let me go to paul butler. paul, give us a sense of this legally, what it means that robert mueller is taking the bull by the horns here. he's going with it. he's not going to do a narrow little look. he's going to do something like ken starr, perhaps more on the up and up than that. but he's going after everything that looks fishy here. >> this is why no one wants to be the subject of a special counsel. there's always mission creep. you remember ken starr started out looking at a failed land transaction called whitewater. he ended up focusing on a stained blue dress and whether the president of the united states lied about his relationship with an intern. the most interesting aspect of this development is rod rosenstein. he'd almost certainly have to cuse himself, which would mean then the person in charge, the person with the ability to fire the special counsel, is the associate attorney general, somebody who is much more ideological than rosenstein. she teaches at a law school named after justice scalia, and

lisa bloom, thank you very much. >> thank you, joy. >>> bring in msnbc analyst paul butler on the phone, your thoughts. it looks like prosecutors are going to try again. >> this counts as a win for bill cosby. whenever there's a mistrial or hung jury, defendants usually take it as a victory. i think it's way too soon for the prosecutor to affirmative assert they will be bringing charges. they need to talk to the jury and find out what the problem was with the case, why they weren't able to persuade beyond a reasonable doubt, and then make the decision. you know, lisa is right. there are often inconsistencies in victims' statements. it doesn't mean the assault didn'thappen. but the standard in a criminal trial is very high." the jury asked for beyond a reasonable doubt. not grounds for criminal conviction. that's may be the issue here. >> finding out jurors escorted home. they were a sequestered jury. prosecutors saying they will retry the case. how difficult is it to put a celebrity on trial? it obviously complicates matters? >> it does, but it cuts both ways. since it's bill cosby, ame

paul butler, then what? >> then it becomes a political determination by the congress of the united states. so the house would impeach him, which means charge him. and the senate would judge the case. they would decide whether to convict him or not. >> but just to be clear, they're under no obligation to do so. robert mueller could file a report that says, here's all the evidence that the president of the united states criminally obstructed justice. you know, under the letter of the law, there's no legal requirement that the house initiate or the house judiciary committee initiate impeachment proceedings, right? >> that's exactly right. again, the congressmen were saying earlier in your program whether those could set aside their partisan differences and just express fidelity to the rule of law is going to be key. one of the reasons that the president can't be indicted, formally charged with a crime, is because we want him to focus on governing the nation. but this president, knowing that he's in serious jeop

mueller is a good prosecutor. >> so you're a former prosecutor, paul butler.ou let your chief witness testify in front of congress if you were intending to make a case for obstruction. >> i've prosecuted people for obstruction of justice including fbi agents. director comey went into that meeting, tried to be folksy, lordy, lordy, but he had an agen agenda. he deliver the president of the united states on a platter with two words. he said he felt that trump ordered and directed him to stop the investigation. he met with comey one-on-one nine times. now, president obama met with the director twice in three years. comey meets with him nine times in three months. that's inappropriate. he should have been fired. but when he said that he felt ordered and directed to fire -- to stop the investigation, in these nine meetings trump isn't asking him, oh, what's this about the russians taking over democracy and subverting the election, trump is saying stop this investigation against me and my boy mike flynn. if that's not obsuction of justice, ion't know what is. >> see

we are joined by former federal prosecutor paul butler, a veteran of the justice department who is now at georgetown law. and kouns lacounselor, what dide of what you heard? if. >> if i'm a prosecutor investigating trump for obstruction of justice, i just found my star witness. when comey testified that he interpreted the president's words as an order or a directive to stop the investigation of michael flynn, that is the president attempting to impede an official investigation. comey would be a flawed tacular judgment. when the president asked for his loyalty, he should have said no, he should have left the room. he did not have a compelling explanation for why he talked to the president one-on-one nine times in three months when president obama had two one-on-one conversations with comey in three years. but he came across as a man of integrity enwith bad judgment. so i think this substantially moves the case for obstruction of justice forward. >> ari melber, i came away thinking that his overare ar ar explanation for all those different encounters was that this was as presidents go so

joining us former federal prosecutor and professor at george town university law center paul butler, panelists on set, betty woodruff from the daily business, vivian salama from the associated press. thank you for being with us. paul, i'll start with you. the "wall street journal" is reporting on this memo apparently written by the former deputy nsa director about a call between the president and mike rogers, the guy who leads the nsa. "during the call the president questioned the veracity of the intel community's judgment that russia had interfered with the election and also tried to persuade rogers to say there was no evidence of collusion between his campaign and russia" they said. i got to get your reaction to these reports coming out today. >> this is a major escalation of the investigation. there is a pattern of conduct by trump that would make any investigator think about possible obstruction charges. director comey testified last week that he felt ordered and directed by trump to call off of the flynn investigation. the intelligence chiefs last week wouldn't say whether trump

