there is a reason why you have the tradition in my office, the southern district of new york, the nicknameuthern district of new york and even though it is true, the person at the top, united states attorneys are political appointment, none of the other folks are not supposed to be doing jobs based on politics. but honestly, when you in this book, very interesting reflections on the judicial system, the business of doing lawn, you write in the book when i entered the office in the southern district of new york, do the right thing for the right way in the right thing for the right way in the right thing for the right way in the right reasons and do only that, that sounds wonderful but i'm just wondering as i come back to the point about us public opinion, whether the american public really believe that prosecutors today really operate on that perfect basis? is not to say that every prosecutor is perfect, in the same way that i am sure, sir, there is a mentor among the media that you are supposed to be objective and truthful, we do not always get it right, some prosecutors do not get it righ

of this meeting injune 2016 in new york ? ironically at a time when you were still the attorney for the southern district of new york — a meetingd trump jr, jared kushner, paul manafort, and the clear intent, certainly as we know it from donjr, was to gather dirt on hillary clinton. according to robert mueller that cannot in any way be regarded as the basis for a collusion charge against donald trump, the president. first of all, there is no such thing as a collusion charge. the word "collusion" is a shorthand that been used byjournalists and observers — and by the president himself — to say this is the bar and this is the standard. "collusion" is an informal term that people use to talk about, you know, people working in some kind of way for mutual benefit of each other, knowing a little bit and having some knowledge about what the other party is doing, which is a very different thing from criminal conspiracy, which is very particular in what you have to show. a meeting of the minds, an agreement to do a particular thing that is unlawful. and the unlawful thing that has been charged on the part of bob mueller against members o

joining us now to including this is elie hoenig who did work in the southern district of new york. rticle and i couldn't get through it because it was just published a moment ago seems to suggest that the southern district has a lot of evidence, conducted a serious investigation into specifically what the president did and knew about these hush money payments. >> right. well, this is what the southern district does, right, they get a threat and they pull on until the sweater is completely unwound. we had some indications of this, the southern district is already on record you will remember from the michael cohen plea as saying that individual one, donald trump, candidate one i think he was called in the cohen case was the one who directed kobe to make the payments. now i think what they're trying to do is, a, flesh out just how much did the president know by going into his inner, inner sanctum, people like hicks, and, b, who else was involved? there's no question these payments were made, but the remaining questions are who knew about these payments and were they for a campaign-rela

you think democrats need to do to preserve and protect the work being done out of the southern district of new yorkt of all i think the southern district of new york has actually operated in a manner that protects itself. i think when those cases were handed off to them, they were done in a way that separated them from what was going on in washington. when i look at hicks and schiller, outside of the president's family, in a very small campaign operation, those were the two people who were the closest, who heard every single thing, who were in on every conversation. and so i think, you know, we at first months ago talked about the campaign fitnenance scheme it's just this campaign financing. it turns out it goes a lot deeper than that, and schiller and hicks i think are going to be the lynch pins to figuring out what was going on out there. >> we talked about don junior and jared in the mueller investigation. hope hicks and keith shiller have no family protection. they're called by prosecutors. how helpful are witnesses like that? how instrumental are they if they were the eyes and ears around a ca

attorney for the southern district of new york. ave her own or his own u.s. attorney in that job as fast as possible to decide what to do about the united states of america versus donald j. trump. that's what the case would be called. the same case against michael cohen is the united states of america versus michael cohen. the phrase poetic justice has never had more meaning than it would have if, after the voters of the united states of america reject president trump's re-election, the first thing that happens to him as a private citizen is that he is criminally charged in a case entitled the united states of america versus donald j. trump. but this is the one thing that we can be virtually certain won't happen if donald trump becomes a private citizen again on the afternoon of january 20, 2021. and the reason it won't happen is on the morning of the january 20th or late at night on january 19th, donald trump will become the first president of the united states to pardon himself. the president's pardon power is absolute. donald tru

