Longtime personal lawyer michael d. Cohen about a moscow real estate deal, whether the president knew of any attempt by mr. Trumps soninlaw Jared Kushner to set up a back channel with russia during the transition and any contacts he had with roger stone jr. , a longtime adviser who claimed to have inside information about democratic email hackings and what happened during mr. Trumps 20 is a trip to moscow for the Miss Universe panel . Again, thats the reporting from the New York Times. Breaking tonight is michael zeldin, john dean and general Michael Hayden. What do you make of i mean, interesting that these were recently provided to President Trumps lawyers, this list of questions. Right. They have now leaked out to the New York Times. Tied to our earlier conversation, i talked about our being a fractured society, kind inform a posttruth world. Weve got issues of our own and now this just illustrates, anderson, you have a foreign adversary coming in over the top, very skillfully in terms of the russians, taking advantage and worsening the fissures that we already have in our society, and now youve got the special counsel trying to sort this out. Number one, what did they do, and he hes made some progress with regard to russian activity, and now how did the russian activity relate to the Trump Campaign and the Trump Administration . Michael zeldin, im just wondering from a legal standpoint, as a former prosecutor, i just want to tell you here are some of the questions that the New York Times has gotten that mueller wants to ask. What did you know about phone calls that mr. Flynn made with the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in late december 2016 . What did you know about sally yates meetings about mr. For instance . How was the decision made to fire mr. Flynn on february 13th, 2017 . Im just wondering what you make of what were just now learning, michael. Well, it seems that what we are learning is that contrary to earlier reporting muellers interest in the president and the president s deposition, however that takes place, falls fully within the full scope of his mandate. It does not going to be a limited interview. It is going to be relating to the question of the interference, the counterintelligence investigation and matters that arise out of it including obstruction of justice, and so these questions point to the broad areas of interest that mueller has as they relate to each of the four points within his mandate, counterintelligence, matters that arised out of it, obstruction of justice and coordination and conspiracy, the socalled collusion aspect of it. And this is what you would have expected from mueller all along, so we talked about this earlier, anderson, that i was skeptical that mueller was going to wrap up this investigation with multireports. The first one coming on obstruction of justice. It didnt make sense to me as a prosecutor and former independent counsel, and so i think that these questions sort of speak to the breadth of muellers interest and the fact that i think were not yet near the end of this investigation. Yeah. I just want to read our viewers some of the other questions from this times article. After the resignations what efforts were made to reach out to mr. Flynn about seeking immunity or possible pardon . Another one, regarding the decision to fire mr. Comey, when was it made . Why . Who played a role . What is the reason for your continued criticism of mr. Comey and his former Deputy Andrew g. Mccabe . Those are just some of the questions, more than four dozen were told, that Robert Mueller would like to ask President Trump. Michael, does i mean, the fact that this leaked out and, again, you know, this was recently provided according to the New York Times to President Trumps lawyers, so it either leaked out from someone on that end or someone on the special counsels end. It doesnt seem like a lot has been leaking out from the that and what do you make of the fact that this has leaked out and has now been published . Well, it strikes me that somebody within the white house most likely in the White House Counsels Office may be leaking this office. We saw a leak earlier about the president having asked white House Counsel mcgahn to go to rosenstein and have rosenstein fire mueller. I thought in looking at that article that that had to come from the White House Counsels Office itself. Similarly as i look at this and think where might be the source of this, and this is speculation, and i dont mean to impugn anybodys reputation and im not naming anyone by name by any stretch. It seems that thats the most likely point of exit about this information, the White House Counsels Office. General hayden, does it hurt the Mueller Investigation that these questions are out there . I mean, couldnt the president say, well, look, these questions are out here. I can now just i can answer these in writing since they are already out there. Well, obviously the president would know what the questions were based upon the story line we know. You could see this being an attempt by the white house to undercut once again the legitimacy of the Mueller Investigation, pointing the finger at them, that they are doing this for political purposes. You know, what really strikes me, and i know youve got two lawyers to give the legal point of view here, but the broader kind of Strategic Point of view, anderson, the points of tension between this administration and the broader American Society have been with law, justice, intelligence, scholarship and journalism, and what do all those have in common . They are factbased. They are databased and based on evidence so this is one more example of what i tried to point out in the book of how evidencebased institutions are a bit under siege in this posttruth