joining us is democratic senator richard blumenthal and jeffrey toobin who has some questions for thesenator blumenthal, what is your reaction about the letter from mueller to barr and the phone call from mueller to barr? >> this letter is unquestionably an stunning rebuke of the attorney general of the united states. very significantly under mining, devastating his credibility and likely tomorrow in our hearing. there is going to be some tough questioning of him tomorrow about not only his four-page summary, which then mueller said in effect mischaracterized his report, but then why he doubled down three weeks later in a press conference and in effect lied again to the american people. i realize that characterization sounds harsh. we said it at the time. now we have bob mueller himself saying in effect that william barr's characterization was deceptive and misleading, in effect a lie to the american people. that's going to be reframing and adding a new dimension entirely to the questioning tomorrow. >> it certainly only raises the interest, i'm sure, by democrats at the very least to

i want to bring in cnn's chief legal analyst, jeffrey toobin. jeffrey, how big of a win is that? this one today for house democrats? >> well, it's another very important win, because the legal issue fundamentally is the same as the one yesterday regarding the accounting firm that did the president's taxes. the issue is, is this a legitimate subject for congressional oversight. does congress have the right to investigate this area? the president's lawyers have argued in both courts that this is a purely personal matter. it is not related to any sort of legislation, so congress should not be allowed to get those documents. that argument has now been convincingly rejected twice. and that, i think, is among the wa weakest of arguments that his lawyers will be raising. it's certainly a weaker argument than the don mcgahn executive privilege argument, which is upcoming but this one looks doomed in d.c., doomed today in manhattan. and we'll see if he does any better in the appeals court. >> how quickly could it make it to an appeals court? and could this potentially, eventually wind up

jeffrey toobin.hat the special counsel was not satisfied with the attorney general's summary, that initial four-page letter that he released of his conclusions. i want you to listen to barr's comments on this matter, both from last month and from earlier today. >> did bob mueller support your conclusion? >> i don't know whether bob mueller supported my conclusion. >> reports have emerged recen y 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 reports' findings. do you know what they're referencing with that? >> no, i don't. i answered a question and the question was relating to unidentified members who were expressing frustration over the accuracy relating to findings. i don't know what that refers to, at all. i talked directly to bob mueller, not members of his tea team. >> mr. barr, i feel your answer was purposefully misleadi

analyst jeffrey toobin and gloria borger. jeff, is it any surprise that rod rosenstein would push back at comey given what comey said? >> no. it's not. you can see why both of them take the positions that they do. just remember the history here. i think we take it for granted that everybody remembers, but the president wanted to fire james comey for one reason and one reason only, because of the russia investigation. and then he sends rod rosenstein off to invent a pretext to fire him. in the mueller report they use that word, a pretext, that he was fired because he was too mean to hillary clinton during the 2016 campaign. just a preposterous justification. the president then asks rosenstein to elaborate on that, to pretend that that's the real reason comey was fired. and that, to me, is, i mean, indefensible what rod rosenstein did and you can understand why comey is upset that rosenstein allowed himself to be used that way and then praised the president on the way out the door. the contention between the two is very much un

as jeffrey toobin knows, they will have paragraphs upon paragraphs and you can't do it without getting in trouble. it's not a function of inaccurately doing it, he went into it with a bias and an attempt to benefit the president of the united states and it completely backfired. so, you know, today we can thank robert mueller for looking out for the interests of the general public and the justice department because it looked that the leadership of the justice department wasn't quite there. >> jeff, what does this say about the attorney general? >> the reason this is such a big deal is that william barr will never do anything as attorney general remotely as important as that four-page letter. that was the defining moment of his service as attorney general, and the defining moment of the mueller report and he misled the public. >> wasn't that why he was hired? wasn't that his audition? >> depends how cynical you are. that's not what he's supposed to do. he's supposed to be an honest broker. he is supposed to be someone who is not the president's lawyer, who is not roy cohen, who is someon

