And they knew what was under scrutiny and they knew that mueller was not going to exonerate trump for a long time. I have two gentlemen on deck. Pete williams wants to get in on this conversation. Pete . Two things to bear in mind. One, we now have the report. We have barrs letter, we have the report. We can reach our own conclusions about whether barr accurately characterized it. And the second thing that i would point out is that he is going to say that he only redacted 8 of this report. So, the public has seen most of it and most of those redactions are in part one, if i may say, the less controversial part about collusion or coordination. Pete, its tougher for him to account for the no collusion portion of his News Conference. Yeah. And, you know, in his letter he doesnt actually use the phrase collusion. He talks about coordination or conspiracy which is sort of the language that the Mueller Report uses. Collusion is the term that he used in the News Conference before the report came out and hes taken some heat for that. To our viewers, youll notice, lets use the, they are in place and as bill barr comes forward to take his chair, robert costa, any of your reporting from overnight or this morning to share with our audience . Very quickly, the attorney generals future is on the line. Talking to senator Richard Blumenthol and other senate democrats. They know there is already a rise of people calling for the attorney general to step down will it rise now to the threshold of impeachment proceedings for the attorney general . Thats a decision democrats have to make in the coming days just how far are they going to go in questioning the ags conduct and todays hearings mean everything. Robert costa has the reputation among us as using every second of his air time and reporting for something useful and, indeed, reporting today that its more than just idle talk about impeaching a sitting attorney general. Nicole wallace. Robert costa is also one of the most restrained and stays within the corners of what hes reported and not any analysis. Robert costa, can you talk some more . What im hearing is that democrats are stunned by what they saw in the mueller letter. Something they were not aware of. Are they calling for his impeachment yet . No. But privately and now some publicly some senators are saying we cant rule out anything at this point. They have to hear from the attorney general. They dont just want to hear answers on how he handled the report, they want reassurances about his conduct and his integrity. Expect this to be a very tough hearing because, as you said, some of the people sitting up there are running for the white house and have to impress their party and tough shots are sometimes the way to do so. This could be a highly uncomfortable moment. The attorney general sitting there in total silence. In a second the press rangler is about to say clear the shot. Get all the photographers out of the way and bill barr who is under way more scrutiny than he was at this time yesterday even is now going to open up this hearing. Everything about this attorney general is meant visually to convey a sense of competence and his placid exterior. That may be challenged today under questioning. Well listen in to lindsay gram as we get under way. Thank you. The hearing will come to order and the first order of business is to try to cool the room down. So, well see if we can do that. But the attorney general will be testifying here in a bit about the Mueller Report. I want to thank him for coming to the committee and giving us an explanation as to the actions he took and why he took them regarding the Mueller Report. And heres the good news. Here is the Mueller Report. You can read it for yourself. Its about 400 and something pages. Cant say i read it all, but i read most of it. There is an unredacted version over in the classified section of the senate. A room where you can go look at the unredacted version and i did that and i found it not to change anything in terms of an outcome. But a bit about the Mueller Report. Who is mueller . For those who may not know, i dont know where youve been, but you may not know that bob mueller has the reputation in this town and throughout the country as being an outstanding lawyer and a man of the law. He was the fbi director. He was the Deputy Attorney general who was in charge of the Criminal Division at the department of justice. He was a United States marine. And he has served this country in a variety of circumstances long and well. For those who took time to read the report, i think it was well written. Very thorough. And let me tell you what went into this report. There were 19 lawyers employed. Approximately 40 fbi agents. Intel analysts. Forensic accountants and other staff. 2,800 subpoenas issued. 500 witnesses interviewed. 500 search warrants executed. More than 230 orders for communication, records so records could be obtained. 13 requests to foreign governments for evidence. Over 25 million spent over two years. We may not agree on much, but i hope we can agree that he had ample resources, took a lot of time and talked to a lot of people. And you can read for yourself what he found. The attorney general will tell us a bit about what his opinion of the report is. In terms of interacting with the white house, the white house turned over to mr. Mueller 1. 4 million documents and records. Never executive priskolog one time. Over 20 white house staffers including eight from the White House Counsels Office were interviewed voluntarily. Don mcgahn, chief counsel for the white house, was interviewed for over 30 hours. Everybody that they wanted to talk to from the Trump Campaign on the ground, they were able to talk to. The president submitted himself to written interrogatories. To the American People, mr. Mueller was the right guy to do this job. I always believed the attorney general sessions because he was part of the campaign. He was the right guy with ample resources and the cooperation he needed to find out what happened was given in my view. But there were two campaigns in 2016. And well talk about the second one in a minute. So, what did we learn from this report . After all this time and all this money, mr. Mueller and his team concluded there was no collusion. I didnt know. Like many of you here, on the republican side we all agreed that mr. Mueller should be allowed to do his job without interference. I draw with some colleagues on the other side to introduce legislation to protect the special counsel could only be removed for cause. He was never removed. He was allowed to do his job. So, no collusion. No coordination. No conspiracy between the Trump Campaign and the russian Government Regarding the 2016 election. As to obstruction of justice, mr. Mueller left it to mr. Barr to decide after two years and all of this time he said, mr. Barr, you decide. Mr. Barr did. There are a bunch of lawyers on this committee and i will tell you the following. You have to have specific intent to obstruct justice. If there is no underlying were reluctant to do this and we rarely do but the chairman of the Judiciary Committee just said that