the about is the campaign finance crime that he was identified as participating in the southern district of new york. host: is the investigations being done by the southern district of new york, those -- what do you make of those? people say the president should be concerned about those but why and can they go forward while he is president of the united states? guest: so i think he should be concerned about them. those are the -- that investigation and the michael cohen finance campaign investigation led to cohen and even prosecutors endorsing the idea that cohen's payments which were a crime, were directed by the president. they were a little bit coy about whether in fact that amounts to a crime by the president. there's an intent element, a knowledge element as well that you would have to show that president trump knew that this was a campaign finance violation and we don't know whether or not he did. cohen's a lawyer so we presume that he knows the law. but that's why people are pointing to that as an area of grave concern. now, assuming that the southern district of new york follows the d.o.j. p

attorney for the southern district of new york. good evening and welcome to all of you. katie, i'd like to begin with you. do you find the timing notable, the news we learned today that it's coming on thursday, by this broadcast thursday night we'll know what's in it, probably still be pouring over it. do you find the timing notable? >> well, i mean this is what bill barr has promised but he's also cognizant how much attention has been paid to this report. in order to stop the constant flood of news that would have happened if he released it earlier. keep in mind he needs to deal with reports that while the top findings might be in some ways good for trump you do not spend 400 pages to say good things about someone and nothing bad. so of course there are going to be things he has to deal with when it comes to having conversations with his boss and i do think the holiday weekend is the best time to do that. >> your newspaper is the one that reported there was misgiving on the report of the mueller team about how their work product had been interpreted publicly. have you a

i'm john o'malley from the southern district of new york and i believe you and i'm going to try to get you out of here at which point he's on the ground and began crying. it's not as simple as that. you file an affidavit on behalf of the end it turns out it wasn't just eric at fiv but fivr people have been convicted of crimes and they were also exonerated and set free. it's one of the stories when i tell it in greater detail i think it has more force if i talk to other aspiring law students than any statistic because you explain it took the work of a good person might o'malley who didn't have to spend a month of his life by definition implicating the low law-enforcement agents in something that didn't go right, but eventually justice can read on. and this case was one of a rare impact you did exonerate people because he paid attention to the innocent perhaps wrongfully convicted as well as putting people behind bars and sending them away as they were bad people that did bad things. >> people think the prosecutors job is to send people to present at the december jobs or job is to make s

in exchange for their cooperation, limited cooperation. >> at the moment, the view of southern district of new yorkthe whole thing was michael cohen's fault. now, you can think what you want about michael cohen, but who was the beneficiary of the trump money, oh, i said, hush money, i said trump money. it was trump money ultimately, so the question arises are they going to charge the person who was the real beneficiary of this, who was donald trump, as dana pointed out in the charging instrument where he pled guilty, the payment was at the direction of donald trump. for a campaign finance violation it is usually the candidate who is at fault, not someone doing the candidate's bidding. >> i think this is interesting that people, especially schiller, do you want tv in black and white or color. black and white is emails, phones, financial records. i want to talk about the bodyguard and what did they talk about. you won't see that in email or in a financial transaction. hope hicks said i told white lies for the president. what were those, did they relate to personal relationships with women. you can ge

attorney for the southern district of new york. let me ask you is it more than troubling conduct among a handful of individuals when this is 25 applications dedenied and then over ruled? does that suggest the entire system is broken or corrupted? >> i've never seen anything like this. i came in the clinton white house about this time, two yearinize to the administration and in the first year or two of that administration you often find the slow downs insecurity clearances. you got whole white house full of new staff. many are from campaign backgrounds. it can take a while to process these people and get them through. bill clinton had back logs. bill clunten certainly had big back logs in his first two years. by the time i got there it had all been resolved. it had been reported there were two employees who had drug use issues in their past and political appointees had said no, no. we'd like the give them security clearances. that's two people. what woor arer hearing today is there were 25 people in the first two years of the trump a

elliott, robert mueller, much has been made of investigations that are ongoing and the southern district of new york. a lot of those investigations is that mueller farmed out, those ultimately are under the control of the attorney general, are they not? >> they are. what are you getting at? >> is that a concern? if democrats are putting faith in investigations that ultimately the attorney general can have a hand in shaping in some way. >> well, we hope not. right. the department -- i worked there for many years. the department works on with a great degree of independence out in the field and if this is the southern district of new york or d.c. and virginia and so on, we hope there won't be political interference that we've seen from the attorney general over the last couple of days. even if it is not interference, there is a willingness to show a bunch of leg for lack of a better term about how things are spun and so on. but having been in the eastern district of virginia, there is a certain degree of independence with the investigations -- >> do you agree. >> absolutely. we both worked in the justi