jeffrey toobin, senator richard blumenthal says if donald trump jr.efies and ignores the subpoena he's received from the senate intelligence committee, says he should be jailed. that's what senator blumenthal is saying. is that a realistic outcome? >> no, it's not. it's just not going to happen. he is -- he is going to figure out a way to talk to the lawyers. his lawyers will talk to the committee. there hasn't been someone jailed for defying a congressional subpoena, certainly in decades. and it's just not going to happen. but i think this comment by senator blumenthal who is a former u.s. attorney, someone who is very familiar with the legal system, it's indicative of the level of frustration that democrats feel as person after person refuses to testify. documents are not produced. and they are frustrated. but don junior is not going to jail. >> the house speaker nancy pelosi, chris cillizza is now joining the judiciary chairman jerry nadler in declaring a constitutional crisis. has nancy pelosi, the speaker's political strategy, evolved in the face

back with us now, david chalian jeffrey toobin, and bianna golodryga.oining us david gregory. the president cleared something up after before tweeting, raising questions whether whether or not russia helped him get elected he asked that directly. he said russia did not help me get elected president, i got me elected. didn't help me at all. david gregory, the president also called robert mueller a true never trumper, which is the first time i believe i've heard donald trump say that about the special counsel. >> well, you've got a sad contrast between somebody in robert mueller who has conducted himself professionally and with integrity as a patriot, and the president who in his pet u lens i think is doing more to move the needle toward getting congress to initiate impeachment proceedings than anyone else. we have to refined ourselves there wouldn't have been a special counsel if the president hadn't brought this on himself. so that is this lack of self-control that our president of the united states displays on a near daily basis. again, the notion -- i

. >>> joining us to talk about everything happening this week, cnn chief legal analyst jeffrey toobin who has a new piece in "the new yorker" entitled "the constitutional system is not built to resist trump's defiance of congress." on that note, let's bring in jeffrey. >> good morning. >> the framers anticipated friction among the three branches of government which has been a constant throughout our history. the trump white house has established a complete blockade against the legislative branch, thwarted any meaningful oversight. the system, it appears, may simply be incapable of responding to this kind of challenge. jeffrey, we've already heard it. since the mueller report came out, since the various committees want to do these investigations, we have lawmakers on all the time. they seem -- fluk mocksed is not the right word, but at a lost of what they're going to do when these subpoenas and requestion for documents are requested? >> inherent contempt sounds like a robert ludlam novel. the idea that congress is going to throw the attorney general in prison for not cooperating, it's

elliott williams and cnn chief legalable list jeffrey toobin.how does this transcript reconcile with the trail already laid out in the mueller report and the president's tweets about the trump tower moscow? >> in a normal world we would have every reason to disbelieve michael cohen as a not particularly credible witness because he's already pled guilty. we have a long pattern laid out in section two of the mueller report of the president engaging in largely similar conduct, of trying to get people to at best be cute with their stories and at worst lie and we've seen it again and again and again and it's sort of happened multiple times. to some extent michael cohen's statements are at least supported and at best corroborated by sections of the mueller report. so he, again, you know, this is piggybacking on something evan had said. he's not wonderful witness, to put it charitably, but again, we've just seen this pattern from the president once again and it should surprise no one. >> jeff, there's a difference between the president and jay sekulow.

. >> want to bring in joe lock hart, former clinton white house press secretary and jeffrey toobin, cnn chief legal analyst. can we take a step back? the superlative, he lost more money than just about anybody >> bigly. >> it is staggering. >> you covered business for years. if you are losing more money than anybody, are you good at business? >> it doesn't make you the best businessman in the country which is what the president sold himself as which i think you can't under estimate the power of "the apprentice" and what it did for him on a national landscape where you had so many americans turn to him as a successful businessman. covering business, especially real estate in new york, any real estate expert didn't take him seriously. so many banks wouldn't deal with him. congress has now subpoenaed many banks, in particular deutsche bank. that was a bank that was his go-to lender. there was a facade of a man who was a primetime, big businessman over many, many decades. come to find out when he wrote his book, he was actually losing a ton of money. >> one of the amazing things about the s