world. More questions from the article i just want to read to our viewers. When did you become aware of the trump tower meeting, the june meeting with donald trump jr. . What involvement did you have in the Communications Strategy including the release of donald trump jr. s emails and what communication disease you have with michael d. Cohen and felix seder and others an foreign nationals about russian Real Estate Developments during the campaign . What discussions did you have during the gain about russian sanctions and what did you know about russian hacking and social media and other acts at the campaign . What did you know about communication between roger stone and his associate Julian Assange or wikileaks . Joining me now on the known is joan dean and we have jeff zeleny standing by at the white house. John dean, as you look at these questions being asked, is there something that jumps out at you . The very fact that the questions are out there, my first reaction suggesting that it could be an act of obstruction just to have released these questions. How so . How would that be obstruction . Well, to try to somehow disrupt the flow of information, the tipping off of witness in advance to what the question was going to be, and listening to you reading the questions, and im scanning them, it appears to me more that these are questions somebody wrote down after listening to someone else than necessarily the questions that were designed by the prosecutors. You think the wording is knots exact as they might be from a prosecutor . Yes, i do. What makes you think that, just how the sentences are phrased . Exactly. Its sort of mechanical. What did you know, it sounds like it could have come out of a discussion with the prosecutors. Michael zeldin, as a former prosecutor, do you agree with that . Well, i think these are not specific questions as you might get in, you know, sort of interrogatories, written interrogatories which are formal questions put in question form. I think that john is probably more right than less as always that these are probably more topic sentences, areas of inquiry than they are specific questions that they want specific answers to but rather we want to talk to you about the topic of communications around the june 9th meeting. We want to talk to you about the topic of roger stones knowledge of wikileaks. We want to talk to you about the topic of your counterintelligence inquiries, et cetera. So thats an important thats an important point because if the president knew exactly the questions as worded, one might be able to give very precise answers and leave it at that. If these are just general topic areas, and theres more possible questions within these topic areas, that then leaves more opportunity for a for kind of a, i dont know, a freefloating, freeform rambling answer or several answers. Sure. It gives you the opportunity to have followup questions. When you ask what was your communication strategy around the june 9th meeting . Well, that asks a whole host of questions just within that topic. What happened on air force one . How did that statement get written . Who was involved in the writing of the statement . What did hope hicks mean when she said these emails will never see the light of day . How did it come to pass in a jay sekulow and said that the president had nothing to do with the writing that have statement which turned out to be untrue . Those are all subsumed in the one topic sentence of tell us about your communication strategy. I want to bring in jeff zeleny from the white house as well. Jeff, what exactly is the status of the president sitting with an interview for bob muellers team and do we know how this might affect it one way or another . Anderson, thats been the question hanging over this white house for weeks and months, in fact. The last time the president has addressed this he said he did indeed want to sit down with bob mueller. Of course, that has been at the heart of all of the changing lawyers, you know, the will he or wont he . So we dont know the answer if he actually will go through with it. A lot of his attorneys have advised him it would be, you know, the wrong thing to do, but anderson, when i go through these questions and to look at them, theres nothing in here thats a surprise. Of course, like these are an outline, but what this is, its just connecting the dots of really whats happened over the last year, particularly again on that air force one flight from germany back to the u. S. I was the Pool Reporter on that flight. I remember it well. We didnt know at the time what was happening, but in the days after it became clear that that meeting was going on. So the president wouldnt be surprised by anything that is in this list of questions here. The question is would he give a consistent answer to what many of his advisers have already done, who have already sat down with bob mueller, so that is at the root of all of this here, so we dont know if the answer if hell ultimately sit down. Its one of the reasons that Rudy Giuliani is one of the new lawyers on his team. He is supposed to be negotiating Something Like this, but it does seem to me that this was leaked by someone on the president or the white houses side, not certainly the special counsel. Also joining me on the phone is anne milgram, former attorney general and prosecutor in new jersey. What jumps out at you at this point . I have the same reaction. The areas are not surprising, the areas of inquiry, and i also believe theres a lot of opportunities for them to go deeper. These are just high level areas, so if they interview the president he wont be surprised by the general areas, but they will have i believe a lot of questions underneath each of these sort of subheadings, and they will go a lot deeper