attorney for southern district of new york and author of the new book "doing justice, a prosecutor's thoughts on crime, punishment, and the rule of law." last time i saw you, we were in our podcast cardinals. >> i dressed up for you. >> all gusyed up. >> i look like an author. >> if you're traumatized you had to watch the process in the makeup room. >> very interesting. >> sorry about that. a strategy to get you off your game. the president, it seems, between the mueller report being summarized by barr with not a single complete sentence included -- does someone like robert mueller at the end of a process have something that can easily be cut and pasted in terms of a summary? why the decision no not include a single complete sentence, would you guess? >> i don't know what bill barr was thinking. we had pressure to put something out. i think it would have been untenable from his perspective to not say anything at all about the report for a week, two weeks, the amount of time he thought he needed to have a redacted version. >> is it harder or easier to pull fragments of sentences. >> d

attorney for the southern district of new york now with the new school in new york. high yeah, we've yet to haer you weigh in on what we've witnessed thus far. >> i agree with so much of what's been said. i would backtrack to the question about what the mueller report tells us about the amount of evidence related to conspiracy. it's clear there was enough evidence to institute a special counsel's investigation in the first place. so much of what we have seen that is in the public already indicates evidence. the question is how much evidence. one of the things that william barr said that established him as a defense attorney as opposed to an independent attorney general for the united states is no crime versus crime. in this instance it's really about there may not be sufficient evidence to establish a crime. the question for our democracy and that congress must answer is how much of a concern should we have about our national security and how much evidence is there of whether it's incompetence or whether it's actual criminal to use foreign government essentially for a

the lawsuit that was filed yesterday by the southern district of new york is criminal in nature. ne is individuals need to be held response and we need to put forth remedies as a result of their financial settlement, remedies that would, again, focus on treatment, prevention, education, and detection. >> one of the things, when we think of this 130 people who die in america every day, and it was like the crack epidemic, which also became normalized and became part of our culture, and now that is sort of happening here. this is part of our culture, we know people die, we know they die across the spectrum, there's a danger in that, in not dealing with this as the crisis it is. >> when you begin to normalize this type of behavior and you treat it like a criminal justice, when you focus primarily on criminalizing individuals, this is a public health crisis and it should be treated as such. and so it's really critically important that we provide more recovery beds to individuals. as i travel throughout the state of new york, there's less and less beds available, we need counselors in s

attorney for the southern district of new york. sk you is it more than troubling conduct among a handful of individuals when this is 25 applications dedenied and then over ruled? does that suggest the entire system is broken or corrupted? >> i've never seen anything like this. i came in the clinton white house about this time, two yearinize to the administration and in the first year or two of that administration you often find the slow downs insecurity clearances. you got whole white house full of new staff. many are from campaign backgrounds. it can take a while to process these people and get them through. bill clinton had back logs. bill clunten certainly had big back logs in his first two years. by the time i got there it had all been resolved. it had been reported there were two employees who had drug use issues in their past and political appointees had said no, no. we'd like the give them security clearances. that's two people. what woor arer hearing today is there were 25 people in the first two years of the trump administr

the southern district of new york kind of like congress does not have any scircumscription about what at. so in a sense that if the president has done wrong in some of these other aspects of his lifelike the trump organization or inaugural committee then the southern district of new york is free to look at all of those things. but it does not mean that they can investigate people including those related to the president and associated to the president and his businesses and otherwise erin his administration up to and including the president himself. whether or not they can take action on the president is a separate matter. >> so what do they do then? >> they can wait -- yeah, if they find compelling wrongdoing if they believe they can prove beyond a reasonable doubt it was an ordinary citizen -- not that you're ordinary. but it's don lemon and they find we have proof beyond a reasonable doubt of a crime but it happens to be against the president with respect to his policy i guess they have a couple of choices. they could wait. it looks like mueller did this. you can make a referral to

