. >> from bob mueller. i haven't heard you speak to his integrity at all, but i'm hearing you say, echoed by the history we just showed and people like former prosecutor starr that the notion that this would be wrapped up by the attorney general is odd, just as janet reno did not resolve the clinton issue. attorney general richardson did not resolve the nixon issues. and so barr, as you say, is putting it in a maximalist position. there is one other thing about this that i've got to ask you, and i just don't know what happened here. i'm curious if you do. there is a requirement under the rules that congress should be notified about the decisions about who to charge and not charge. and on friday, barr said he was going to do that as soon as this weekend. does this letter constitute that? because it seems to deal very hermetically with a few things, but doesn't in any way tell congress about the other individuals or other issues under investigation that were declined to be charged. does that requirement still

bob mueller is done. does that mean there are no possible indictments left or do we not know that yet? >> i think there is a strong possibility of additional indictments including president trump's family. maybe not by the department of justice. i know you want to stick to the mueller report. but the mueller report cannot be viewed in isolation. >> if you have a question for the senator on this newsy night, i'm curious what you want to know from this member of the judiciary committee. >> well, i agree with you. i think there could be the possibility of a sealed indictment. i think it's a tough one though. i would expect that to come out by now. just since the report has been trans mitted for over an hour. my gut that is not likely. there could be indictments in other investigations in the southern district and investigation and others. i think for senator bloom enthal, if the president asserts xoo executive privilege in some way, what is the committee prepared to do about that? >> key question. first, and

who did bob mueller speak to? who didn't bob mueller speak to? did he ask to speak to mike pence?no? what follow-up questions did he ask donald trump? that is the way it's supposed to work. now let's see, we know donald trump would not speak to him. he said 460 days ago, i look forward to speaking to him. they never did. maybe it's time for congress to speak to donald trump. and it's congress's turn now to talk to bob mueller, to hear from him exactly what he has to say. >> coming up, reaction from democrats running for president as they crisscross the country on this saturday morning. they y on this saturday morning >>> that report needs to be made public. and the white house should not be allowed to interfere in any way in interpreting our presenting the information to the american people. you're having one more bite no! one more bite! ♪ kraft. for the win win. [zara larsson - "wow"] ♪ ♪ baby i'm not even in a gown ♪ and the only thing u have to say is wow ♪ ♪ make you're jaw drop drop say oh my drop drop drop ♪ ♪ make u say oh my god my drop drop ♪ ♪ make you're jaw drop make u

these are angry people including the highly conflicted bob muellerer. a witch hunt like no other in american history. >> mueller continues his investigation. undaunted. >> he's a remarble bli efficient thinker and doer. he doesn't waste time or motion. he knows what he needs and what he wants and expects people to work as hard as he does. which is hard. >> i can tell you personally you don't want to let bob mueller down. >> somebody you aspire to be like. in every way you can think of. his work ethic. the way he looked at an investigation. >> mueller's team included the government's best and brightest attorneys. >> he put together a terrific team. men and women in federal law enforcement. deeply experienced. >> i would call it the 1927 yankees. >> his chief deputy is aaron. a class act. and he's got as much integrity as anybody i have met. >> by the end of 2018, mueller and his team wrapped up guilty pleas from several members of trumps campaign and inner circle. national security advise ir michael flynn who trump fired after 24 days in office. and forme

despite what might be said about bob mueller by president trump, bob mueller has caied out his duties with professionalism. i think now what we need to do is be prepare to accept his findings and mov on so we can address the issues that most americans are concerned about. >> let me go back to pete williams to get more on the time linesor of how things has a clock begun ticking that the attorney general has to ofer things congress or is it open ended? >> it's open ended. there's no requirement in the special counsel rules on how soon the attorney general has to tell congress what mueller's report says. but he has submitted -- it's a one-page letter that william barr, the attorney general, aisubmitted to the an and ranking members of the house and senate judiciary ancommittees. he says, i may be in a position to share with you, that means those four people, to advise you of thepecial counsel's principal conclusions as soon as this weekend. let me explain whathat means. what he's saying is, what we tstr, lekester.d ouwhat tthe special counsel rul say is that when mueller submits his repo

he also said he's going to consul with rod rosenstein and bob mueller. >> robert mueller ends his workere doesn't mean he's disappearing as a human being. congress, of course, can call on him to testify. >> exactly. >> i guess what i'm saying here is the whole question, the orig origin, happens with the firing. it's a factual question of what happened. what happened during the election, what did the russian elections do and when did they do it? what elt matly everyone has been working to get to, whatever the facts indicate is what the facts of the matter were. >> let's be clear. donald trump fired james comey and lied about it. and that was exposed. then he admitted the letter that said they had to fire him because he was too mean to hillary clinton. >> too mean. >> too mean to hillary. >> and that it was false, that's a fact that he lied about something that central. and according to "the new york times" and sources klaus like don mcgahn, he tried to have bob mueller fired. that could have been a crime if he pulled it off, and that presumably is also part of this investigation. anothe