on all of them, but it really does show us that the investigation still relates to there are serious questions about obstruction, about, you know, the firing of mr. Comey and the firing of mr. Flynn, questions about Jeff Sessions and so it really and also questions about the collusion aspect and, you know, really thats a conspiracy question, but there are questions related to that. So its a very broad and farreaching. Theres really nothing thats off the table i think in these questions. Its interesting, general hayden. If im doing an interview and i have 40 questions i want to ask somebody written down, thats thats a twohour interview just on the face of it. Yes. And if theres not other followup questions, and it seems like the consensus is that these are just broad topics with followup questions. If all these questions and others in these topics were asked, this is a lengthy interview. Oh, my god, yes. And the followon questions and keep in mind that director mueller probably thinks he knows the answers to all of these. Right. And so when he puts that out, hes maybe learning a little bit more, but hes checking the answer against what he knows already to be observable fact. Michael zeldin, i mean, again, for there was a lot of talk about, well, will the president agree to an hour sitdown . I mean, this is a long interview. Yeah. When we did our independent counsel investigation of George Herbert walker bush we had really one or two topics, and it took us most of the day. When ken starr interviewed bill clinton in the Monica Lewinsky whitewater matter, it took about nine and a half hours, and it was also pretty narrowly circumscribed. This is not necessarily a oneday interview. All of these topics and all of these questions and the way the president answers questions, this could be a multiday interview, and so the raskins along with giuliani, the raskins and Rudy Giuliani will have to do a lot of preparation with this president to get him ready for what could be very long and multiday interviews if thats what mueller requires of them, because i dont think the president for all the posturing can avoid this interview unless he is prepared to either take the fifth amendment or say that nixon versus the United States and its progeny do not allow for this and takes this to the Supreme Court which is a twoyear legal battle. John dean, as someone who was involved with nixon, is this allowed, do you think . Well, thats a good question. I think he could put up a good fight and would certainly test the process. I think ultimately its its going to be muellers call as to whether he forces the issue. Clearly trump just walks away i think the special counsel can probably push on an expedited basis to try to get these things resolved, and i think hes got the the wind is behind his sails with the existing law, and i think that a president doesnt have any right to say that he cannot answer questions if he takes the fifth. Also joining us right now by skype is professor Alan Dershowitz. Youve had a question to look over the questions. A, what do you make of the fact that this has leaked out so quickly, and what does it tell you about what mueller is looking and needs from the president . Everything leaks. We should assume everything is going to leak. I think theres only one series of questions that caught me by surprise. Everything else was entirely predictable. The questions about some of his financial dealings before the campaign and before he became president. Heres the president s problem. He can refuse to answer questions based on executive privilege that focus on reasons why he engaged in activities that are covered by article ii of the constitution. The problem is those are the easy questions and he can answer those whereas the hardest questions, the one about his financial dealings, he has no executive privilege, so he can posture and take the case to the Supreme Court and he might very well win on some of the questions, but those are not the most difficult questions because those are the areas of obstruction of justice and engaging in protected constitutional activities so he has a little bit of a conundrum and dilemma but there are very few surprises here. The surprises come mostly in the form of questions about financial dealings, real estate dealings before he became president. Professor, do you agree with the rest of the panelists that these are frameworks for topic sort of topic sentences and under each one there would be a series of questions based on each of these, that this is not sum total of what the questions would be . I would expect so. The questions are very inartfully drawn. They are written as openended questions. They are not crossexamination questions. They are not sharp questions designed to confront and test. They are really designed to let him ramble and talk, and i suspect that thats the strategy of the special counsel because they know that may be President Trumps weakness. If they were to ask him direct tough questions to which he can answer yes or no, that might not give them advantage they are seeking. Well have more on our breaking news. Well take a short break and be right back. Its a lot easier to make decisions when you know what comes next. 