jeffrey toobin, former federal prosecutor and chief legal analyst. great to have you here.o much happened yesterday. that's a day that will be written about in the history books for what happened. first let's talk about what's happening in the senate intel committee. led by republican richard burr. they have subpoenaed don, jr., the president's son. he said he was only going to testify once. those were his stipulations in 2017 when he testified. there was inconsistency. they want to hear from him and tell him the significance >> the mueller report clearly said he doesn't agree to speak to mueller's investigators. he spoke to the committee in 2017. but the questions about the plan for trump tower moscow is the june 9th meeting in trump tower in the aftermath. the lies that were told about that. donald trump, jr., was intimately involved. one of the questions the senate intelligence committee is dealing with is the counter-intelligence side of this which is what was the relationship between trump and russia. the question -- >> that seems important. what, of course, is very st

we'll have jeffrey toobin on in a little bit.anaugh was placed on the supreme court he said this is the end of roe v. wade. he will be the deciding vote. is it that simple? >> that's what the sponsors of the bills are backing. it contradicts what kavanaugh allegedly told senators about roe v. wade that this is settled law, stare decisis, yet there is a different message from his appointment. all those who said this isn't an issue, culture wars, running values up through the courts because the people in the states seem to have gotten a different message. >> there are all sorts of cases now that journalists are finding of people who would be forced to have children, for instance. an 11-year-old rape victim in ohio. >> yes. >> she would be forced to have the child. >> there was a vote as to whether there would be an exception for cases of raper o incest and it failed. children who are definitionally the victims of rape because we have statutory rape laws in the country would be forced to bear the children >> the fetus has to have a

. >> joining us now is jeffrey toobin, former federal prosecutor and chief cnn analyst. margaret thalev, cnn political analyst and michael smerconish. >> you look refreshed. >> i feel refreshed. >> moving on. justin amash, it is hard, jeffrey, to see a tipping point in real time. only sometimes after the fact do you look back at watergate and say that was the watershed moment. it's hard to know what it means that this republican has publicly said that, quote, president trump engaged in impeachable conduct. >> it's striking given the republican unanimity behind donald trump. however, i would very much doubt this is the beginning of a flood. the republican party is so unified behind donald trump. i always quote john boehner, the former speaker who likes to say there is no more republican party. there is only a trump party. that's where we are now. justin amash is in the libertarian camp, but i don't see anyone, much less the stampede among republicans. >> you can't say as goes amash so goes the republican party or so goes anyone? >> i think the response was very interesting

jeffrey toobin, you were on "new day" when brett kavanaugh was being confirmed and you predicted this would be the end of roe v. wade. here is a challenge. what do you see next? >> the end of roe v. wade. president bush -- candidate trump -- bush? i don't know. candidate donald trump said repeatedly he was going to appoint justices to the supreme court who would vote to overturn roe v. wade. what he meant by that, i think, was he will appoint justices to the supreme court who will vote to overturn roe v. wade. >> sounds like it. >> that's what he's done. there have been two confirmations -- anthony kennedy who was a vote for roe v. wade has been replaced by brett kavanaugh who will vote to overturn it. there are now five votes on the court to overturn roe v. wade. all alabama is doing is following the news. they have seen who was appointed to the supreme court and elections have consequences. this is one of them. >> obviously we need to wait and see what happens. this will be appealed. the law will be overturned in federal district court and appeals court to get it to the supreme cour

jeffrey toobin says the most obvious is impeachment. do you go there? >> look.e along the party lines. you've seen leaders, speaker pelosi, senate majority leader chuck schumer and others say i don't think we're at impeachment yet. i think there's a question of this president's conduct and you even got to make him understand and answer to the american people is he competent enough to lead this country. so i don't think you want to push for impeachment yet, but i do think there needs to be more oversight. >> it's on deck. >> it's on deck. i'm a person who believes in order to beat donald trump in 2020 we need a moderate candidate that can talk about some of the things this president has done and what he or she would do if they become president. >> brian, do you think the republic republicans -- do you think the president is trying to goad the democrats into an impeachment? >> absolutely. it would be a gift wrapped christmas present for donald trump if they would go to impeachment. you want to know why? middle america, wisconsin and michigan who put trump over the

