former federal prosecutor laura coates and -- we start with you.nalysis of the law empowers what the president did or to be fixed? >> it is a circular argument to suggest that he can solve a problem of what he created. the executive order he signed is one that doesn't have much teeth and the reason is because you have the flores agreement. >> 1997. >> and of course solidified in 2014 and 2015 and the 9th circuit and the limitation on detaining and undermining the rights given to people even if they are undocumented. >> so that forced him to separate the family, so he was following the law. >> in part. that is justification, you cannot detain for that lengthy period of time and the de facto result is to do so. however, we are talking misdemeanors based on a zero tolerance policy it was influenced by a policy that required a result doesn't mean the law contemplated that. the decision was based in part on the abuse of children in detention facilities, housed with people unrelated to them and routinely stripped search and forced to sleep with men and w

. >> i want to bring in laura coates. she is a former federal prosecutor and a cnn legal analyst. laura, good to see you. >> good to see you. >> what's most significant about this article disclosing that. there was another meeting in florida with a russian that was not disclosed to russian investigators, but they were interviewed about it through --. they were never talking to anybody who was tied to the russian government or was a russian. you have, again, this sort of lecture happening. then it spurs. what it does is cast additional clouds of suspicion on people like roger stone, on tho were advocating that he was telling the truth . it's making the probe all the more suspicious and it's right for a visa. >> stone met the pretext there was dirt on hillary clinton. they didn't take the bait of the $2 million fered. does that make a difference? >> no, it doesn't. it's not about the exchange of money that may be the issue here. it's about whether or not you were trying to use a foreign national or government agency in some way to try to influence an election here in the -- even if y

senior legal analyst laura coates. was always expected to be taken to task by this report. you used to work at the justice department. you were a federal prosecutor. this inspector general, michael w horowitz, i think, has worked on this. >> the whole job of the ig is to ensure that there is credibility and that no one is trying to abuse their power or the system, which is in direct countntradicn to the president of the united states. i, too, was critical of james comey. it should not shock anyone to think there was authority of the prosecutors in charge of that case whether or not to charge hillary clinton, then-candidate in the and the dnc nominee, it was a difficult decision to make. even rosenthal has talked about that issue. loretta lynch also taken into task on the same vein about this, because it comes into question what james comey had to say about his ambivalence which caused him to take that investigation authority. it may be very impactful. >> josh, you once worked as a special assistant to comey, but the bi

federal prosecutor laura coats, and former white house lawyer, jim schults.oth for coming on a friday night. coats, do you believe that an analysis of the law empower what the president did or empowers what he did to be if i canned? >> well, first of all, it's kind of a circular argument to suggest he can solve a problem that he created and get full credit of doing so. an executive order that was signed is one that doesn't have much teeth. you got the flores agreement -- >> 1997. >> -- 1997 and solidified in the ninth circuit. talk about the limitations the government can detain for a lengthy time over 20 days or -- >> so, didn't that force him to separate the families because he can't keep kids the same way he cannot keep the adults and what's what the flores agreement said and he was following the law? >> in part. because the court says you can't detain for that lengthy period of time, the only end result is to do so. we're talking about a misdemeanor base under a zero-tolerance policy. the fact it was implemented by the policy that required the result. the

laura coates is also here and a former federal prosecutor.ust discussed with david gergen severe he thinks the potential -- whatever manafort was trying to tamper for, it could be very severe that he was willing to risk being thrown in jail even before his trial. could you talk to us about what tampering with a witness allegedly, two witnesses, in this case according to mueller could look like? >> certainly. you have two phrases, one is called influencing or intimidating, the others supporting perjury -- >> i can't hear laura, can you guys? >> there's two different schools of thought in terms of tampering with a witness. one is the idea of subvorting perjury. you're trying to get them to provide false testimony in an effort to get your story straight that's other than the truth. the other notion is to intimidate or try to influence them or try to ensure that they're not able to give a comprehensive or truthful testimony. it can be in the form of physical violence or intimidationften times you're talking about a case like this, it's much more

here to discuss cnn political commentators charles blow and steve cortez and cnn legal analyst laura coates. so, laura, colin kaepernick's legal team expected to seek subpoenas related to the quarterback's collusion case against the nfl. do they have a shot at getting testimony from either of them? >> they do. and here's why. first of all, it's not ironic and not lost on me that you have collusion cases that are putting the president between a rock and a hard place. one being the russia investigation which he believes no collusion exists and one being this collective bargaining grievance filed by colin kaepernick about this issue. of course what this is all saying is that the president of the united states in some way influenced or conspired with team owners in the nfl to try to avoid having them ever play again. and that has been the result with kaepernick who hasn't played since 2016. the idea of the subpoena, though, has to go through two steps. the first one being is you actually have to have the arbitrator agree they have a substantive claim in which there's testimony between these peo