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Comeys intelligence briefing on january 6, 2017 about Russian Election interference . Another question. What was your reaction to mr. Comeys briefing that day about other Intelligence Matters . What was the purpose of your january 27th, 2017 dinner with mr. Comey, and what was said . More questions. What was the purpose of the february 14th, 2017 motoring with mr. Comey, and what was said . What did you know about the fbis investigation to mr. Flynn and russia in the days leading up to mr. Comeys testimony on march 20th, 2017 . They go on. What did you do in reaction to the march 20th testimony . Describe your contacts with intelligence officials. What did you think and do in reaction to the news that the special counsel was speaking to mr. Rogers, mr. Pompeo and mr. Coates . These are just some of the questions. Back now with our panel, john dean, Michael Hayden whose new book is the assault on intelligence. Jeff zeleny, anne milgram and also legal analyst carrie cordero. I think one of the most interesting things when i first saw the questions, i kind of assumed that these were actually the worded questions. It seems like all of our panels are saying they dont think whether they are word for word what the questions would be and there would be sub questions and that these are opening salvos per topic. I tend to agree, anderson. I think that these are, you know, could be potential questions but they really are headings that would govern further detailed questions beneath each one, and so what i think these questions were was the questions that the special counsels office gave to the president s legal team for purposes of saying here is what the contours of an interview would take. This is all the things that we want to ask about, not necessarily these are the specific questions, but this is everything that we want to ask about, and then these obviously would be prompts for further details to come underneath each of those head general hayden, you point out that this is, in addition to obstruction of justice and stuff, this is still a counterintelligence investigation. Absolutely. And because of that i have great interest in that particular chunk of it, and several of these questions relate to what was the relationship of the campaign to the russians and whether there was any i wont use the word collusion by synchronization or harmonization, cooperation, foreknowledge of suggesting things to do, and frankly up till this point, i mean, there has been circumstantial, beyond circumstantial evidence of synchronization between the campaign and representatives of the russian federation. You know, anderson, a couple of other things. You mentioned mike pompeos name in there and dan coates name in there. You and i talked during the break we still have to govern ourselves and youve got these folks, Senior Leaders and how many more tied up into this investigation, and then finally would i offer the point. You know, the president doesnt actually give factbased answers or make factbased statements. He generally appeals to base is how he handles any controversial issue. He cant appeal to base here. This man is after the specific details, the specific facts. I fear this is going to take a long while to sort out. Professor dershowitz, you made a really interesting point that these are not particularly pointed questions, that there would be more pointed questions, and it bears repeating hutch more Robert Mueller and his team know than the public at large knows. I mean, its often, you know, the cliche is we know maybe a little tiny tip of the iceberg, but they have access, to you know, hundreds of thousands of documents that they have been poring over, the testimony of other people so they can have very specific questions that they may already know the answer to and want to hear how the president will answer, truthfully or not. I think thats exactly right. I think they would love to get him to say when they ask him did you know about this meeting or did you know about that meeting, they would love to get him to lock himself in and say no, i didnt know, because they then may have other people that come forward and say, well, yes, he did know. If i were the president s lawyers, and i want to emphasize that im not, i would take advantage of these questions and i think i would immediately offer to respond to all of them thoroughly in writing in an effort to try to avoid a facetoface meeting, and if that were rejected i would say lets negotiate for four hours. Pick your best 20 questions and the president will sit down with you with his lawyer president and respond to the 20 questions, but i dont think hes going to want to respond to two or three days worth of topics with sub questions and other questions so we may get to a point where theres no agreement and where he receives a subpoena, and, of course, he has to comply with the subpoena. He can invoke executive privilege. Invoking the fifth amendment will do him absolutely no good. First of all, it will make him seem guilty even thought the constitution says thats not proof of guilt and he can be given immunity but that doesnt cover impeachment and he can answer under threat of contempt of courts and if he answers questions he doesnt have i mount from impeachment but only criminal prosecution so the fifth amend cement a nonstarter. I guarantee you he will not take the fifth amendment. No lawyer would be foolish enough to advise him to do so. Anne milgram, why wouldnt special counsel mueller subpoena the president . Its been done before. Here, and weve seen this as the investigation has been going on. They have been in these negotiations since last fall to try to get the president to come in voluntarily and, you know, there are a couple of reasons i think. First of all, its standard to want to bring someone in voluntarily before you bring them into the grand jury and here what is happening more is mueller has made a decision that he wants the president s testimony. I think hes being very respectful of the fact in a donald trump is the sitting president of the United States and so hes giving him every possible opportunity he can to get him through that door to come in voluntarily short of issuing a subpoena. It is extraordinary, and i dont know if weve, you know, really said this enough tonight, but