this is what -- you know, when the southern district of new york used all of their incredible powerso go after michael cohen and basically turned his life upside down, it wasn't very hard for them to find a crime, especially a financial crime, right? >> that's true. >> so they got him on tax fraud because he didn't report, i think it was like a million, or a million and a half dollars over a several year period. boom, you know, that's a tax crime. he applied for that heloc to pay off stormy daniels, and he didn't include in the application all of his liabilities, right? it might seem to a lot of people kind of minor. he's going to jail for that, so imagine the same powers that were directed at him investigating donald trump's tax returns? his entire financial history at the trump organization. what are the chances that the southern district of new york won't find some tax issue or some instance where he did not tell the truth to a bank, which has already been reported repeatedly, and he'll have the same issue as michael cohen. i think that is the lowest bar but highest, the greatest

-- to borrow a term first coined by chris christie, there's another tour guide for the southern district of new york. this is a former close confidant of milania trump's, she's a witness in the southern district of new york's investigation into the trump inaugural committee. a lot of questions revolve around pro-russian ukrainians, some of the other reporting has been about the mismanagement of money, about how funds sort of flowed in and out carelessly. there's also some public reporting about tom berrick being of interest to investigators. what do you make of this two-pronged investigation and scrutiny of the inaugural committee and the witnesses there? >> there are a lot of potential lines of inquiry here that federal prosecutors could have jurisdiction over. it's illegal to knowingly accept a contribution from a foreigner for an inauguration. that would be a clean crime of knowledge and intent. but if these contributions were being taken and were then misused, if there was wire fraud involved or some other sort of fraud, this could be a lengththy investigation, and i think the most interesting t

now all of that is being investigated as we reported yesterday by southern -- by the southern district of new york want his devices. they want more information that they can, on their own, look through and try and corroborate some of what he says his investigators have found. and that's where things stand. bezos was expected to meet with prosecutors. they want his devices, the fbi wants to go through it. he's expected to negotiate that with them. we'll see where that goes. one thing this indicates is that the investigation perhaps is escalating here with the fact that bezos is meeting with prosecutors here in new york. >> shim open prokupecz, thank you for that report. >>> coming up, an ominous new tone from north korean dictator kim jong-un. so, we took all our engineering experience... a hundred years-worth of learning from impossible projects all over the planet... the heart and soul of a cat... and found a way to fit it all... ...right through that gate. this could be huge. little things can be a big deal. that's why there's otezla. otezla is not a cream. it's a pill that treats plaque psorias

a number of people in the southern district of new york were given immunity. esident, so far, has not been touched. his son, don junior, who signed at least one of the checks, nothing has happened to him. and so i think he feels like there has been a grave injustice where he is paying the price and no one else involved is doing any time. >> two things struck me about cohen that i wanted to ask you about. one, there were questions mostly based on the way the republicans abused him during his congressional testimony about his credibility. jim comey said to me when i interviewed him at the 92nd street y that a federal prosecutor doesn't put anyone's testimony into any sort of charging document or official document until it's been corroborated because once it's in their documents, it's sponsored by the federal government. so it wouldn't appear in writing until and unless it's been corroborated either by other evidence, other documents, or other testimony. so it would seem that michael cohen -- and i know -- what i found striking was the same thing you did, that he

southern district, and different districts. >> different districts. we know of two. but one most significantly is the one in the southern district of new york. >> right. >> then you have the collusion. a lot of the collusion, what was really amazing in that is just how much the mueller team and the fbi really learned about how the russians really made such great efforts to try and infiltrate the campaign, try and work back doors to get policy, favorable policy. they were reaching out to different people through cutouts to jared kushner, other people, obviously the trump tower meeting. we learned that, you know, the mueller team even considered at one point whether or not they could bring charges against anyone in relation to that meeting, whether or not donald trump jr. could face charges for in essence taking a campaign contribution from a foreign entity. we really didn't -- >> but they didn't. >> but they didn't. you also learned the issues the special counsel faced in terms of the law and the difficulty in proving a lot of of these parts of this investigation and trying to bring it to a point where they could bring charges. so you really