i will talk to jeffrey toobin who did testify when he was no longer nixon's white house counsel. -♪ justother family ♪ the house, kids, they're living the dream ♪ ♪ and here comes the wacky new maid ♪ -maid? uh, i'm not the... -♪ is she an alien, is she a spy? ♪ ♪ she's always here, someone tell us why ♪ -♪ why, oh, why -♪ she's not the maid we wanted ♪ -because i'm not the maid! -♪ but she's the maid we got -again, i'm not the maid. i protect your home and auto. -hey, campbells. who's your new maid? >>> more breaking news. cnn has learned that house judiciary chairman jerry nadler told democratic leaders he's prepared to move forward with the contempt of congress vote for william barr unless they agree to his set of demands and he sent a letter to don mcgahn threatening to do the same to him if he doesn't appear before the committee and the white house told mcgahn not to comply with a subpoena for certain documents and one of the key questions the judiciary committee wants is did president trump obstruct justice. those from democrat and republican administrations say yes and signed an o

. >> joining us now is cnn chief legal analyst jeffrey toobin, jim baker along with former deputy assistant attorney general elliot williams. jeffrey, first of all barr is saying he doesn't think investigators committed treason as a legal matter. >> you know, he's got this phlegmatic style. everything seems matter of fact. it's important to remember just how extraordinary what's going on is. he is ordering a new investigation, probably the third investigation of what you described correctly as court-ordered surveillance, an authorized investigation of the highest officials of the fbi. so it's not just that there was no treason. there couldn't possibly be any treason, because treaso is helping a foreign adversary in a time of war. and his matter of fact attitude about that i think camouflages just what a serious matter this all is. >> it's sort of normalizing what is abnormal situation? >> exactly, exactly. >> jim, it's your former colleagues the president is accusing of treason. are you surprised the attorney general didn't just put all that talk to rest today? >> well, he made a legal conc

. >> let me get jeffrey toobin into the conversation as well. let me read a couple sentence toss give some context. this is from the "washington post" which had some quotes from the mueller letter to war. the summary letter the department sent to congress and released to the public did not fully capture the context, nature and substance of this office's work and conclusions. that we've been reading. here is the next sentence, though, there is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. this threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the department appointed the special counsel to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations. how do you see it? >> well, what happened here is, i think, an example of no good deed goes unpunished. what the mueller office said was we can't say that there is a prosecutorial -- that we have the right to prosecute the president. it would be unfair to say there is a prosecutorial case if there is no chance for the president to respond, as he could in a tr

we'll take this up with our chief legal analyst, jeffrey toobin, in our next segment and something we'll ask our next guest about as well. there's certainly plenty to talk about with adam schiff, chairman of the house intelligence committee, who joins us now. there are various interpretations of what mueller said today, one of which is that he was essentially calling on congress to do their constitutional duty and begin impeachment proceedings against the president. is that how you interpreted what he said? >> again, i think mueller was more than capable of asserting that if that's the conclusion that he had reached, that the president should be impeached. but, no, he said, this is now in the hands of congress. and i think that leaves it open to congress to determine whether to investigate this through its oversight powers, whether to initiate impeachment proceedings. there were really two things bob mueller was not prepared to say. he was not prepared to say that we were able to exonerate the president. he reiterated once again that while he didn't have the power to indict, he did have

jeffrey toobin our chief legal analyst is with us now.e broader context for us here because there are two indiana laws that the justices were reviewing here, there is another ultrasound one that we're waiting to hear on if they will hear that case. talk about what happens now and the fact that they upheld the seventh circuit's decision on the other part of the indiana law which was about the woman's motivation for having an abortion. >> right. this is all the fallout of brett kavanaugh being confirmed to replace anthony kennedy. anthony kennedy was a firm vote to support a woman's right to choose abortion. brett kavanaugh we don't know his views exactly, although we do know that president trump said he would appoint people to the bench who will vote to overturn roe v. wade. so in state after state, in more conservative states, they have passed laws restricting the right to abortion. indiana is one of them. the most extreme came from alabama just a couple of weeks ago. but there are many of these -- these laws that are now working their wa