its extraordinary to give a potential witness who youre going to Interview Questions like this in advance of a meeting in a criminal investigation. It isnt done, so i think mueller is making a lot of concessions and doing things differently than he normally would in an effort to get the president in voluntarily. Short of that i think, you know, at the end of the day, mueller will need the president s testimony and so if he needs to issue a subpoena i think he will issue a subpoena, but i dont think he wants to do that unless its the only possible way. Michael zeldin, if the president of the United States is looking at these questions, would have kind of give him a sense of security, false or otherwise, that, oh, i can answer all of these pretty easily. Well, i dont think it will give his lawyers that same sense of security. The support hard to figure what his level of comfort is with questions like this. He may feel that he can answer all of these because he has nothing to hide, and he may have nothing to hide so he can feel comforted by this. I think his lawyers are going to be anxious that theres a lot of preparatory work that needs to be done here and that this is going to be a long slog through this interview process. I wanted to add though one thing to what professor dershowitz said which is and then i agreed with his analysis. The only thing that i think i would add to it is that a lot of these questions point to conversations that predate the president s inauguration, so those topics are not covered by executive privilege per se, i think, and then secondly with respect to postinauguration executive privilege as i read it involves the deliberative advice that subordinates to the president give on policy matters. These questions dont seem to relate to policy matters, so i dont know that an assertion of executive privilege would be availing in this case which would lead his lawyers to conclude that they are most likely not going to succeed in an effort to resist this interview, and, therefore, they really have to buckle down and start answering. Id be interested to hear what professor derby ritz has to say. Professor dershowitz, on that answer and if you were a part of the president s legal team, would you form a, you know, get all the lawyers in there, form a team, get some other people in there and just go through not only all these questions but also any subquestions that you can think of based on these questions, whether it takes days and days to do that just to kind of run through the president through everything . I assume they are doing that already. I think they were not taken by surprise by some of these questions. I just want to disagree a little bit possibly with my previous speaker about executive privilege. A different kind of executive privilege may apply to the president s motives and state of mind in engaging in actions that are protected by the constitution. Just like you cant question a senator or a congressman about their vote or about their actions as a senator or congressman, its not completely clear to me that the constitution permits the questioning of a president as to why you pardoned, why you engaged in this activity. Its a different kind of executive privilege than conversations between him and his aides, but it makes for a plausible argument to the Supreme Court. We have to take another break. Well well hear from Carl Bernstein and the rest of our panelists after this break. I no create a better visitor experience. Improve our workflow. Attract new customers. Thats when fastsigns recommended fleet graphics. Yeah now business is rolling in. Get started at fastsigns. Com. Hello. Give me an hour in tanning room 3. Cheers yeah now business is rolling in. Thats confident. But its not kayak confident. Kayak searches hundreds of travel sites to help me plan the best trip. So im more than confident. Forgot me goggles. Kayak. 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Boom the big breaking news tonight, a list of dozens of questions the special counsel would like to ask the president obtained by the New York Times. We want to we want to see now how this tracks with cnns previous reporting and evan perez joins us now with that. Evan, whats your reaction . Anderson, we reported a story back in march that talked about the four essentially buckets of questions that the mueller team had told the president s legal team that they wanted to ask the president , and what my understanding is that these questions that the times have obtained are essentially notes that the president s legal team made so its their questions. They basically took what muellers team was telling them and they wrote questions based on that, and thats the reporting we had back when we reported our story back in march, and what we were told then is essentially it amounted to 50 or so questions. Gloria borger and i were told by different sources that that wasnt the number, and this matches really what the times is reporting here. Its interesting here reading some of these questions, i think the most interesting thing to me certainly, and i certainly understand the agitation that this meeting, where these questions were given to the president s legal team. You can see the agitation that resulted the agitation that resulted in the president s legal team because theres one particular question here about Paul Manafort and whether or not the president was aware of outreach to russia. Keep in mind, a lot of people inside and close to the president have thought that collusion is off the table, that this is already resolved, right. Yeah. And if you look at the question here from that they have written based on the outreach. What knowledge did you have of any outreach by your Campaign Including by Paul Manafort by russia about potential