that was never bob mueller's charge.d the evidence, follow it where it goes, prosecute people that needed to be prosecuted if the evidence was there. as you have laid out in a number of different ways. and then turn the report in. that's what he's done. now we enter the political phase of this. >> the first piece of good news. no indictments on the underlying charge of joining the conspiracy. we don't know how or why he reach that conclusion either. >> we don't know that. you're right. there's no new indictment coming. that means there's no collusion. a significant number of people were charged. >> it means there was no conspiracy. collusion is not a legal term. >> fair enough. but of the people convicted of crimes, none of them were convicted for conspiracy or collusion or anything related to russia interfering with the u.s. i think we owe a debt of gratitude to bob mueller for exposing what the united states republicans and democrats alike, need to know. which is what other governments are trying to do in our elections

. >> was it appropriate for bob mueller to essentially punt on the issue of obstruction, leave it to the president's two top police kale poi political appointments at the justice department to decide? >> as far as i'm concerned, mr. mueller's report gave the attorney general both sides of the equation. he decided, not mr. barr, to give that decision over to the attorney general. you can ask him. from my point of view, i think what mr. barr and mr. rosenstein did was very appropriate. somebody has to decide, and the attorney general is not conflicted. he was not part of the campaign. so the big thing for me, guys, has always been, did trump work with the russians? i told him to his face, almost two years ago, if you did, that's it between me and you , d and anything that follows, you deserve. i will say that about any politician of any party. here's what we know two years later. after an exhaustive examination of the facts in this case, by somebody that every american should trust, mr. mueller, the answer is no. >> sir? what about though, is there any daylight, as democrats have sugges

for those folks, protect bob mueller has now become, to hell with bob mueller. fication of bob muler is becoming the villfication of bob mueller. now the republican position is unified. we need to move on. again, if 19 federal prosecutors , 40 f.b.i. agents, working 18 hours a day for the last two years, couldn't find any crimes to charge donald trump with, house chairman and a few house staffers shouldn't be wasting our time looking for them. i want to be real clear about this. the special counsel looking for how russia meddled in our election was not a witch hunt. but when it comes to investigating donald trump further for crimes, bob mueller didn't charge any crimes. bob mueller says there are no witches. so democratic efforts to continue these investigations would in fact be a political witch hunt for no other reason than for political gain. so, i want to close by anticipating your first question. the full release of the mueller report. republicans are united in our position that we do want the full release of the report as allowed by law. that's the same po

frank, nbc news national security can contributor and we start with you because you worked for bob muellertalk about loose ends. there are parts of mueller's case that are still in motion. there is a company unnamed owned by a sovereign government unnamed that has been fighting a subpoena. there's an associate fighting a subpoena who said he's been informed the mueller people want him to testify before a grand jury. there's a trial set for roger stone. someone's going to have to prau prosecute him and a whole bunch of statuses hearings. no sentence for rick gates. kilimnik is still on the lamb. what do you make off all the loose ends as the special counsel's office has apparently concluded? >> what i know about bob mueller is he's not a loose ends kind of guy. what does that mean now? it means he had a strategy. he's got the plan. he's worked out the loose ends so that someone else is going to wrap this up. it's likely the loose ends don't point to conspiracy regarding the campaign or he would not be walking away from it. and another insight, which is it would be very much like mueller to

the american public wants to know what bob mueller thinks and what he found. and i think the big question that, you know, kara was talking about is did bob mueller decide not to prosecute because he can't prosecute a president or because he shouldn't prosecute this president? and i think that's one question that the american public really wants answered. whatever they come out with, i can guarantee you is going to be interpreted in different ways. the president may claim vindication. at the same time the democrats say, this is enough evidence to impeach. that's the kind of country we're living in. >> who should be left to sbre t interpret? because we know if bill barr does that, if he interprets, if he editorializes, that could be a problem. >> i think he's trying not to do that. i think he's trying to take what mueller wrote and provide the facts of what mueller's conclusions were. >> we just got word officially now that capitol hill lawmakers have been told they can expect to receive a letter from the attorney general, from bill barr, in the next 30 to 45 mi

