renato mariotti is here. renato, you take the he crossed the line position. i will defend. >> okay.ou something. the judge indicated that he shouldn't comment at all. in addition to that instagram post he's also published a book that talks at length about the case. he's continued distributing the book afterwards. his lawyers have asked -- they made a motion to clarify to the judge. and i'll tell you, chris, when you make a motion for the judge to clarify a ruling, that's a very bad sign. and it's also a bad sign that they told the judge that it hadn't occurred to them to report this to her earlier. >> that's the defense. that's the defense. we didn't know that this counted. we thought you wanted us to stop talking about you and stop talking about the specifics of the case. but the book is really only tangentially involved in the case and it's actually about other dynamics and even what we put, that this framing we believe is much bigger than just this one case. the media's doing it. the left is doing it. >> yeah, i've got to give you a lot of credit, chris, because you're able to sa

so joining me now, shimon prokupecz, renato mariotti and garrett graff. of "the threat matrix: inside robert mueller's fbi and the war on terror." gentlemen, good to be with you. let's get to the details here. how significant is it that white house lawyers are preparing to review mueller's findings before the public or even congress gets to see it? >> right, it certainly could be significant in terms of the perception and the view that the white house is getting a heads up on this. members of congress would certainly have an issue with that as well. the way, you know, it really should be working is when ever the department of justice decides that they want to make portions of this report public, it should just go straight to congress and should go to the public at the same time. whether or not the white house gets any heads up, whether or not the white house gets to review it, the perception of it certainly could be problematic for the department of justice, which, you know, right now is trying to kind of stay -- stay away from getting in the middle of an

but let's discuss now much of this with juliette kayyem, phillip mudd, and renato mariotti. phil, give me your reaction to what you just heard from the president's attorneys. >> i look at this and i say i don't understand why we set the bar like this, don. there's a question about law. i don't think that the special counsel had a question about the facts in the case, that is, robert mueller. i served 4 1/2 years with him. i suspect he looked at the facts on obstruction and said i could determine whether or not to bring a charge. i think instead he said there's bigger issues to play here in terms of who can bring a charge against the president. i think he's punting it not because of the facts but because of the process. but the bigger question we should spend just a moment on is the white house saying we succeeded here. i mean, we succeeded, this is a victory when you have to go to fourth grade civics class and say success in america is a kid saying i got a d, mom, and i didn't get an f. i mean, your personal attorney, your national security adviser, the guy who led your camp