assistance to the campaign . What it tells us is that the mueller team is very much still focused on the question of whether or not there was collusion, whether there was coordination, legal coordination between the campaign and the russians, and so thats the reason why when we were speaking to people last month, anderson, it was clear that people were very agitated after hearing some of these questions. Evan perez, stand by. Joining me on the phone now is Carl Bernstein. Fascinating to see these. It seems like it came from the white house side. What do you make of what you read . I think that what we see here is that theres a clash coming in all likelihood. It could have been predicted that there would be a clash. The real question is what answers does donald trump have to those questions . If he has satisfactory answers, he should have nothing to worry about. But those are very loaded questions in terms of collusion. They suggest where mueller is going. They suggest that mueller has talked to other witnesses and that he knows the direction that he wants to get answers from the president on that have to do both with, quote, collusion or a conspiracy to cooperate with agents of a foreign party, and if the president has satisfactory answers he should have nothing to worry about. But the real question is what does mueller and his team know and obviously this is something thats going to deeply worry the president s lawyers because the president s lawyers might not know all the answers that donald trump might or might not give to these questions. Yeah. And they indicate the seriousness of muellers investigation and the direction its been heading. Carl bernstein, appreciate it. Back now with our panel, evan perez, john diehl, jeff zeleny, were not talking about potentially a twohour interview and answering all these questions but other questions that might be followon questions to to these ones that were given out already by the mueller team. Michael zeldin is saying you could be looking at a twoday interview or more. I mean, certainly look at all the topics and all the volumes of information. Im struck by just going through these questions again. We should point out they are not verbatim. They are just topics, as weve been saying, but they are using the president s own words in many respects, almost like going through his schedule, if you will, day by day and the key moments of when he fired comey and the tweets he sent out. Just asking the president about the tweets he sent out and the interviews he was doing would take a considerable amount of time so this, of course, the president s lawyers will want to limit this as much as possible here. Ive been reaching out to the white house officials to see if they have any reaction to this. They are not officially and they still say, you know, the president has not made a decision if he will speak to him, but, again, that might not be up to him. That might not be his decision here if bob mueller decides to force this here, but going through this is like a time line of the first 14 months or so of this of this presidency, so much to go over, anderson. Carrie cordero, its not even that they need nixons tapes. They have all the tweets and interviews that the president has done. They are asking him what he meant when he talked about james comey to lester holt in that now infamous interview . What he meant to the russians who were in in the oval office when he talked about, you know, firing comey has relieved pressure. A lot of it is based on things that the president has publicly said. And this is such an important point, anderson, because so often when the president tweets outrageous things, particularly when hes attacking the Justice Department or attacking the special counsels investigation or attacking doj or fbi or whoever it is in the political spectrum that hes unhappy with, he tweets, and he says things and many of his defenders often say, well, we shouldnt Pay Attention to those things. Dont look behind the curtain, look the other way and the fact of the matter is that you see if these questions are in fact, and it looks like they are, an accurate representation of the types of things that the special counsels office is interested in. The president s statements matter and now they are going to matter in an area where theres legal consequences. You know, the scope of these questions, it really covers a variety of issues. Theres a lot here that i see as i skim through them on the obstruction going through each individual person that the president dealt with, whether it was his targeting sort of his his verbal intimidation of the attorney general, whether it was list interactions with director comey. Many others. Theres all different angles that potentially can speak to an obstruction issue. Theres questions about the camp all of the things that he may have known that really is is a big question mark right now. One of the things we dont know because he hasnt testified in front of any of the congressional intelligence investigation, others have, and so weve gotten to know pieces of the coordination or communications that took place, i should Say Communications that took place or meetings that took place between members of the campaign and russian individuals or officials or surrogates, and we never have known. Tease a big question mark what the president s none was of those interactions so those another line of inquiry indicated by these questions. Questions about what he knew after sally yates had come to the white house which it took several weeks to fire michael flynn. What was happening during those weeks. Still a lot to be determined. John dean, jeff zeleny,an milgram, Alan Dershowitz, carrie cordero. Were going to take another break and well be back with more on tonights