way, now we can say, and i don't think we could have ever reported this as fact until tonight, bob mueller beat donald trump's attempts to circumvent or shut down the mueller probe. and there were many moments where that wasn't necessarily clear. the future was yet to be written. according to don mcgahn's testimony and leaks in the "new york times," donald trump was seeking to ask someone to do his dirty work for him and fire mueller. and rather than that being a thing that maybe chilled the special prosecutor's office or slowed its work or ended it, it failed. mueller found out about it. we know he investigated it. and we will find out whether he ultimately provides material on that to go to congress. so in many key ways the fact that bob mueller picked tonight to end the proep tells us some ways he beat donald trump's efforts. >> and neal katyal, i want to go to the only defense that the president has ever really offered about this. it's the two-word defense, no collusion, no collusion. collusion is not a legal term. it does not legally describe a crime. and so it's not really in any rea

it doesn't say that bob mueller left it to me or bob mueller asked me to weigh in on it. it just says the fact that bob mueller left open the question leaves it to me to say something about it. in some ways, i understand why an attorney general for a particular president wanting this to get -- wanting us to all get passed it decides to opine on it. but i don't think it's desposative. >> but what do people do with that? so the fact that all this ambiguity about obstruction, now what are we supposed to do? >> we're supposed to get the report. >> and when we get the report, then it's up to congress, if there was obstruction that congress sees, it's up to them? >> yeah, i think so. that's how it's been in the past. it's interesting that bob mueller and his team have not shied away from charging crimes of obstruction or things like obstruction like lying to the fbi. in fact, many of the charges have been squarely within an obstruction statute. it's important to know how close a question it was, how much evidence there was of obstruction. as a political matter, i'm not a politi

. >>> we begin with what is known about what bob mueller found. for all the talk about mueller's findings, no one outside of the doj as of this hour has seen them yet, instead we have attorney general bill barr's now famous letter, some democrats are calling it basically a press release. it states, mr. barr's view of things and as attorney general we report on his view, it's important. but democrats are now dialing up the pressure in a big way and demanding the public report within the week, one week and there's new signs as i mentioned the doj is responding saying tonight it will come out within weeks but not by that deadline in that big letter that you see on your screen. dems say they have leverage because they will issue a subpoena if needed and speaker pelosi now taking a pointed shot at mr. barr, donald trump's newly installed attorney general. >> let us see the report. we don't need an interpretation by an attorney general appointed by the president. we need to see the report. >> what you heard there is the sitting speaker making a serious a

bob mueller.> you know bob mueller. how well do you know bob mueller? i told him how well i knew bob mueller and the barrs and muellers were good friends and would be good friends when this is all over and so forth. >> reporter: back in june before his nomination. barr wrote this unsolicited memo to the justice department. in it he appears to criticize part of mueller's probe, calling it fatally misconceived. it was enough to leave many to wonder how he'd handle the final report. randi kaye, cnn, palm beach, florida. >>> the news continues and we turn it over to don lemon in cnn tonight. >> this is a special edition of cnn tonight. i'm don lemon. breaking news, the attorney general, william barr publicly releases his four page letter summarizing the principle conclusion of bob mueller's report. the news is huge. mueller did not find donald trump's campaign or his associates conspired with russia. he also did not exonerate the president of obstruction. there is a whole lot to dig into. dig into the

i'd like to go with you first to hear you out on bob mueller, why you think he punted on this centralnt. but also please follow up with the counterintelligence part of this investigation. the mueller report that we haven't been able to see yet. >> certainly, brian. so i'm as perplexed and puzzled as the guests you had on earlier, but knowing bob mueller and how he works, there's a couple possibilities here. there's probably more than a couple possibilities but one of them is he had a strategy that was aimed at giving congress the opportunity to take care of business because he may have firmly believed that it was not his province to do so with regard to a president and regard to a shaky call on a criminal matter. the other is that somehow he made it crystal clear to the attorney general that he wanted to do something or had a strategy but the attorney general took that and turned into the summary we now have. and i think we -- none of us will know really what was going on unless bob mueller testifies on the hill and we see the entire unvarnished report. speaking of the entire unvarnis

. >> and we'll be talking about bill barr as much as bob mueller. he completed another tour of duty. it is time to go home. i'm sure they consult with the attorney general. there are loose threads, things to finish. i'm sure he will be asked to testify, but the pressure and the attention now switches to the attorney general and what he does with this thing. >> why don't we play what the attorney general said at his confirmation hearing. let's play that sound. i'm told we don't have that yet. our control rooms are still trying to figure it out, but he did -- okay, let me say the republican and congress will be informed of the special council's office. barr says consistent with regulations and the law, yes. he says the special council report is a report by the attorney general. he believes he will take this into his own hands, does that mean he writes his own version of this report? is that how he could be reading that? >> i think which he do it one of two ways. and that could mean taking it and redacting classified information, it could be going to c