we have nick akckerman and paul butler here. nick, have you seen this happen before? >> it's never happened before. presidents have gone up to congress to speak to senators, to speak to the house, but to testify before a hearing, that's just never happened before. >> would there be something behind closed doors, some sort of deposition, as kacey was just alluding to? >> as long as it's not under oath. no attorney would let a president go in there and swear to the truth and then answer questions. >> why not? >> because they would be concerned about what he might say. >> he's president of the united states. they're concerned about him testifying under oath? >> who a former director of the fbi is called a liar, who is not fit to be in the same room with. you have to keep him out of this perjury trap which means don't let him say anything, putting his hand on the bible, swearing to tell the truth. >> john harwood is with us as well. what do you think of this? >> it happened in 1974 after the resignation of president nixon, and he was called to congress to give testimony w

in washington, d.c., nbc legal contributor, former federal prosecutor, paul butler, who doesn't rise to husband status but we've also been on the air all day. i feel like we've been having this conversation since 9:00 this morning. the dramatic moments to me today seem to fall into three categories. one, what donald trump asked comey to do that was just so outside the realm and the norm and we'll have this debate about whether or not it was illegal, obstruction of justice. two, for all the interactions we had with the sitting president which is not normal, your old boss, my old boss, did not call the head of the fbi down for dinner and ask him for loyalty pledges, but u for all those interactions, never one question about russia. who was very seriously meddling in our democracy. and then, three, this exchange that julia was talking about about leaks. what for you, what do you think we'll still be talking about 24 hours from now? >> i think we're still going to be talking about the fact that jim comey went under oath on the record and said the president lied. the president lied about

. >> joining me now is chuck todd, moderator of "meet the press," heidi przybyla, and paul butler, a former federal prosecutor, now a professor at georgetown law school. chuck, you first. it seems to me that the most interesting charge that the lawyer kasowitz didn't really take on is that the president asked this guy, comey, who i thought was very credible today, to basically drop the case against michael flynn. how do they get around the fact that that's at least abuse of the president's authority over the fbi? >> well, look, what i found very remarkable about the lawyer's statement as well was not just that, but it was also confirmation of some parts of comey's testimony, including the idea that the president encouraged him to investigate potential satellite associates of his. >> yes. >> so, no, i mean that is a -- but where i think the president's lawyer locked himself into a trap is that he wants to parse -- basically the stuff that seems exculpatory to the president, he says, yeah, look, comey, yes. the stuff that is less than exculpatory to the president, no, no, that was a li

they came to me and said, paul butler, you're under investigation for the assassination of abraham lincolnuldn't say, i wasn't even born then. i would say, i need a lawyer. >> there's no sign that vice-president pence is under investigation. >> the sign is that the special counsel wants to talk to him. there are 4,000 federal crimes out there. justice scalia of all people said if the government wants to charge you with a crime, they can always find one. it's just safer to have somebody on your side, even if you're the vice-president. >> all right, jeffrey, your thoughts on the vice-president pence getting a lawyer tonight. >> paul and i taught at gw together a few years ago. the first lesson we would teach our students is if you are under any kind of investigation whatsoever, say the magic words, "i want a lawyer." all sorts of legal protections kick in and i agree with paul. it's just smart and prudent to have a lawyer at a time when this investigation could go in directions that no one can anticipate now. >> all right. well, deputy attorney general rod rosenstein be expected to recuse hi

and paul butler, welcome back to the broadcast all of you. and ken, you get the first whack at this, this new lawyer that the president has brought in for his new legal team, what do we know about him and why is he being called a high-powered addition to the team? >> because he has experience on matters that the trump team here to forehas lacked. he represented pete rose that led to pete rose's lifetime ban in baseball. he's just a well regarded tough criminal lawyer in washington, d.c. who it's believed will be able to handle this matter. the question is whether donald trump's going to heed his advise, brian. >> paul, you have been in and around the law all your life. talk about the legal jeopardy that the president's cell phone puts the president in right now. >> i'm surprised he got such a good lawyer, because he's a lousy client. the president does not listen to counsel, so he's in a very difficult position, where his tweets are providing evidence of an obstruction of justice case against him. he has a thing about being investigated. ever

