voters a lot of outreach to young lawyers working on voter protection and ensuring

especially in african-american neighborhoods in pennsylvania the voters were protected and i helped are on her races at least for a g. in the senate race but i just think that she brings a lot right now larry to this ticket i mean there's going to be a lot of excitement for her especially in some of these states that we must win in order to win the white house is that i remember when she would guest on my show on c.n.n. as well the tourney general and prosecutor in calif and san francisco she was tough on lauren are agreed. yeah well she's tough in general man i got to tell you that you better know your stuff if you're going to brief comment harris because she is by far if not the smartest one of the smartest people that i've ever worked with i mean she is and she brings a not just a law and order stuff but i think she also brings a perspective with their upbringing of understanding how the justice system disproportionately impacts minorities and i think that she said that throughout her entire tenure in the justice system that there's other ways to do things as well she was a progressive prosecutor in a progressive a.g.

and i think balances out this ticket well where does she stand on defunding the police which is been thought of in many regards he could bring this way she could be that way dismantling ice exactly where is her stance on that. yeah i mean you bring up an excellent point the defunding means different things to different people that are talking about it but both she and vice president biden have taken stands against this general sense of defunding police but both are in favor of the idea of reallocating resources toward early intervention programs and as somebody who worked in law enforcement i got to tell you there's no one for us men agency in america that thinks it's a good idea that law enforcement should be primary on public intoxication low level drug crimes or behavioral health issues so they would welcome the opportunity to have that go elsewhere but you need investment in it 1st what happened to her and the democratic primary she was then forceful for a while and then gone what happened yeah i actually think that this is

a case of we need to let comedy kamel out because when people get to see who she really is and the campaign is wrong or out pretty well right now she's going to succeed presidential campaigns are hard larry as you know very very talented people don't make it up to the top there's a lot of external factors and a lot of issues you can't really figure out and seems like the democratic electorate on the whole wanted to go back to somebody that they knew and trusted in a way that vice president biden brings of the tech the table but i think that it was i think her sense to get out when she did ended up being one of the wisest decisions on the entire campaign trail because that i think it helped her be selected as vice president. if she's the next vice president who will gavin newsome appoint to the senate. man i have no idea but i tell you what people are arty behind the scenes jockeying for that position right now larry and we live in a state united both in california here where there's a remarkable amount of people that are talented enough to do it both at a statewide level a couple that tina leaders there are karen bass for example you know there's

a lot of people but i tell you what i magine issue becomes vice president i imagine kamel harris will least have a conversation with the governor to help try and figure out who the best person is to represent the state he can appoint himself gani yeah he could appoint himself if he wanted to get away from being a governor in the middle of a pandemic right now but i think that you know he wanted to be governor and that is the role that he sought for an extended period of time i think as you well know i think from the point he was mayor he wanted to be governor and so i think that he'll probably keep his current position. what are the conventions going to be like they're not by conventions what tell me what trump said he made to his from the gettysburg yeah what a strange thing that is and i mean they're going to be they're going to be virtual and i think that in some respects that that's the most responsible thing to do it took a long time for the president to realize that i mean he was promising a full convention up until recently mean a basically because nobody was going in the local actors were telling him not to do

it but i think a virtual conventions are the safest and you know a lot of it is just making sure that you can tell every day people stories here from some of the party leaders i don't know that you have to do that physically larry like we've done traditionally you're not both been to a lot of conventions the pomp and circumstance is nice but i think this year's a unique year and i think it'll be ok that they both sides happen to be on the digit on the virtual side you think people are going to sit at home and watch different speakers speak off 1520 like it was a live convention i don't buy that nonono they sit at home and watch us run out there is that they are no you know i mean to watch to watch comes me go race me go be speaker see them sitting at home if i go to the convention that's different well but the viewership of even in person conventions at home is pretty high as you remember both at c.n.n. and other times i mean tens of millions of people end up watching it over the course of the convention and i think that this year the stakes are so high as you saw with turnout in some of the primaries the high ratings of the networks