laura coats here as well. senior prosecutors. good evening to you all. laura, mueller as not messing around. i want your takethis rtand the seriousness of this allegation that manafort is witness tampering. >> that's a very very serious offense. we've been talking for better part of a year-and-a-half about the consequences of obstructing justice, by trying to get somebody to interfere with an ongoing investigation. if you tamper with a witness you are trying to get somebody to give false testimony and mislead investigators, mislead prosecutors and mislead the court, all of which are offenses against the american people and american court system. it's egregious whether you already have somebody who by the grace of the court is allowed not to remain in jail pending the trial in july and one coming in september, and given the opportunity to be home on house attention and many opportunities that people are not given when they are considered to be alleged filings in our court of law. he was granted that ability to have lenience and trying to commit crimes whil

let's bring in julia and laura coats. hello to both of you. ura, i want to get your reaction to this. mattis news, 21 jag lawyers reazioned to help process the immigration cases, will that make a den do you think? >> no, given the fact that you have 600,000 courti according t recent reports in 2013. you have an enormous backlog and a disinterest for presidents to have more judges. so, even if you have the prosecutors there, who i'm sure will be effective trying to expedite everything. if you don't have the judges to rock siel the cases and you have this enormous backlog, even having a small number of people who are devoted to this process won't make much of a den. i do hope that it does and do a good thing to try to undermine that backlog. >> julia, let's talk about this executive order. you say it is a bridge to another crises. are you saying thing could get even worse? >> they could. and look, if the written executive order, which is agencies appear to have no idea what they're doing. there's no victory here. first of all, it is setting up, y

i want to bring in cnn legal analyst laura coates, a former federal prosecutor, jack quin, and nelsonunningham, also a fo former white house counsel under bill clinton. good evening. i appreciate all of you being on. laura, we're hearing the first action from president trump's legal team. his attorney, rudy giuliani, was on fox news tonight and he's reacting to the report with a few interesting demands. >> mueller should suspend his investigation, and he should go see rod rosenstein who created him and the deputy attorney general and attorney general sessions who should now step up big time to save his department should suspend that investigation. i believe that rod rosenstein and jeff sessions have a chance to redeem themselves. and that chance comes about tomorrow. doesn't go beyond tomorrow. tomorrow mueller should be suspended and honest people should be brought in, impartial people to investigate these people like struck. struck should be in jail by the end of next week. >> laura, do his demands make any sense given what the ig report actually concludes? >> it makes sense to furt

joining us now is laura coates, david chalian back with us as well.nt to ask what the implications are of this ruling. i ask in light of what happened yesterday. the supreme court struck down objections to the travel ban. it will hold. that is an immigration related matter. will that have an impact here? >> well, interesting you make that power electrical. this particular implementation of immigration policy has to follow that same track record. remember, the reason there was a 5-4 decision it caused great chaos, confusion among the agencies. a third or fourth person travel ban that the supreme court said that is a go on. this is the first instance of it. and, again, the court has recognized before and could follow the same supreme court logic and say, listen, you have to have a way that is not going to cause mass chaos even if you have immigration basis in your executive authority. this tracks the same sort of lodge you can. this is a signal to the trump administration that, olympic, you have to have some end resulted in mind and some process for reu

. >> laura coats, your initial thoughts on this thing. >> i thought this was a 500 pages worth of deputy and loretta lynch deserves also om plame for cutting the meeting short on the red carpet with bill clinton. for so many months the fbi and those around us that are supportive of them have said that agents have been able to compartmentalize their private, political views from their professional direct irs. the reason the foye by not prioritizing the anthony weiner happen dopp emthe ability of the agents in that sliver of the investigative team and there's a very, very wide breadth of agents availability. ultimately you are seeing a tale here of a quest to try to it's a nurse with the again fit then wapd in the e-mail probe. >> when is going out on a limb. we're about to hear from sarah sanders. you might take something for your heart... or joints. but do you take something for your brain. with an ingredient originally found in jellyfish, prevagen is the number one selling brain-health supplement in drug stores nationwide. prevagen. the name to remember. my dai need my blood sugar i'to

let's bring in phil mudd and laura coates. phil, i want to start with you.big news that came from this in so far as we can tell, and it was a closed door hearing. it would have been nice had we been able to see what has gone in o in there. when robert mueller found out about the anti-trump text, apparently he didn't press strzok for more information about them. he just fired him. this is being looked on two different ways. republicans are saying, well, how come mueller didn't look into it more? democrats are saying what more do you want, he fired the guy right away. >> let me summarize having worked four and a half years for robert mueller. what his response was, i suspect, is he sits up and says, look, this will be portrayed as an event. he knows washington. he is saying a guy is trying to impress his girlfriend. what am i supposed to say? son, you're out of here. let me prepare for the political heat afterwards. i'm sure he looked at this and made a quick judgment that there was not a lot of there there. >> should we have, and we are only hearing through l

laura coates and patrick healy. thanks to all. harry, you heard the reporting. trump allies are afraid cohen could flip at any moment. some are very afraid. one said looking at the epd of a barrel. this could be imminent. is there a deadline on him fl >> there's no deadline on him flipping, but there's a difference between whether you cooperate before inindictments or after assuming he is to be indicted. to cooperate before red better inindictmeninindictmendictment. it's a little less stressful than being indicted. having to be arain raigned. so if we assume that the government had evidence to get the search warrant, we can assume they had enough to p indict thim hill. >> imminent would be ir. >> yeah, conceivably, the next four to six wee maybe. >> so what cohen is clearly afraid here, he's sources telling cnn he's fully aware. at this point, that he could be. when you're facinhat he's facing, there's reason for team trump to be worried he could flip. the guy is his long time partner is cooperating to avoid 100-year possibl prison term. there's real risk. >> wh