and former department of justice prosecutor, these days a georgetown law professor, paul butler who we know escaped washington for the confines of our studios here in new york. and we're glad he has, welcome to you both. michael, your task tonight for members of the audience who have not read and d digested the fly story. walk us through it. >> well, brian, the shane story, i think this is really significant because it provides us with potentially the most -- it's the most specific potential evidence of collusion between trump associates and the kremlin. and that potential evidence is that -- a republican opposition researcher, a man in his 80s who passed away in may, actually, was apparently trying to -- it's an amazing story, when you say it out loud you can hardly believe it. made contact with russian hacker who he believes may have hacked into hillary clinton's private e-mail servers, found those thousands of deleted e-mails, extracted them. this guy wanted to get in touch with the hackerin eers and get e-mails and was telling people he was associated with michael flynn, we talked

. >> let's bring in rebecca ingber and paul butler, former federal prosecutor of the department of justice. paul, let me talk to you first. there's so much anticipation for comey and there's a question about what will he be able to say or not say? i guess from a legal perspective, what's your anticipation of the breadth of what you would imagine he can talk about? >> chris, it could be really boring, or it could be really juicy. boring would mean he talked this over with special counsel mueller and mueller said, don't say too much. it would be kind of like when rod rosenstein went before the senate intelligence committee they were like, well, why did you even come if you weren't going to say anything? but he's doing that to preserve our criminal case. the juicy part could be, you remember trump called mueller a show boat. he is a little bit of a drama king. he loves a moment. and the good thing here for the juiciness is that this isn't a criminal trial. it's a senate committee hearing. so the criminal rules of evidence don't apply. so they'll be able to ask mueller things like, well, when

back to former federal prosecute toward paul butler. paul, what do you think about the trump defense today? >> well, his defenses have been, one, i'm ignorant, not malici s malicious, that is i didn't know about washington ways. when asked about that, comey said that's true, why when he reached out to me to drop the investigation did he not only exclude the vice president of the united states, not only dismissed my boss the attorney general, but then when everyone was out ofhe room comey said trump noticed his chief staff reince priebus and jared kushner peeking in worried and he closed the door. if you're doing something on the up and up or if you're ignorant, you don't close the door. the other part his defense is, well, i hope that you drop the investigation is not an order. and i think senator kamala harris eviscerate that had defense when she said if a robber is pointing a gun at you and says i hope you give me the money, that is not a request. what trump used was not a gun but a job. an fbi directorship which he consistently dangle

but they're there. >> paul butler, i want to get paul in.estion of if intercepts of surveillance involve certain people which is generally expect philadelphia there is diplomats and other high level officials involved, what relevance does that have on any of the other investigation to john's point? what dils want to add? >> the concept is unmasking. it is totally legal when intel tell jens officials get information they don't con taint names of american citizens. sometimes that information is hard to comprehend. >> sometime the information is -- >> it has nothing to do with intelligence. >> sometimes they don't understand the information. they can't read it accurately unless they have names. so all those intelligence officials and state department officials and u.n. officials did is ask to see the names. there's a procedure, no allegation of criminality unlike the president of the united states who again with his boy michael flynn who he knows is under investigation refuses to fire him for 18 days when he does finally fire him because he's f

. >> we're also joined here in the studio by paul butler, former justice department prosecutor, and then some, who's now with georgetown law. ari melber is here with us at the table. katy tur is here with us at the table. so the gang's all here. paul butler, given your expert eye, what will you be looking for in terms of questions, and what's maybe an early marker as to what sessions' satank, how h views his task today? >> how forthcoming is he going to be? the first time he testified before the senate was at his confrmco confirmation hearing and i did not tell the truth. he was asked by al franken. people on the armed services committee don't meet with russians. he was the only senator who did. so you'd think he should remember that. so he's got some explaining to do. two areas. collusion with russians, and obstruction of justice. collusion, he's got to ask those questions if he's pressed. no executive privilege there. obstruction, there are lots of questions about his conversations with comey, whether when comey complained about the president, what did sessions do? he may claim executi

joining me now, paul butler, professor at georgetown university law school, and former federal prosecutor department of justice. and michael allen, managing director of beacon global strategies. he's also a former special assistant to president george w bush, as well as former staffer of the house intelligence committee. paul, the white house has not commented yet on whether or not the president will try to invoke executive privilege. given all that the president himself has already been saying, hey, james comey, you better hope i don't have tapes, can they try to do it even? is it too late? >> so the idea of the executive privilege is that the president should have a right to have private conversations about sensitive matters. courts don't always uphold that in cases of high public interest, like russiagate. so president nixon tries to assert it with regard to the watergate tapes. obama tried it in regard to the fast and furious investigation. it wasn't allowed. trump has two problems. one, the exception, if there is a compelling government interest. second, as you say, stephanie, he wai