>> bill barr. >> i was going -- who disagrees with bill barr is bob mueller. because he prosecuted mike flynn for obstruction crimes lying to the fbi. full stop. there may have been other stuff but the notion as a prosecutor when somebody obstructs -- i'm not saying the mueller report says that. all we know is that it leaves the question open. which is itself interesting. mueller chose to do it that way. >> exactly. >> when flynn obstructed, mueller went to court and then ultimately won a convict then through a plea by saying the crime is lying, nothing else. >> we have to remember that barr is the one who wrote this 20 page memo outlying why the obstruction inquiry that mueller was going after was really misguided and why it was not appropriate for him to be going down that road. so for mueller to have left this conclusion to barr to be made is really, really -- it's interesting. i think that maybe in the full report we might get a better understanding of why he chose to do it that way. but it seems like you're leaving the fox in the hen house in this case. >>

way, now we can say, and i don't think we could have ever reported this as fact until tonight, bob mueller beat donald trump's attempts to circumvent or shut down the mueller probe. and there were many moments where that wasn't necessarily clear. the future was yet to be written. according to don mcgahn's testimony and leaks in the "new york times," donald trump was seeking to ask someone to do his dirty work for him and fire mueller. and rather than that being a thing that maybe chilled the special prosecutor's office or slowed its work or ended it, it failed. mueller found out about it. we know he investigated it. and we will find out whether he ultimately provides material on that to go to congress. so in many key ways the fact that bob mueller picked tonight to end the probe tells us some ways he beat donald trump's efforts. >> and neal katyal, i want to go to the only defense that the president has ever really offered about this. it's the two-word defense, no collusion, no collusion. collusion is not a legal term. it does not legally describe a crime. and so it's not really in any rea

>> so look, i would never presume to speak for bob mueller. i will say like everybody we've all watched him closely over the past 18 months. and he's obviously a patient man. he didn't react every time donald trump, you know, called him conflicted and called it a witch hunt, et cetera. and i really have to believe that while there is a lot of misinterpretation at this point going on about what mueller has or hasn't said, right? he has not said no collusion. at least as far as we know through barr's own words. that is not what mueller said. and so to the extent that is being repeated, that must be frustrating to him. but he has a report, and we now at least have a clue that it's a very substantial report, which could mean apparently less than 1,000 but clearly more than several hundred pages if it's substantial. and i think that he understands that that report will come out because it has to, because that is the only way that we are going o'fully understand here what happened. as far as we know, bob mueller took one thing off the table so far.

bob mueller beat donald trump's attempts to circumvent or shut down the mueller probe. there were many moments where that wasn't necessarily clear, the future was yet to be written, according to don mcgann's testimony, donald trump was seeking to ask someone to do his dirty work for him and fire mueller. maybe that was something that slowed the work of the special prosecutor's office, we will find out whether he ultimately provides material on that to go to congress. the fact that mueller picked tonight to end the probe, tells us some ways that he beat donald trump's efforts. >> katyal, i want to go to the only defense that the president has ever really offered about this, it's the two-work defense, no collusion, no collusion. collusion is not a legal term, it does not legally describe a crime. and so it's not really in any real legal sense a defense. what do you see in what we -- in what this letter tells us from the attorney general tonight about what there might or might not be in terms of revelations about russian interference in the election. which the word collusi

now i will say the mueller, in bob we trust. i heard them say it's about the process and we're all confident that bob mueller has engaged in the process the way it should be handled. so i think we're going to have to wait for the results and hopefully have confidence in the results. >> so, you know, i think what is striking chris is how much energy the president devoted to undermining the very institution of the special counsel and law enforcement in general. if you think about it and remember the tv show "madmen" if you don't like what people are saying, change the conversation. rather than address any of the legal issues on the legal merits, attack the fact bob mueller and rosenstein weren't elected officials. this is part of a long now two, three-year process. he's gone after congress and after the special counsel and we'll see much more of that in the next few days and it's undermining the very, very nature of our system of government. i think, you know, in many respects it's a 20/20 strategy far more than legal and getting

me removed from the room under any circumstances. >> in the end, he backed him. >> he knew that bob muellertation in washington. >> now, trump views mueller's relationship with suspicion. >> his best friend is comey who's a bad cop. >> mueller loyalists deny it, but it is all part of the landscape as the special counsel's work end and the country waits to see how the long, silent bob mueller will finally be >> bob mueller believes in american institutions, so i think he wants to set the institutions up to make the best decisions that they can. >> that was our chief political analyst, gloria borger reporting. an excellent report indeed. we're going to have much more on all the breaking news just ahead on the mueller report. >>> also a new claim over victory of isis in syria, not from president trump but from u.s.-backed forces who are on the ground. we'll have details. stop by your local jackson hewitt and get all the benefits of a tax pro. with jackson hewitt you get 100% accuracy and our max refund guarantee. so, switch to jackson hewitt. open late and weekends. i switched to geico and sav