jeffrey toobin has more details of this investigation clearly emerge.lose to the white house tells cnn the president is, quote, annoyed and frustrated. we've certainly seen some of that frustration emerge in the course of this week, involving the president's behavior. >> well, and for the first time, we saw robert mueller say what was in the mueller report, but, you know, most people get their news from screens, not from the printed word. and you have robert mueller saying there was no way, based on the evidence before me that we could exonerate the president from obstruction of justice. that is a profound thing for a prosecutor to say. that is something the president certainly didn't want to hear. and it is clear, i think, that robert mueller is going to be testifying before congress at some point, though he doesn't want to do it. so this story, this report, investigation, is not going away, and you can see why he's annoyed by it. i would be annoyed if someone was saying i committed crimes, too. >> he's obviously annoyed. earlier in the week, though, s

jeffrey toobin is back with us. rudy giuliani says this is a bunch of hog wash, you can't believe michael cohen, you have to believe jay sekulow. but if sekulow did do that, help him lie essentially to congress is that illegal? >> i think the important point to realize here is that jay sekulow was dealing with information that his client gave him. so the issue isn't so much was jay sekulow lying, the issue was was he lied to by his client and trying to align cohen with trump? i really don't think there is any likely misconduct here by jay sekulow. >> okay. >> i think the real question here is was donald trump trying to get a false narrative out there about the trump tower moscow meeting. >> we know the president has lied repeatedly about issues in this investigation, one of the most explicit is about the stormy daniels payments. i know the white house strategy here is to say, well, michael cohen is a liar. >> right. >> that said we know, for instance, in court proceedings here in new york regarding his campaign fina

jeffrey toobin, to me, it seems as if this puts a lot of pressure on william barr.oing to learn a lot about barr in the next 24 hours if he responds to this. he has said he's okay with mueller testifying in the past. now the president says no, so is barr the principled attorney general or is he just carrying water for the president? >> well, that is the question. and we'll need an answer very soon. another development over the weekend was david cicilline, the member of the house judiciary committee, saying it looked like there was a tentative deal for mueller to testify on may 15th. cicilline walked that back a little bit, but obviously, this is a very live issue about mueller's testimony. the judiciary committee wants him sooner rather than later. you know, i don't know what's going to happen. the president is the boss of the attorney general. he has now spoken out. i, you know, we'll see. ask abby phillips. ask her. >> but he's not the boss of robert mueller. >> that's exactly the question that i have. but it's not clear to me that president trump has the ability

joining us now david gregory, cnn political analyst and jeffrey toobin former federal prosecutor and cnn chief legal analyst. this morning the president's son ask under subpoena. >> that is true. >> i can imagine a time when that in and of itself, jeffrey, would be a very stunning head line. >> like malia obama never subpoenaed, not even once. >> as far as we know is that correct. the most interesting part of the story is who issued the subpoena, which is the republican-led senate intelligence committee. >> it really -- it damages the narrative that the investigation of russia and the contacts between the campaign and russian interests are a complete democratic idea and, you know, to keep a political attack on the president. the fact that richard burr, the chairman of the committee, a republican from north carolina, authorized this subpoena is very significant and that's why you see there is so much push back against him from rand paul, another republican senator, and, of course, from donald trump jr. himself who calls burr a so-called republican in his response. >> before we get to t

and as jeffrey toobin says there, is he going to comment on his congressional testimony solely?y general? will he in any way characterize his filings or attempt to clear up. and we should note he did send not one but two letters to the attorney general following his summary of the special counsel's findings to say that, in fact, they had not been reflected accurately in those statements coming from the attorney general. sarah westwood is at the white house now. sarah, probably too early to get reaction from the white house, but i imagine this is a statement that they will not only be watching very closely but perhaps nervously as well. >> reporter: that's absolutely right, jim. we don't know what mueller is going to say. we don't know if the white house was given a heads up that the special counsel was going to make a statement. and president trump has sort of gone back and forth on whether he believes that mueller should speak out publicly. he has said that it should be up to the attorney general whether mueller should testify, but he's also taken to at which time for say that