robert mueller initially referred gregory craig's case for potential progression to the southern district of new yorkecutors in the southern district of new york appeared to have passed on it and decided not to do anything with it. today, instead, craig was indicted by a grand jury working with prosecutors in the u.s. attorney's office in d.c., so it started with mueller, it went to the southern district of new york and went to d.c. before they finally did charge him. today's greg craig's lawyer said in a video statement posted online said essentially "see you in court. craig says he is confident that a jury will vindicate him. if so, that promises to be quite a trial. the u.s. justice department prosecuting one of the most prominent lawyers in the country, a former democratic white house counsel. the mueller investigation is apparently over but its ripple effects are clearly going to be playing out for a very long time. another one of those ripples seems to be turning into a bit of a tsunami and that story is just ahead. stay with us. but she might not be sweatpants cool. not quite ready to face the

i assume the mueller people, the southern district of new york folks were pretty thorough. need to know. >> the question i have then of all of the people that we seen involved in some way, would cohen know the most? >> no, i think it is allen weiselberg. it extends beyond these narrow swim lanes and it gets into the history of how the trump organization financed itself. it gets into everyone in that company that knew how trump was financing his business. where does the southern district investigation go, and does bill barr assert himself in that investigation as well? >> and try to stop it? >> i don't think he will try to stop it, but the report is in to the attorney general and trump thinks that bill barr is someone that will be his hat chet man. he is trying to involve him, even though the justice department, this is not their particular issue. he certainly allowed to look into any of the u.s. attorney'ses that he wants and question the investigation. i think it will be interesting looking forward to see how barr positions anyplace that investigation. >> that is not comfo

there's an ongoing counterintelligence investigation, there's investigations going on in the southern district of new york, there are the hush money payments, the emoluments claws violations, all of these things if the democrats launched impeachment proceedings would be wrapped into one. they're in different hearings. >> you have a trial in november, fight over the tax returns, which is something i think real americans -- >> when is the that going to reach its head. >> that may goo go into the courts and take months too. but trump not showing those returns and fighting it and violating law -- >> i think that's impeachable. >> but natasha is right. in the same way, if you do these hearings correctly, it will chip away for the few persuadable voters. >> let's hope we get something to the supreme court and see if the supreme court will insist on the information getting to the american people, the tax returns, all this information, unredacted mueller report. a lot of this stuff we'd like to see but the court is going to have to insist on it. thank you, narcottasha. >>> coming up, special counsel robert muelle

there's investigations going on in the southern district of new york. there are, you know, the hush money payments, the emoluments clause violations. all of these things if the democrats were to launch impeachment proceedings were to be wrapped into one. >> what's the hardest one to follow? roger stone and what's coming? >> the stone trial -- >> you've got the stone trial in november, the fight over the tax returns, which is something i think real americans -- average americans --thality may go to the courts and may take months, too, but trump not showing those returns and fighting it and violating law -- >> i think that's impeachable. >> there's so much out there in some that almost helps trump but in the same way if you do these hearings correctly it will chep away their impression. >> let's hope we get something to the supreme court and see if the supreme court will insist on the information getting to the american people, the tax returns, all this information unredacted on the mueller report. a lot of this stuff we'd like to see but the court's going

new york and elsewhere. should people be confident that those can be carried out given that most of them report to the attorney general? >> i do. i think the southern districtell you in detail, has this great tradition of independence. there is not going to be political pressure that's really going to work there. i'm much more skeptical that they're going to find anything. that's what i think is the real issue here. i don't think the heavy hand of william barr is going to be the end of this investigation. i think people have exaggerated hopes for what's going to come of these financial investigations. but as far as i'm aware and as far as i believe in the justice department, especially the line prosecutors, i don't think political interference is going to be the death of these investigations. and if it is, we'll know because people will leave in protest. >> preet, do you agree with that, these will be independent at least for the southern district of new york and do you think jeff is right people have up realistic expectations? >> with respect to to the second, i have no idea. i have no idea what the evident or facts are. i think there are people in the cou

his organization, his company, the trump organization still has a lot of problems would be here in new york with et southern districtew york. the hush money payments. >> yes. >> that is very much ongoing. that investigation has not ended. remember they released search warrants. >> which he is individual number one. >> implicated in the kriemt unindicted could dpirter for lack of better word at this point and the department of justice said he directed michael cohen to make the payments. >> you got these 14 two of which we know. and no references in the report tonight to trump's taxes. to anything financial. right. the only refrps to anything financial is michael cohen tryinged in deal with the trump tower in moscow. that's it. right? so we don't even know if mueller looked at trump's taxes, right? >> we don't know. there are a couple of points worth making. one is all we know and see mueller addressed the two prime questions that were given to him, the 2016 russian hacking into the election and the e-mails and whether the president obstructed justice. and mueller did those cases. what we saw is he farmed out other th