you witness donald trump's new claim today, that he welcomes any new report or information from bob mueller, even if it might further implicate trump's team. >> does the public have a right to see the mueller report? >> i don't mind. i mean, frankly, i told the house, if you want, let them see it. let it come out. let people see it. that's up to the attorney general. we have a very good attorney general. he's a very highly respected man. and we'll see what happens. >> everyone knows good cop, bad cop. this is kind of good president, bad attorney general. donald trump now claiming he's fine with the public report, but it's the other guy who will decide and maybe he'll decide something that's unpopular. maybe that other guy, that bad attorney general, i'm saying, colloqui colloquially, like bad cop, will decide not to release mueller's findings. you'll note this is the exact same spin that president trump used whether he would sit for a mueller interview in the first place. he claimed in the rose garden that he was game, only his lawyers, bad cop, might hold him back. donald trump, as you mig

but i want to read bob mueller's conclusions. what we got was a four-page distillation by a political appointee of the president. and you'll pardon me if i don't take his word directly for it. besides which i think the american public deserves to see this work product. director mueller deserves to be congratulated and thanked for his service. and let us remember that for the last two years, the administration has been engaged in a nonstop hour-by-hour attempt to discredit the reputation of bob mueller. haven't heard much of that in the last 48 hours, though, have we, erin. >> no, obviously, that's been a complete about-face. but when you say a distillation of the report by a political appointee, are you saying you don't trust the attorney general? >> no, not at all. remember, as it relates to this point in particular, i'm not making that point generally. but remember, attorney general barr on an unsolicited basis submitted a 19-page single-space memo to the department of justice last summer about why it is that they shouldn't pur

would hide any material findings of bob mueller?be pretty foolish to do so. >> i think he certainly intends to hide the grand jury material and that could be very substantial. there's one of two courses that barr could take right now. and he's clearly decided to take the one that is less transparent and more hiding of the evidence. and that is, he could do, as we did, as we saw in watergate, he could ask the court for permission to share that evidence with the congress. that's what he should do. if he is true to what he said during his senate confirmation, that he would be as transparent as possible, as the rules in law would allow, then that is the course he would take. but that does not appear to be his course at all. >> you know, i hear your answers. i've been reading them about bob mueller, we'll wait and see whether or not we need him. why? what would be wrong with bringing him in? if you want transparency for the american people, why isn't it a given that you want bob mueller to come in and testify in public so people can know

big swing with a big muscle move with the person with the biggest muscle associated with the doj bob mueller. >> the focus of the media has spent the last 22 months lauding robert mueller, the integrity of his investigation, spending a lot of time on every little jot and tiddle of everything having to do with russia. and i think the results of this have really made a lot of democrats question whether they put their faith in the wrong horse. and they're not -- nobody is going to bail on robert mueller. i think that's not appropriate. right now i think they're looking at barr, at the attorney general, and wondering just how, you know, rigged this whole thing might have been going in. >> did he work it this weekend? >> well, all those hours spent poring over those many pages. if he hadn't come out with some sort of a letter or some sort of conclusion, we'd all be jumping up and down saying what is he sitting on. >> he said i hope to update by the end of next week. i'm going take a very vigorous approach. >> he said i'm going to give some top line conclusions. and basically those top line conclu

but we will be heavily guided by what bob mueller did. we are not going to try to reinvent the wheel. and if bob mueller exhaustively looked into the i.r.a., this troll farm, and he exhaustively looked into the hacking and dumping operation, i'm circumspect about how much value we can add to that. but there may be many other aspects of the investigation that bob mueller or rod rosenstein decided that were beyond the scope of what his charge was, that still leave the country vulnerable. >> and so it continues. congressman schiff, thank you very much. i appreciate it. >> thank you. >> you know, you have to ask about how much and how long, because there's a political cost to this type of probing. poll after poll says voters didn't turn out in the midterms because of the mueller probe, but because of health care in large part. now, the president has turned his face toward that issue. and he says his move, get rid of the aca in the courts. problem is, no plan to replace it and not great law in his favor here. there's a lot of spin about the ac