breaking news. [upbeat music] now im gonna tell my momma that im a traveller im gonna follow the sun now im gonna tell my momma that im a traveller im gonna follow the sun transitions™ light under control™ we need to help more tocalifornians get ahead. D, thats why Antonio Villaraigosa brought both parties together to balance the state budget with record investments in public schools. And new Career Training programs. As mayor of la, he brought police and residents together to get illegal guns off the streets and keep kids out of gangs, and on the right path. Thats Antonio Villaraigosa. A governor for all of california. And i am a senior Public Safety my namspecialist for pg e. My job is to help educate our First Responders on how to deal with natural gas and electric emergencies. Everyday when we go to work we want everyone to work safely and come home safely. I live right here in auburn, i absolutely love this community. Once i moved here i didnt want to live anywhere else. I love that people in this community are willing to come together to make a difference for other peoples lives. Together, were building a better california. Big breaking story this hour tonight from the New York Times, special counsel Robert Mueller has at least four dozen questions he wants to ask the president , likely much more. The times got a list of them, openended questions about his tweets and his firings and the campaign and the russians ought to talk about. Our political panel, jackie kucinich, paul begala and our legal panel joins us as well. Paul begala, where do you begin with this . Who gets the questions in advance, nobody. Ken starr did not send notes over to president clinton saying why do you think they did in this case . I have no idea. They clearly want him. This is an extraordinary maybe its being extraordinarily gracious and hugely helpful for a witness to know the general areas that he knows but to know. It makes it harder for him to say no. I know his lawyers are telling him not to sit down but hes told the American People for over a year. Theres no collusion. Ive done nothing wrong. Not only has he told us that, hes gotten the questions in advance. Kind of difficult politically to say im not going to participate in an interview with this special counsel. Michael dantonio, professor dershowitz pointed out these are not the questions but general topics and Robert Mueller probably has a lot of drilldown information that he has based on these topics. Each one is going to leave the president down a half hour or onehour odyssey. I disagree that this would be eight hours or even two days. When i interviewed the president , he would speak at length and in a very disjointed way, and it was impossible to follow up and get coherence from him, so and hes going to tweet about this. These topics are things hes going to go through and discuss with the American People whether his attorneys like it or not. You know, part of me, if if this information is coming from the trump local team, part of me wonders if he did this to get the president ocean attention. Weve seen this from other trump advisers that would imply theres leaks in the white house. I know. Its a crazy assertion, but i wonder if hes trying to get his attention so when hes totally not watching cnn later or when he watches fox friends tomorrow morning he sees this questions and gets spun up about reaction to them. I think three immediate reactions. One is there wasnt much of anything in here we didnt know already and Alan Dershowitz said the same thing and thats really striking. I think weve been hearing for a long time. Muellers investigation is really thorough and then we see questions right now and its not like when you talk to russian agent a did you know you were also talking to russian agent b . If you were mueller would you put those into the questions or would you want to give him sort of broader view things. Thats entirely possible. Everything we didnt already know, everything is already in press reports. Does that make you believe he should go in and answer these questions . Weve talked about. Theres a huge negotiation going on between these two teams. Its a game of chess about what they are going to say and which questions will he answer . Which will put it down in writing . A few of these are actually about russian collusion and thats what youll hear republicans talking about in the coming days after this which is the reason this is put out there. This has gone on 14 months, 14 months of this, right. This has gone on 14 months, 14 months of this, right. Very few of these questions are actually about collusion and the ones in there are about other people like Paul Manafort that we already know are in trouble has very little to do about the president and collusion and now its stretching into other topics and the clinton team was really, really aggressively going or ken starr. Why are you going after things that had nothing to do with when president clinton was in office. Youve now had Mission Creep and youll see republicans talking a lot about that. Except at the end. Day its been very clear from the mueller team, and this is why i think the president said red line, red line, but to me it has always been, yes, collusion but more so what are the money ties that this administration possibly has with russia . What are the money obligations . How indebted is he to the russians perhaps even from deals that have generated years back . So that strikes me and youre right. I dont think theres anything in here that we didnt know about, but theres certain things in here that are not going to neighboring the president happy. Those are sort of wild guesses of things that may be could have happened. And clearly i think if they are in this list of questions as we have said before, mueller