we are a long way from that nowadays. >> jeffrey toobin, i want to come to you. you often ask the question, well, what will it matter because the president won't lose his supporters under any circumstances. i do think when he does things like this with commenting about vice president biden overseas like this he does cap out his possible support and give an opportunity for the democrats to focus on something other than the economy. if they can make this about values, if they can make this about, you know, the president just does things that are offensive to our national ideals, then maybe it is an opportunity. >> it is true that during the 2018 midterms the suburban moderates, many of them republicans, went in significant numbers to democrats. that was a change. the president won a lot of those people in michigan, in pennsylvania, in wisconsin. a lot of them went over to the democrats and in part one thing you heard from them was they didn't like the way he behaved in office. they didn't like the tweets. so in that respect potentially it might matter, but in terms

really defrauded its listeners you know for months and months in the beginning i was on debating jeffrey toobin i was on with the lemon with anderson cooper with cuomo and i was the only liberal democrat who was saying wait a minute the evidence isn't here the constitution protects the president's right to punish they didn't want to hear that on the air it was ok to hear extreme right wing republicans defend trump down the line and extreme people on the left attacked him but they didn't want a centrist thoughtful liberal democrat telling their viewers that this is complicated and this is difficult so for the last eight months they banned me from there and it turns out then that the viewers just got a misguided view they were shocked at the outcome because they had been assured by their pundits that there was going to be indictments impeachments you name it but the people who heard diverse points of view on other channels weren't as surprised so c.n.n. really owes an apology to its listeners and to you know the american public but c.n.n. and amisom b.c. they will never apologize i mean even afte

. >> and jeffrey toobin, you read the five page letter from emmet flood.ot one of his personal attorneys, this is white house counsel. is it legally the sound that he makes here? >> the thing that is so particular about this is that robert mueller would you say as to indict the president. he was pound he was bound by the opinion that a sitting president cannot be indicted. so how you can criticize him for not asking for an indictment is amazing to me. robert mueller was trying to be fair, he was trying to say look, you because of the president can't defend himself, if i say he should be indicted, i'm not going to come to a conclusion so ilg layout the evidence and just let people draw their own conclusions. in return, he gets slammed by the white house here for failing to come to a decision. so i don't think that any of this will change people's minds particularly. but it does seem like a particularly unfair criticism of mueller. >> and the white house counsel echl mitt flood emmet flood is accusing robert mueller of playing politics. >> i mean you can acc

discuss this and more, we have david gregory, cnn political analyst, brianna, cnn contributor, and jeffrey toobin, chief legal analyst. jeffrey, once and for all, is congress entitled to see the full, unredacted mueller report or not? >> well, let's put it this way, there has never been a court, ever, that has said congress is not entitled to a tax return -- >> first, the mueller report. >> oh, i'm sorry. the mueller report. >> isn't there precedent that things like the starr report -- i know it is different -- but are released to congress? are they in the right when they want to see the unredacted report? >> that one is a little bit of a closer question, the mueller report. grand jury material usually requires a separate court order in order to be disclosed outside of a certain numerated list of people. that court order has not been obtained. if the justice department wanted to cooperate, if the justice department wanted to share the mueller report, there's no doubt that they could. they could set the process in motion. they haven't done it. in terms of a subpoena, i think that issue is closer t

joining us, jeffrey toobin, bianna gol dreeg ga. what we were talking about with jeffrey last hour, some people are saying this is a tipping point to hear a republican, a conservative republican or libertarian republican come out and say that what he sees in the mueller report is an impeachable offense. i think it's hard so spot while you're living it, only in retrospect. what do you think the significance of this is? >> i don't anticipate this as a tipping point. if you look at the response that immediately came from the president, he's making it clear from other republicans that he will damage them politically if he's taken on by them. he has a track record. he has people who were in congress who are no longer in congress because the tweet done was pointed at them. so i don't expect there to be an outbreak of courage or moral character from republicans that's been missing for the last two years, but it is a messaging problem for the president. he can no longer say this is just about democrats and a witch hunt. you now have a republ