at records bob mueller didn't.investigation was narrowly focused on russian interference -- the mother investigation was narrowly focused on russian interference and collusion -- the mueller investigation was narrowly focused on russian interference and collusion. guy: is there any chance he has to testify on the hill? what good would that do? reporter: i think bob mueller is not going to testify about things he chose to leave out of this report perhaps he thinks still touch on national security issues or ongoing law enforcement investigations. i don't think he's going to elaborate in a public forum about those things. i suspect anything he's already written that is in that report that then becomes public, he would be quite content to go and speak to congress about it. i don't think the issue is necessary well or -- necessarily whether bob mueller gets subpoenaed. i think it is what avenues congress pursues that he did not cover. i think he chose to interpret his made it very narrowly to avoid partisan battles and

and bob mueller would have put that in the report.d not draw the conclusion in that report. he thought it was congress's fought and we have to know bid barr talked to the president in drawing these conclusions or bob mueller confirm about this beforehand? he owes the american people an explanation. >> according to the summary, bob mueller did not find any evidence of conspiracy or collusion between the trump campaign, donald trump himself and the russians lifting the cloud on the presidency when it comes to questions of conspiracy or conclusion. how far are you willing to take these obstructions of justice. >> there are two things. the russia interference with our election. he concluded that the russians wanted trump to win. the russians hacked into the dnc e-mails and manipulated social media for false propaganda. there was definitely interference. we don't know the extent of the evidence since the trump campaign involvement. we know it does not rise to the level of criminal conspiracy. you can be convicted or committing a crime of o

bob mueller did not find chargeable collusion.emocrats calling for r a full releast of the report. let's get right to it our paul butler, eleanor cliff is here. a senior doj official and jean rossi. we have been doing a lot of laws here. eleanor, i turn to you on what washington thinks. what do they think of this collusion and barr who's taking a big swing with a big muscle move against the person who was the biggest muscle, affiliated with the doj, bob mueller. >> the resistance has spent the last 22 months with mueller and spending a lot of time and every jot and everything having to do with russia. the results of this have really made a lot of democrats question whether they put their faith in the wrong horse. and no one is going to bail on robert mueller. i think that's not appropriate. right now i think they're looking at barr, at the attorney general and wondering how rigged this whole thing may have been going in. >> did he work it this weekend? >> well, those hours spent pouring those many pages. if he had not come out of

. >> what do you think of bob mueller? >> i think bob mueller is an american hero.ob mueller is a guy, even though he came from an arguably privileged background, has a backbone of steel, he walked into a fire fight in vietnam to pull out one of his injured colleagues and was appropriately honored for that. i've known him for 30 years as a prosecutor and a friend, and i think the world of bob mueller. he is a very deliberate guy, but he's also a class act. and a very justice-oriented person. >> ty cobb also spoke about current trump lawyer, rudy giuliani, and his efforts to discredit this russia investigation. >> i was there for the white house. rudy is there to represent the individual. but keep in mind that you can criticize the strategy, it wouldn't have been my strategy. i don't feel the same way about mueller. i don't feel the investigation is a witch hunt. rudy and the president have been effective in a way that, you know, would not have been preferable for me, but they have ratcheted up the public's concerns about the investigation and its legitimacy. i objec

mueller replied. it would have been a bad idea. bob woodward is coming here. voided that face-to-face with mueller. that's coming up next in about a minute. about a minute i hear you, sister. stress can affect our minds. i call this dish, "stress." stress can also affect our bodies. so, i'm partnering with cigna to remind you that your emotional and physical health are more connected than you think. go in for your annual check-up. and be open with your doctor about anything you feel. physically, and emotionally. body and mind. cigna. together, all the way. that's better. run with us on a john deere 1 series tractor. beacuse changing your attachments, should be as easy as... what about this? changing your plans. yeah. run with us. search "john deere 1 series" for more. yeah. run with us. i'm a fighter. always have been. when i found out i had age-related macular degeneration, amd, i wanted to fight back. my doctor and i came up with a plan. it includes preservision. only preservision areds 2 has the exact nutrient formula recommended by the national eye institut

if bob mueller found no evidence of a conspiracy, bill bar would have told him that. he said we can't believe beyond a reasonable doubt. when the mueller report comes out, it will show what evidence there is in there against the president much of which he would just assume not be in the public domain. >> neil: but if barr got his interpretation wrong on the obstruction of justice, wouldn't mueller have corrected him by now? >> i don't think he got the interpretation wrong at all. >> neil: so that's why mueller didn't correct him? >> sure. >> neil: i'm sure jerry nadler and others, oh, wait a minute. that's the attorney general saying that. that's not mueller. >> i'm sure knowing barr and knowing his intellect, he got the bottom line correct. i'm also sure there's a lot of evidence in there that is damning for the president and the democrats want it out there so that they can secondguess bob mueller and bill barr as to whether it's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. then they'll want not just the 700-page report. it's a summary of two million pages of raw evidence. >> nei