knows the answer to a lot of these. I think there are a lot of connections here. The other thing ill say is that to the point made earlier about the president tweeting. Lets remember that in the past hearings and issues that have been in the court like the president s muscling man his own tweets have done him in. I think thats going to be a lot of what mueller people look at, is using his own words, using his own declarations. His, oh i fired comey because he didnt do the right thing during the Hillary Clinton administration. Then he tells somebody on the press he fired him because of the Russian Investigation. One last point ill make, a lot of this is to get President Trump talking. Can we sit down because hes going to speak so long . That also does not speak to someone we have we got him on something. Its like, lets try to get him to sit down to see if hell tell a lie, mistruth. Thats going after the president. It did mention in the argument again he is a target. There are a lot of loaded questions that were sought. These are not all the questions. Im not a lawyer but if i were the legal team there i would say, mr. President , do not do this do not go for them and do this investigation to testify or whatever. Because, the president did a 90 some odd minute rally, off the cuff, 90 minutes straight. These questions, its not going to be a one hour, two hour, its going to be a very long conversation. I think that are right. What theyre doing to do is say, let him talk. Open up these broad questions. What i try to do in my life i dont try to ask a question that i dont know the answer. I think mueller and his team know the answers to the questions. Its about the followup questions that they havent released which could be dangerous for the president. Allen, the president has the executive privilege, we agree on that. Cant he waive that privilege, for example in the firing of jim comey when he go on television, this is what i was thinking you get an a plus. I hope my moms watching. Obviously can waive privilege by opening up the door and saying look, i put this out. I think theres an intermediate step his lawyers might well consider. Take advantage of these questions, if written responses to as many as you can give wren written responses to that create no vulnerability at all. Give extensive written responses, obviously written by the lawyers, signed by the president , and then say whats left. What else do you want me to answer, if we can answer them in writing find. If you need me in person, we can negotiate that. Then he tells the american public, look, ive answered almost everything theyve asked me. If they need more, they can argue about the more. I think there are intermediate steps that could be taken to help reduce the risk of him going on and on and on. That risk is always there. Lawyers would much prefer written interrogatories to open ended questions. They might try that and maybe it would have a chance of succeeding. Its very risky for the president to answer any questions, even if he knows hes telling the truth because theres somebody else telling the different truth. That could cause a problem. Telling the truth isnt always a perfect the charges of perjury or obstruction of justice. Do we really think though that mueller would accept written questions after everything . After the depth of the investigation . After not only has the president said there is no collusion, he has said repeatedly hed be happy to sit down with mueller and answer questions. The key seems to be his intent in a lot of the actions. It would be hard to glean intent i think from questions written by a lawyer just signed by a president but exactly. The question is are we talking about russian collusion or the other rabbit holes . I think the president , ill talk to you about russian collusion because there is no russian collusion thats never been a crime thats been on the table. Right. The obstruction. Obstruction is what perhaps money laundering. Theres been more than 100 million of our money the American People on russian collusion i want to thank everybody on the panel and our legal panel as well. Well be right back. A hilton getaway means you get more because. You get another day in paradise. Get a sunset on a sunday. Get more stories to share. Get more from your Summer Getaway with exclusive hilton offers. Book yours, only at hilton. Com does your Business Internet provider promise a lot . Lets see who delivers more. Comcast business gives you gigspeed in more places. The others dont. We offer up to 6 hours of 4g Wireless Network backup. Everyone else, no way. We let calls from any of your devices come from your business number. Them, not so much. We let you keep an eye on your business from anywhere. The others . Nope get internet on our gigspeed network and add voice and tv for 34. 90 more per month. Call or go on line today. Big night tonight, the breaking news list of dozens of questions, special counsel wants to ask the president. Its in many cays the closest look inside the Mueller Investigation and what the special counsel wants to know. Going to hand it over to don lemon. Cnn tonight starts now. This is cnn tonight im don lemon. Weve got more on the major breaking newings tonight. On the Russian Investigation were learning Robert Mueller has nearly 50 questions he wants to ask President Trump, thats according to the New York Times. Which obtain the list of the question on trumps ties to russia and whether he obstructed justice. Those questions also touch on the president s businesses. His discussions with his fixers, Michael Cohen as well, about a moscow real estate deal. Theres a lot to get to. Our justice correspondent is evan perez. Senior white house vrpt is jeff zeleny
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