let's bring in our political and legal expert, jeffrey toobin.cant is it donald trump jr. is being subpoenaed by the republican-led senate judiciary committee? >> this is not the house under democratic control, this is the republican controlled. and they have been doing a largely bipartisan investigation unlike the house of matters relating to russia. one of the very notable facts in the mueller report donald trump jr. did not speak to the investigators and it is possible he will not speak to the senate. the question is how will he do that? will he take the fifth which he's entitled to do? will he not show up or will he testify? all of those options are now on the table. he has to come up with an answer and soon. >> if he pleads the fifth, laura jarrett, you're an expert in the area, or if he doesn't show up what would result from that? >> well, two different possibilities. both are messy. if he pleads the fifth, the committee could try to offer him immunity in exchange for his testimony. we've seen offers like that before that gets criqui if a p

we are in a real crisis if the judiciary doesn't step in to enforce the checks and balances >> jeffrey toobinmething in the new yorker. he'll be on later. the constitution isn't built for this >> right. >> what happened with the trump white house is they are exploiting the fact that there is no precedent for this. it shows how when norms are broken sometimes the system can't handle it. there is another interesting point, laura. the president was writing over the weekend about don mcgahn. there are concrete things that still could happen that, to me, are pivotal. one is will don mcgahn testify before congress and what might he say? this is what the president wrote on that. he says i was not going to fire bob mueller and didn't fire bob mueller. he was allowed to finish his report with unprecedented help from the trump administration, except for the fact that i didn't testify. actually don mcgahn had a better chance of being fired than mueller. never a big fan. this doesn't seem a smart way to talk about somebody who might decide to go testify and say things that aren't flattering >> this is cl

and jeffrey toobin. who's best selling book explores the inner workings of the supreme court. kirsten, how do you see the significance of what has just happened in alabama? >> well, i mean, i think it is significant on a lot of different levels. there's obviously a lot of people talking about the political significance of it. i think that republicans have made pretty clear not just with this but i think with the infant born alive act which is something that ben sasse sponsored and all of the republicans voted for, that they're making abortion first of all a political issue in 2020. there's the legal implications of it, which jeffrey can get into more, about the fact that it is not just alabama passing bills like this, there are other states and they're doing it in part because that's what they believe, also because they want to get something to the supreme court because they hope the supreme court will overturn it. then there's just the substantive impact of it, which is incredibly extreme. it is something that's even caused division in the pro-life community, the idea of not

. >> you know jeffrey toobin, you heard kara say maybe there is one option, maybe he would answer writtenstions that were posed by the senate intelligence committee. do you think that's enough for chairman burr? >> it might be. chairman burr is not someone who likes to pick fights with the president of the united states and that may be a face-saving compromise for all concerned, but let's just talk about the law. i mean, the law is not that, well, i spoke to you once, i don't have to speak to you again. it is routine for people to be subpoenaed repeatedly to the grand jury or any other proceeding so the idea that because he spoke once he somehow has immunity from being called back, that's simply not true. now this is a political situation more than it is a legal one and burr in particular is going to have to navigate his duties as chairman, and he did agree to the subpoena, but how much he wants to poke at the president and his son, that's really what -- the stage we're at now. perhaps written questions will be a compromise he can live with. >> that's interesting you have senator lindsey

chief legal analyst jeffrey toobin, and senior analyst david gergen, who's been in the west wing in moments like this, i'm not sure exactly like this. what did you learn about how this went down today? was this planned out? was everybody in the white house on board with the idea? >> it was planned out but it was not some white house wide thing. it was basically decided on after pelosi's remark this morning where she said he had been part of a cover up or cover ups or something to that effect, and he was triggered by that remark. he told his aides he was in a bad mood, he has been for a few days, he told his aides he he wanted to go ahead and make a point about this. what was the point of having this meeting with nancy pelosi was going to say this. we're overlooking he has been accused of cover up by prosecutors in the southern district in the michael cohen case, in terms of the hush money payments in terms of women who claimed to have affairs with him. i don't think that's related to why he got this upset. i think he wanted to make a loud production that would obscure the actual remark, and