and by legal analyst paul butler. good to see you guys. ron, let's start with you. what is happening there? >> the jury is deliberating. they're into the sixth hour. more significantly, they've asked two questions already, which is a sign perhaps they are really, really looking through this carefully and being very intensely focused on it. may be good news for the prosecution. they've asked essentially for parts of the testimony that focused on bill cosby's version of events that night. cosby insists, through his lawyers and other statements, that this was a consensual, romantic relationship, and the night in question was another night in the relationship. the jury, however, has been told by the prosecution that he drugged her, that she did not give consent, and that he sexually assaulted her. also, the defense has tried to raise doubts about constand's credibility. they pointed out the inconsistencies in the testimony along the way. the prosecution said to the jury, focus on the night in question. focus on cosby's words and you can convict him. seems to be with wha

paul butler is on the show all the time and legal analyst and formal federal prosecutor. i want to have attorney general make the first case. forget the law for one second, how much does this violate the pledges he made about blind trust. >> absolutely he did. he hasn't put his properties into a blind trust, period. >> is that something you can do when you have a corporation, can you put in a blind trust, is it doable? >> you could with a corporation, widely held, but not with the kind of companies that he has. >> what should he have done to avoid the hastle he's in right now with you? >> that's where -- >> what could he have done to avoid this. >> he could have sold all the properties that yield payments from foreign governments. >> sold the whole trump empire. >> and you think he would have done that, that was -- >> i signed up for this. he never said he would do that. >> it doesn't matter what he said. it matters what the constitution says. >> paul, what's your thinking about this and what he's done wrong what the remedy might be for what he has done. there needs to be

. >> now since you said it, i heard paul butler tonight taking it a matter of fact now that rosenstein have to recuse himself. >> well, you were reporting about the other breaking news tonight, the statement coming late night from the deputy attorney general suggests that as of 9:22 p.m., he hasn't yet. >> yeah. we're joined now by congresswoman stacey plaskitt. she previously worked with james comey when he was the deputy attorney general. you were in the justice department with james comey. you have a real familiarity with him, and the in regular procedures in the justice department. i can't remember seeing a statement like this from a deputy attorney general or an attorney general about leaks, the one that we've just gotten from rod rosenstein where he says americans should exercise caution before accepting as true any stories attributed to anonymous officials. we can tell what he is talking about. it's "the washington post" stories, the "new york times" stories that are breaking every night. how do you interpret that press statement tonight from rod rosenstein? >> well, you know, t

juliana glover, paul butler, now a professor and an msnbc analyst. slate columnist michelle goldberg and my friday date, rev al, president of the national action network and with us from massachusetts the man with the best summer plans that i know, robert traynham, former adviser to the bush/cheney. thanks for being here. let me start with you and if you could just weigh in as a former -- well, a current communication strategist, but not inside the white house anymore. what goes through the minds of the professionals as we often call folks like hr mcmaster, dina powell, people who are there trying to protect the country when they see their boss, the president, on twitter down in the gutter and fighting with cable news hosts? >> i would not pretend to think what they're thinking right now. >> but you have didn't -- just as a professional, what must its be like to have your boss -- >> i think they're focused on south korea right now. every syllable spoken about this hyper ventilating scenario around "morning joe" all that attention in a normal environm

yesterday there wewre reports of the cavs making a play for pacers star paul georgetoday it's bulls star jimmy butlere the george situation a trade would likely involve the cavs giving up kevin love with a 3rd team involved butler who had the best season of his career this past season like george is set to become a free agent in 2018 but unlike george he has not expressed interest in leaving for another team as george did lakers which may make the chances of signing butler deal a safer prospect for the cavs giants in atlantagame started an hour behind schedule because of rain delayas expected, giants relief pitcher hunter strickland must serve six-game suspension major league baseball denied his appeal of a 6-game suspension resulting from his brawl with bryce harper on memorail day... strickland must now start serving that suspension... but he doesn't have to appear in a game for it to count against the penalty...harper appealed as well, but withdrew and now serving three-game suspension himself the a's appear to have a favorite of the to have a the a's appear the a's appear to have a favorite of th