. >> and sunday night at 9:00 eastern on b afterwards, former southern district of new york restaurant gives an inside look at how the judicial process works drawing from personal experiences and case histories. he n his new book doing justice, he's interviewed by senator richard blumenthal of connecticut. what you have too much in society is two problems. when people do engage, they say you're ugly or fat. or there's also awl sorts of nonlogical argument that goes on. it's very mean spirited and terrible. as bad as that is, what's even worse the other problem is people don't enb gauge with the other side at all. watch on c-span 2. >>> next the house financial

number two, in the southern district of new york, they are conducting investigations that mueller could never conduct, because it wasn't within his remit. we've discussed this, as well. but mueller had a relatively narrow remit. he did a hell of a job, by the way, but it was relatively narrow, which was russian interference in the 2016 election. but, it was not trump foundation, trump organization, trump campaign finance violations and the like. and so, to quote my dear friend, preet bharara, the president was identified as individual one in publicly filed documents in federal court in manhattan, and thank god we live in a country where just about anyone can grow up to be individual one. >> it's a good reminder, ron klain, that so much of the story is still in front of us. i talked to a federal prosecutor this week, a former republican federal prosecutor, out of that southern district of new york, and i said, what do you think sdny is up to? and he said, listen, the michael avenatti case was sitting in a u.s. attorney's office in l.a. for a couple of years. it was at sdny for a much sho

announcer: on sunday night at 9:00 p.m., former southern district of new york federal prosecutor paper our gives an inside look on how the judicial process works, drawing from personal experiences in his new book, "doing justice." he is interviewed by richard blumenthal. >> when you have the issue of how to dissolve a persuade -- a pursuit, what you have, i think too much a society you have two problems, one would be able to engage they yell and say, you are ugly or fat. or there is what aboutism, and all sorts of non-illogical argument that goes on and it is very terrible and it affects people's opinions of the whole process. and what is even worse is the other problem, which is below do not engage with the other side at all. announcer: watch this weekend on book tv on c-span 2. announcer: u.s. special representative for venezuela elliott abrams talks about the political crisis in venezuela and gives advice on what the country should do without the madura regime. he spoke at the atlantic council. mr. kempe: good morning. welcome. i am president of the atlantic council. thank you for j

occur the further investigations that could occur for example by the new york state attorney general or in the southern district of new york the state of the national attorney there and those and one of the glaring omissions from the report has been trumps finances in the state of crimes finances so there is some speculation that a lot of the elements the evidence that has been found in the in these investigation was farmed out to others to further prosecute which didn't fall in the narrow mandate of very very quickly the democratic presidential candidates you know everywhere across the country have been saying that people are talking about this report they're talking about health care the the economy is this going to change that do you think in the u.s. i mean i think it's similar to frankly if you think about back to nixon and pietschmann or excuse me and his resignation and watergate a lot of the basic facts of watergate were already available in one thousand nine hundred two before the one nine hundred seventy two election what happened was it just the temperature continue to rise through investigations and th

that presumably is what the southern district of new york is doing and that's one of the reasons thatump is an unindicted coconspirator there, in effect. individual number one and so i think the southern district of new york has to pursue those leads and that investigation including possibly against donald trump jr. another mystery here for me is why did bob mueller not recommend charges against donald trump jr. given the absolute montage of evidence against him. >> the mueller report gives an account of the president's f furious reaction to it. the president slumped back in his chair and said, oh, my god, this is terrible. this is the end of my presidency. i'm efed. a month later on june 17th, 2017. the president called don mcgahn at home and directed him to call the acting attorney general and say that the special counsel had conflicts of interest and must be removed. mcgahn did not carry out the direction. the president asked mcgahn why he had told the special counsel's office investigators that the president had told him to have the special counsel removed. mcgahn responded that h