regarding political coverage tells me that people are going to be at home watching this and by the way since a lot of people are still sheltering in place in a lot of locations in the country i think that they're going to want to have that kind of interaction with the government that way or some possibility of an october surprise the discovery of vaccine and that konami covering things that would work in traumas favor do you worry about that because there were both things you'd like . oh yeah no i mean i think that taking the politics out of it those are things that i would prefer to happen for the country do i think that there will be a trump october surprise or thing there's 100 percent likelihood of that i think that he is the master of manipulation when it comes to media narrative and i think that you will make sure that there's a way to try and steal the thunder but at the end of the day larry i mean if you think about whether you're better off now than you were 4 years ago in a very basic sense there's nothing you could do in october that would fundamentally change that i do believe that things are going to totally tighten i don't think the

current polls are accurate i think it's still going to be a close race all the way to the end you are a about voter suppression oh yeah i mean that i mean have you seen more overt voter suppression i mean you're talking about an entire republican party this trying to manipulate the postal service of a people came or turned ballots they're doing everything they can on voter i.d. laws i mean it you think it's accidental they're only doing this in certain swing states i mean this is a clear effort of voter suppression and i know the biden campaigns working very hard i got to say haven't come on the tickets helpful in this case for prosecute that case but also just making sure that you can get episodic voters the turnout is going to be hard that's why i think that polling and actual turnout when you actually get close to the race are 2 different things and the senate go to the democrats i do think so i mean i think that right now a lot of the close races are trending the democratic way overall though it's the senate is definitely set up to be advantage republican advantage rural so it's

a much harder lift i think of the dems win it they either win it on a 5050 with the presidency and get that tie breaking vote or maybe it's a 5149 and we're going to have some honest conversations about filibusters and everything else in order to get policy done. if problems is what happens to the g.o.p. . over they have a reckoning i mean it's a there's a lot of good members of the republican party guys don't know what happened out of the world to trump i mean we basically are debating facts right now we're debating basic democracy people are afraid of them within the republican party but i think mitch mcconnell saying the 2 telling vulnerable senators that they can run away from the president is very telling about how he views it and what a post-election g.o.p. may look like zag thanks is always wonderful seen you always great to see you larry . zach friend we thank him for his time today we thank him for joining us on this edition of politicking and thank you for joining us remember you can join the conversation on my facebook page or tweet me at kings things don't forget to use

the politicking hash tag and that's all for this edition of politicking. false and illegal takeover of government by a small group. rather than revolutionaries or so just that small group the corporations when you have a tiny drip of people who have all the power you have to have some means to make sure that the best don't get together and take it back. police are sacrificing. places that capitalism exploited and destroyed for profit and left behind misery poverty environmental devastation and so you see things

like voter suppression building more prisons you seem gerrymandering all sorts of undemocratic practices were well in that world for well for a stroke. no question that the. tax guys are financial survival guide stacey let's learn us out fill out let's say i'm the troika and here i'm greece banks have the fight street fraud thank you for helping. on the story that's right if the debt ceiling. as the u.s. economy was booming growing numbers of people were made homeless. you can work 40 hours in a week and still not have enough to get housing everybody believes america still is

the land of opportunity the reality of we're not financially equality and the lack of affordable housing for a living minimum wage gave many people no choice though there's been a problem with the city knows turn over china told me stay away almost. 2 sins of the food that there is no answer because yes the requires resource the most vulnerable are abandoned on the streets to become the invisible cops. show seemed wrong but all wrong just don't call. me old yet to shape out just they become educated and endangered because the trail. when so many find themselves worlds apart we choose to look for common ground.

the headlines in r.t. bellary starts to really people who took to the streets after sunday's disputed presidential election amid claims of widespread police brutality towards detainee we hear from a doctor who was jailed. the women were lined up and the men were in the next hour they were constantly leaving so badly just how long you've just come on the stand announces a u.s. brokered peace deal between israel and united arab emirates it will see tel aviv suspend for now it's a plan to annex parts of the west bank and tensions spike in the mediterranean france says it will bolster its military presence there to monitor turkey's activities in.