bob mueller did not find chargeable collusion. democrats calling for r a full releast of the report. let's get right to it our paul butler, eleanor cliff is here. a senior doj official and jean rossi. we have been doing a lot of laws here. eleanor, i turn to you on what washington thinks. what do they think of this collusion and barr who's taking a big swing with a big muscle move against the person who was the biggest muscle, affiliated with the doj, bob mueller. >> the resistance has spent the last 22 months with mueller and spending a lot of time and every jot and everything vhaving to d with russia. the results of this have really made a lot of democrats question whether they put their faith in the wrong horse. and no one is going to bail on robert mueller. i think that's not appropriate. right now i think they're looking at barr , at the attorny general and wondering how rigged this whole thing may have been going in. >> did he work it this weekend? >> well, those hours spent pouring those many pages. if he had not come out o

first the letter makes it clear on the issue of election conspiracy bob mueller did not find chargeableonclusion. barr quotes mueller is stating members did not establish the campaign did not establish or coordinate with with the russian government in election activities. -- what barr himself writes, the report left unresolved what mueller viewed as difficult issues of law in fact concerning whether the president's actions and intent could be viewed as obstruction. dud not conclude the president committed a crime. barr also notes the report does not exonerate him. that is pretty important. barr's letter today tries to go further and declare donald trump who, appointed barr did not obstruct justice. quote we've concluded the evidence is not sufficient to establish the president committed an obstruction of justice offense. that's very important what you see here there and we have a special tonight that is going to tell you everything you need to know about what is real. what barr is saying mueller found and comma we know from a probe now concluded and what may be less than real because yo

bob mueller says specifically, this does not exonerate him. that was william barr's assessment of the bob mueller report. although he committed no crime, the report does not exonerate him. they also said that mueller found no obstruction. mueller did not find no obstruction. mueller laid out the evidence on both sides of the issue and allowed bill barr and rod rosenstein to make the decision. why continue to be misleading about good news? >> well, i think they take bill barr's assessment as exoneration on obstruction, and -- >> but sarah sanders in her statement said mueller exonerated the president on obstruction. >> i'm shocked by the conflation attempts by these folks. this is -- katy, as we know, this is what donald trump does, overexaggerates everything, whatever it is. and this is the pr head start that essentially the trump administration -- the president is getting, thanks to the fact that his attorney general that made this assessment. and this is where democrats are in a huge box here. we're all taking bill barr's word for the -- cle

the people that work for bob mueller whether democrats or republicans came together in a very thorough investigation. mueller walks away from this with everybody saying at least he's telling it straight and it underscored how important it is to be independent of the white house and this justice department achieved that in this case. >> i'm wondering what your perspective is on this. i know you thought there would be more indictments. >> i had been lead to believe that was a real possibility. the first thing is to recognize that the american system of justice has just delivered to president trump the greatest gift of his presidency and that is indeed said that he did not conspire with a foreign power. and in response we need to see what his first reaction is which was to declare war on his enemies and not to welcome this and as an opportunity to bring us together whatever he feels he might have been through. and when you look at what the democrats are doing or are about to do on the hill, the important thing is that we need to know every bit of what's in that report. there's a narrative

i have to admit, myself, i want to hear it from bob mueller. it from bob mueller. not william barr. not jerry nadler. i want to hear from bob mueller. >> i agree. chuck todd, good to see you. thank you. >> thanks, alex. >>> ahead on "up." david gura will talk about this with senator chris coons and representative pramila jayapal. l ♪ limu emu & doug what do all these people have in common, limu? [ paper rustling ] exactly, nothing. they're completely different people, that's why they need customized car insurance from liberty mutual. they'll only pay for what they need! [ gargling ] [ coins hitting the desk ] yes, and they could save a ton. you've done it again, limu. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ [zara larsson - "wow"] ♪ ♪ make you're jaw drop drop say oh my drop drop drop ♪ ♪ make u say oh my god my drop drop ♪ ♪ make you're jaw drop make u say oh my god ♪ (door bell rings) it's ohey. this is amazing. with moderate to severe ulcerative colitis, are you okay? even when i was there, i never knew when my sym