we're joined by mika henderson, laura coates and cnn national security analyst, former senior adviser to the national security adviser under president obama. laura, if i could start with you. i was jotting down a rough list of the things cohen would know about president trump. including business meetings with russians, personal affairs, payments with women he had relationships with or allegedly had relationships with, but also conversations with the president because michael cohen kept recordings. from a lawyer's perspective, what danger does this put the president in if he decides to cooperate? >> enormous legal jeopardy if the content of those conversation criminal in nature. the discussion about rigamaro, his everyday occurrences that were non-legal, that wouldn't be interested to anyone else. but if it's illegal, he has lost his bearings. previously when he talks about this case, president trump said he's not his lawyer, not anymore, and when he was his lawyer, it was a small sliver of the work he was doing. we had someone overseeing the documents who said not even a tenth of the

so let's bring in our expert, cnn national security analyst juliette kian and cnn legal analyst laura coatsi want to get your reaction. 21 jag lawyers to help process illegal immigration cases. will that make a dent in the problem, do you think? >> no. given the fact that you have 600,000 according to the most recent reports, deportation cases currently on the books. an enormous immigration backlog. and a disinterest by the president to have more judges. so even if you have the jag prosecutors who i'm sure will be very effective at trying to expedite everything, if you don't have the judges there to reconcile the cases and you have this enormous backlog, even having a small number of people who are devoted entirely to t process won't make much of a dent. it requires overall policy and legislation to accompany that tactic. but i hope it does a good thing to try to undermine that backlog. >> let's talk about this executive order. you say it's a bridge to another crisis. so are you saying things could get even worse? >> they could. and look, it's a hastily written executive order which the age

laura coates, what stands out to you?r starters it's that it was a self-fulfilling professphecy. in an effort to improve the fbi there were actions that undermined in the the long run. there has been talk about the ability and fbi is able to do so to compartmentalize their personal views and political juice and how they act about it. much ado has been made about the e-mails and texts suggesting there was a personal bias against donald trump but that loose hook was not there. it didn't go over into the world of influencing the prosecution so thereto some saving grace but this is damning of the fbi agents involved and certainly james comey and loretta lynch. >> nobody looks good in this report. susan hennessey, how did you see it? >> i largely agree. the finding that the political bias didn't influence the investigative steps. fbi agents, federal employees are human beings, they have first amendment rights and political views. they aren't supposed to be expressing them in particular ways and i think the ig is right to conde

we have molly ball with us, laura coates and our chief political analyst gloria borger.he president says he has the absolute right to pardon himself. what do you make of that? >> first of all, i think he needs to read a 1970 memo from the office of legal counsel which states very clearly that no one may be a judge in his own case. and says that a president can't pardon himself for that very reason. now, have been legal scholars who disagree with that. solicitor general robert boric back in the day disagreed with that. but then let's take a step back further and try to figure out why this is all going on right now. rudy giuliani is out there saying the president can do anything he wants. this legal memo was leaked over the weekend, 20 page memo detailing why the special counsel basically can't touch the president in any way, shape or form. so it makes you wonder whether they're sending this outside signal to the special counsel that people are with us here so you better be careful because you don't have public support and you better not try and subpoena the president and

laura coates, this goes way beyond abortion.s people focusing on the fact that this probably means that roe versus wade will be overturned and abortion declared illegal in several conservative statements. what else is significant about kennedy retiring and what other areas of the law might this affect. >> he was going be a down the line conservative on things like campaign finance and gun control and liberties but in areas like criminal justice reform, he had very key things to say about the use of solitary confinement and all but invited people to say i would like you to challenge this barbaric practice of 25 or over five years plus of being held in solitary confinement and the effect on the mind and somebody who was a swing vote and america needs to keep in mind, we needed a swing vote to ban or over turn a ban on same sex you'll activity in texas. this is an issue that was important in the texas case. he is somebody very key, although not an advocate for it, he has written in his dicta about things like affirmative action and

. >> laura: getting the run away at dominick runaround from the fbi and doj, devin nunes went straight to the director dan coats today. he gave the agency at 5:00 a.m. deadline to turn over key documents in the russia and hillary clinton investigation. >> i would say we cleaned up most of what was on the table except for the most important piece. did you or did you not run informants into the trump campaign, especially before the investigation even began. very simple question, it deserves a very simple answer. >> laura: the fbi responded late tonight saying, they have already responded to nunez's request. congressman mark meadows joins us now, and that just happens apparently. so you have the documents you are entitled to? >> the one good thing that the fbi and doj is good at is creative writing. any time you would suggest that we have all the documents, when we have tens of thousands of documents that have not been delivered, as we speak right now, we have a valid subpoena that has not been really responded to appropriately, and it's 97 days and ticking. so for them to suggest that we have everything is just f