, the complexity is it is not up to congress when he has to surrender, it is up to the southern district of new york and the court who is supervising his case. but it is a pretty compelling case that if you want the information, i can only get it for you if i'm out of prison. >> and i also think we should make clear, if i may jump in, we don't know how helpful these 14 million files are going to be. correct me if i'm wrong. he is saying look, i've found this hard drive with all these files. we don't know if the information might be helpful to investigators or making the case that he has only been through 1% and he doesn't have enough time before jail to go through the rest of this, so please give him more time to do so. and let's not forget michael cohen didn't have a cooperation agreement with the sdn ychltsdn. so in inside sense h-- in essene his time is trying to get the benefit of one without having had one. >> i think like every person he wants to be sentenced to less timing. and three years for a series of crimes like he pleaded guilty to, that was a stiff sentence if you look at comparable si

joining us from new york, the former assistant u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york and partner at the patterson and tyler law firm, and here in studio with us, a former associate counsel for the -- ken star and cbs legal analyst. kim, obstruction of justice. define it. mr. gaffney: it isn't -- guest: it is an attempt to interfere, so things like tampering with witnesses, threatening a juror, taking steps to thwart or make it difficult for the criminal justice process to function and to do that, on purpose. wantdea is we do not people to be able to bully and flout the criminal justice system because he wanted to function for the generic public for their safety and for the integrity of the entire process. the definition reads, an act that corrupts by threat or by force or by any threatening letter or communications, influences, obstructs, or impedes the administration of justice. when you look at those words, what acts could be considered obstruction of justice? guest: it is very broadly worded. i would just read from the now attorney general bill barr memora

attorney for the southern district of new york, preet bharara said about thisa topic of exoneration. >> one of the most terrible things for the president in the underlying report we know about is that it explicitly says we do not exonerate the president on obstruction of justice. they felt thee need to sort of anticipate that rhetoric and refute it then of course bill barr comes in and puts his own exoneration gloss on top when i think it was w meant for congre. >>ea it's an interesting topic. the report, anybody can read, can sayan it did not exonerate e president and yet the message that the white house has been sticking with is that it did. >> bob mueller is someone who carefully memorializes his thought process and done that ae fbi director. i've seen him do it. s that how he operates and that's a reason why that got through and the attorney general felt compelled to include that in his summary. there is going to be some tension on this issue which is, again, why we need to see the report. every day that passes that the attorney general doesn't release this report, he looks more

attorney in the southern district of new york. you have gone through, i assume, a big chunk of this, although you have been busy all day. what do you think? >> i think it's an extraordinary document. the folks who are saying it paints a picture of -- i don't know what word to use other than crazy times at the white house, where people were asked to lie repeatedly, people have lied about the lies, and some people have concluded, and as bob mueller and his team specifically say, very directly say, some of the obstruction was not able to be carried out because some folks in the white house, who by the way, in other circumstances haven't necessarily distinguished themselves honorably, but on many, many occasions, don mcgahn, corey lewandowski, and others have said we're not going to do that. i think that's a big deal. >> if you had been in charge, if you were robert mueller. you're the former district attorney for the southern district of new york, and you were in charge. what would you have done if anything differently? >> i would hav

if you want to know where the president has the most exposure in the southern district of new york, youer attorney for the southern district of new york, and guess who that is? >> on your show? >> coming up on this show. >> i thought he was out of town. >> he is here. >> good for you, lemon. i'll see you in a second. >>> we know what is gone in paris, and it is important to speak to what remains. but i see some things that i believe are signs of hope, and some of them are just straight up freaky, and i'm going to lay them out for you, next. it turns out, they want me to start next month. she can stay with you to finish her senior year. things will be tight but, we can make this work. ♪ now... grandpa, what about your dream car? this is my dream now. principal we can help you plan for that . two kids barfed in class today. it was so gross. lysol disinfectant spray kills 99.9% of bacteria, even those that cause stomach bugs. one more way you've got what it takes to protect. we're oscar mayer deli fresh and your very first sandwich,m... your move-in-day...feast. your bold canine caper. [ch