lots to discuss with cnn chief legal analyst, jeffrey toobin, david urban, and cnn legal analyst, carriero. so jeff, this investigation into the investigators, this is what the president has been calling for. so, to say he knows nothing about it or didn't ask for it, do you buy that? >> not only don't i buy it, think about the chilling message it sends to career non-political people in the fbi, in the justice department. what it means is, if you defy the president's wishes, his political appointees like the attorney general, they won't initiate one investigation, they won't initiate two. three investigations of you for doing your job. it's a really chilling message. this is a completely unnecessary investigation by the connecticut u.s. attorney. i don't know that that's really what this investigation is going to be about. i think that would be a useful aspect of the investigation. but that may or may not be the direction. >> you know, anderson, i would just point out that the u.s. attorney in connecticut, who's undertaking this, is hardly a rapid partisan. >> jeff? >> that may be, but le

jeffrey toobin had quite the prediction last year when it comes to this issue. let's listen. let's talk about what america is going to be like that's different. you are going to see 20 states pass laws banning abortion outright, just banning abortion, and because they know that there are now going to be five votes on the supreme court to overturn roe v. wade, and abortion will be illegal in a significant part of the united states in 18 months. there is just no doubt about that. >> joan, what is the reality of where this goes from here? when could this reach the supreme court? >> okay. so let me just start by saying that none of the laws in this recent chapter we have had from alabama, from georgia, mississippi, louisiana, ohio, the ones where they're talking bans for six-week fetal heartbeat bans, those are not going to ever be able to take effect as the law is written now because the supreme court -- the current supreme court -- has said that government cannot put an undue burden on a woman's right to end a pregnancy before the fetus is viable and that's at about 24 weeks, i

jeffrey toobin, let me begin with you. the fact, mueller is a registered republican, sw ununanimously confirmed by the senate in 2001, 2011, the president may think he is a never trumper, he never went to the white house looking to be fbi director. those are all important facts. >> i thought those 17 minutes were an excellent case study in the difficulty of covering donald trump because there were so many lies, so many lies, one on top of the other, that if we're doing our job, which is, i think, to try to tell people what the truth is, you know, we would spend the entire hour just going through them. you know, the fact that he's not -- he's not a never trumper, he never asked for the fbi job, he did not have a conflict of interest about business, he did not exonerate the president of obstruction of justice. i mean, all -- and that's just part of -- >> but, jeffrey, you're right. what's interesting, though, is that the president wouldn't spend his time attacking mueller in that way with those lies if he didn't still see hi

. >> and jeffrey toobin who's here constantly, cnn's chief legal analyst. okay! >> sick of me here, you'll be sick of me in the new studio. >> i look forward to being sick of you. all right, let me do a dramatic reading, if you all will indulge me of -- i want you to tell me if this sounds like obstruction to you. this is the transcript of a phone call to michael flynn from john dowd, we think, the president's attorney, to michael flynn as he is cooperating with robert mueller. what does this sound like to you, jeffrey? here is what it says, this is what john dowd says to michael flynn. "it wouldn't surprise me if you'd gone on to make a deal with the government. if there's information that implicates the president, well, then, we've got a national security issue, so, you know, we need some kind of heads up, um, you know, just for the sake of protecting all of our interests, if we can. remember what we've always said about the president and his feelings towards flynn and that still remains." i find that just fascinating, the psychology of this voice mail to micha

jeffrey toobin is with us. so on this decision by this federal district court judge, you've got a 41-page document. i don't know if you've had a chance to go through it all. but basically sided with house democrats, rejecting the argument of the president and his lawyers that the president's former accounting firm has to hand over all of this information to congress. how big of a deal is this? >> this one's a big deal, because unlike don mcgahn, unlike the white house itself, the president doesn't control this accounting firm. i mean, this accounting firm has the documents itself. and they are going to have to make this decision about whether they are going to comply with this season. that's a very different scenario than employees or former employees of the white house and whether they comply. so, this accounting firm is going to have a tough choice of what to do. presumably, the president will go to the court of appeals and try to get a stay, but if he doesn't get a stay, i don't know if this accounting firm