i trust bob mueller.itten a report based on the evidence he's found but we need to see the report. >> should barr -- barr seems to have -- >> an interesting question. >> on obstruction of justice when in fact that wasn't his position to editorialize on obstruction of justice because he was never going to indict the president anyway. >> yeah. i mean, you'd think a summary of the report would be a summary. maybe quotations of key paragraphs. that's what summaries are. not quotations of parts of sentences. no. he had to make his own conclusion i guess as attorney general. i believe he probably had the discretion to do so about what he found there to be -- he found obstruction of justice or not. put it this way, i know bill barr and i respect him. i don't think he'd go outside the four corners of the law doing his job, but he'd view it within his discretion as attorney general to act in a way he thought was right and he thought served the country and he thought served -- >> yet, he was hostile to this entire

first the letter makes it clear on the issue of election conspiracy bob mueller did not find chargeableonclusion. barr quotes mueller is stating members did not establish the campaign did not establish or coordinate with with the russian government in election activities. -- what barr himself writes, the report left unresolved what mueller viewed as difficult issues of law in fact concerning whether the president's actions and intent could be viewed as obstruction. dud not conclude the president committed a crime. barr also notes the report does not exonerate him. that is pretty important. barr's letter today tries to go further and declare donald trump who, appointed barr did not obstruct justice. quote we've concluded the evidence is not sufficient to establish the president committed an obstruction of justice offense. that's very important what you see here there and we have a special tonight that is going to tell you everything you need to know about what is real. what barr is saying mueller found and comma we know from a probe now concluded and what may be less than real because yo

they seem to be areas that are not sort of incidental pieces of information but core findings of bob muellerill have very serious questions. >> okay. >> on the obstruction matter, look, i read the original bill barr letter as saying that mueller wrote out a detailed fact ch factual account for dong evaluate the president's behavior rather than to sort of think about this in a traditional framework. i'm very sympatheticic to that that's what mueller did and so i am actually pretty optimistic that we are going to get in the relative short term a reasonable account of what bob mueller found. i think people should hold their breath, you know, and hold their anger until we don't get the results that we demand and respect. >> i assume it is all of this pressu pressure. >> congress so, you'll see them make the case they have been deprived of one of their powers granted to them under the constitution which is the ability to pursue impeachment proceedings. >> okay. so new drama involving the government of saudi arabia. why he think it may have played a l voing stolen text messages from his cell phone

will finally be heard. >> bob mueller believes in american institutions. institutions up to make the best decisions they can. >> and congress, the justice department, and the white house, may be on a collision course over just how much of mueller's entire investigation should be made public. >> thank you for that reporting. >>> massive effort underway to rescue more than 1,000 people stuck on a cruise ship. the shipment's engine has failed. whooo! want to take your next vacation to new heights? tripadvisor now lets you book over a hundred thousand tours, attractions, and experiences in destinations around the world! like new york! from bus tours, to breathtaking adventures, tripadvisor makes it easy to find and book amazing things to do. and you can cancel most bookings up to 24 hours in advance for a full refund. so you can make your next trip... monumental! read reviews check hotel prices book things to do tripadvisor so, you're open all day, that's what 24/7 means, sugar. kind of like how you get 24/7 access to licensed agents with geico. hmm? yeah, you

. >> will you accept bob mueller's conclusions in the report once you read the whole thing? >> i assume bob mueller being a very good and thorough professional that there will be good and adequate documentation and reasoning in the report to support his conclusions in which case it will assert them. if they don't have documentation they don't do it. >> if he didn't find evidence of collusion here, does that make you temper some of your investigations? >> i don't think it tempers the investigation. we have to look at whatever loose ends there are, and we have to look at whatever we don't know. >> do you plan on calling bob mueller to testify before your committee? >> if necessary, but that's a very big if. >> why would you say you wouldn't want to hear from him. i'll be honest, as an american citizen and as a taxpayer who helped take care of this report part of me would like to hear from him directly. >> that would be very pleasant, but the fact is he gave his report, he speaks through that report. if that report answers all our questions there would be no need to call him an

rob: well, you had to expected, trump reelection campaign pouncing on bob mueller's report releasingeo slamming democrats for all of those claims about collusion. jillian: are they helping his bid for reelection, big question there, here to weigh in republican strategists and ceo of american majority ned ryun, good morning, ned, you're getting chuckle right now 5:15 on the east coast anyway, what do you think this does to the president going forward? >> well, i think it absolutely helps him, guy, the reelection bid, even if mueller probe was continuing in 2020 and now i think he's been cleared of all collusion and i think all obstruction thing is complete joke and democrats will have a run time running against him if economy continues to be strong and policies continue to be success but the thing about it too that people aren't really i think though cussed -- focused on too much, do you think i'm so glad that we cleared misunderstanding and move on, heck no, the next 2 years would be problematic for the democrats. i would like to know where all of this started, i want to see the orig