summer has spent a tremendous time with investigators in the special counsel's office, the southern district of new yorkngress cooperating with investigators in a number of different investigations. his testimony has led to investigations of many others including the trump organization, members of the trump family. his testimony led to i think upwards of 80 people being asked for documents from different congressional committees. so i think he believed his cooperation would be considered. but as you said in 12 days he is due to report and the southern district of new york has not made a move to limit his sentence. >> emily jane fox, thank you for always sharing your reporting with us. appreciate it. >>> coming up for us, during times like these, it helps to hear from a couple of pulitzer prizewinning writers. we happen to have a pair of them standing by. we'll talk about that man when we come back. >>> we just went through the mueller witch hunt where you had really 18 angry democrats that hate president trump. they hate him with a passion. they were contributors in many cases to hillary clinton. hate h

news on this, the ceo of amazon, jeff bezos. this story is incredible. he is now expected to meet with stourn district of new york prosecutors, same southern district investigatingy payments, bezos, of course is the one that says saudi arabia was behind the enquirer story that outed his affair after "the washington post". which he owns, was so critical of saudi arabia. >> right. so this tells us they are taking this senior verriously. this investigation court of you can argue know is escalating. they're meeting with the alleged victim in this entire situation, what they want to know, obviously, is whether or not they can prove these allegations from jeff bezos and his team that the saudis hacked his devices, somehow got into his phones, got into his devices and were able to maybe leak some of this information the other thing they are very interested in is this extortion, potential extortion scheme by ami and whether or not there is any criminal charges they can bring against southern district against ami. obviously the saudis, too. the fbi is very interested in all of this material as well. why all this is also important, obviously, the role that ami played in t

as has previously been reported prosecutors in the southern district of new york have been investigatingf was ordered not to dus close a subpoena in the case. it's unusual for such a gag order to be put in place. mueller periodically used them with folks like gates but s dprks ny is not known to have done so in any of the other cases. and there could be multiple reasons for the gag order. >> it looks like just to make surer that she's not giving up what's going on. this is not someone who's been out spoken about her cooperation but rather someone they need to keep secret about cooperation. >> is that in the witness tampering category? >> i think it's one to protect her and secondly to insure she's not tipping off certain people. she can't talk to individuals that are potential subjects of the case. it's a significant finding. >> here tonight two of the reporters working on othis story today. fox, national correspondent for "vanity fair," who has chronicled the flight of michael cohen, the author of "born trump: inside america's first family" and rebecca davis o'brien. i learned everythin

on one hand you have michael cohen and the southern district of new york with an ongoing investigationed obviously to the payments of women through the trump organization and that will also be the subject of the new york state attorney general's investigation. at the same time this is in the context of a discussion of the trump tower meeting, not a discussion of michael cohen and not a discussion of the trump organization. maybe that's one of the dozen investigations that we don't know about that is still indicating campaign finance crimes being investigated. >> so much is going. the finger nails are going to keep growing on this body. maya wylie and ken delaney. mueller is stuck with justice department guidelines that mueller couldn't be indicted, but drew a road map, if you will, for the u.s. congress and a prominent democrat running for president is calling for impeachment. mueller describes how the president lied repeatedly and ordered those around him to do the same. how about huckabee sanders and her fish story. one republican senator responded with a blistering statement. i am s

cohen, columnist for the boston globe and the author of the new book, clear and present safety and mimi rocca in the southern district of new york, also msnbc legal contributor. welcome to both of you. thank you for being here. michael, i just want to read a little bit more from your story in "the boston globe" about william barr. if he skewed the report, he's yet one more trump administration figure openly surrendering his integrity to a man devoid of either. such obsequiousness is the defining characteristic of this administration and its enablers. why would a man like william barr who has a reputation, some people like him and some don't, but he has a reputation. why would he need to join these people who engage in this? >> i'm not sure why he's doing it. had a pretty good reputation. had a good career. did pretty well as a lawyer, i'm not sure. it's pretty clear he is doing it and he has decided to put his thumb on the scale to help president trump and to narrow, at least, how bad this is going to be when the mueller report comes out. >> is that what is going on? he's limiting the damage? the report is written. congress is g