mueller found there was no collusion. That is not correct. Nicole wallace, the report says collusion is not a thing they considered. It doesnt exist in federal code. What is stunning is that Lindsey Graham is offering answers to questions not on the table today. The question on the table tonight is why did barr mischaracterize what was in the report. Im sorry Lindsey Graham, your defensiveness is showing. To uctaabout everything that went in to it and a stunning mischaracterization of what the whole exercise is supposed to be about. He is sitting not as the chairman of the Judiciary Committee but a human shield for donald trump and it would appear, william barr. We try to offer gavel to gavel coverage but that phrase or the lack of it, its absence from federal code. This no collusion mantra that we decided to flag it when we heard him use it, once again. Back into the chairman and the committee room. If you hack into a state election system, even though it is not tied to the internet, thats a crime. I would like to do more to harden our infrastructure because the russians did it. It wasnt some 400pound guy sitting it was the russians and it could be the chinese and be somebody next so, my take away from this report is that weve got a lot of work to do to defend democracy against the russians and other bad actors and i promise the committee we will get on with that work hopefully in a bipartisan fashion. The other campaign, the other campaign was investigated not by mr. Mueller, by people within the department of justice. The accusation against the clinton, secretary clinton was that she set a private server up somewhere in her house and classified information was on it to avoid the Disclosure Requirements and the transparency requirements required of being secretary of state. So, that was investigated. What do we know . We know that the person incha e charge of investigating hated trumps guts. I dont know how mr. Mueller felt about trump, but i dont think anybody on our side believes that he had a personal animosity towards the president to the point he couldnt do his job. This is what and hes in charge of the clinton email investigation. I keep hoping the charade will end and people will just dump him. February 12th, 2016. Page is the department of justice lawyer assigned to this case. March 3rd, 2016. Struck. Oh, my god. Trumps an idiot, page, hes awful. Struck. God, hillary should win. 100 million to nothing. Compare those two people to mueller. March 16th, 2016. I cannot believe trump is likely to be an actual serious candidate for president. July the 21st, 2016. Trump is a disaster. No idea how destabilizing his presidency would be. August 8th, 2016. Three days before struck was made deputy acting in charge of the Counterintelligence Division of the fbi. Hes never going to become president , right . Page, no, no, he wont. Well stop him. These are the people investigating the clinton email situation and the counterintelligence investigation of the Trump Campaign. Compare them to mueller. August 15th, 2016. Struck, i would like to believe the path you threw out for consideration that there is no way he gets elected but im afraid we cant take that risk. Its like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before youre 40. August 26, 2016. Just went to the southern virginia walmart. I could smell the trump support. October the 19th, 2016. Trump is an idiot. Hes unable to provide a coherent answer. Sorry to the kids out there. These are the people that made a decision that clinton didnt do anything wrong. And the counterintelligence investigation the Trump Campaign was warranted. Were going to in a bipartisan way, i hope, deal with russia. But when the Mueller Report is put to bed and it soon will be, this committee is going to look long and hard at how this all started. Were going to look at the fisa warrant process. Did russia provide steele the information about trump that turned out to be garbage that was used to get a warrant on american citizen and how did the system fail . Or is there a real effort between anybody in russia to use the Clinton Emails stole by the russians or is that thought planted in his mind . I dont know. But were going to look. And i can tell you this, if you change the names, youre all going to look, too. Everything i just said just substitute clinton for trump. And see what all these people with cameras would be saying out here about this. As to cooperation in the clinton investigation, i told you what the trump people did. Tell you a little bit about what the clinton people did. There was a protective ord er fr the server for the house and request by the state department to preserve all the information on the server. Paul after having the protective order yoozed a Software Program to wipe the email server clean. Has anybody heard of paul cambeta . No. Under protective order from the house to preserve the information, under request from the state department to preserve the information on the server he used a bleach bit program to wipe it clean. What happened to him . Nothing. 18 devices possess by secretary clinton she used to do business as secretary. How many of them were turned over to the fbi . None. Two of them couldnt be turned over because Judith Caspar took a hammer and destroyed two of them. What happened to her . Nothing. So, the bottom line is were about to hear from mr. Barr the results of a twoyear investigation into the Trump Campaign, all things russia, the actions the president took before and after the campaign, 25 million, 40 fbi agents. I appreciate very much what mr. Mueller did for the country. I have read most of the report. For me, it is over. Senator feinstein. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Welcome, attorney general. On march 24th, you sent a letter to chairman graham and the Ranking Member of this committee providing your summary of the principle conclusion set out in special counsel muellers report. This letter was widely reported as a win for the president and was characterized as confirming there was no conclusion. Following this letter, the white house put out a statement declaring the special counsel and i quote, the special counsel did not find any collusion and did not find any obstruction, end quote. And that the report, quote, was a total and complete exoneration, end quote, of the president. However, last night the Washington Post reported that special counsel mueller sent you a letter in late march where he said your letter to congress failed to, quote, fully capture the context, nature and substance of his offices work and conclusions, end quote. And that he spoke with you about the concern that the letter threatened to undermine the Public Confidence in the outcome of the investigations. Thats in quotes, as well. Then on april 18th, you held a press conference where you announced repeatedly that the Mueller Report found no collusion and no evidence of a crime. An hour later, a redacted copy of the Mueller Report was provided to the public and the congress. And we saw why mueller was concerned. Contrary to the declarations of the total and complete exoneration, the special counsels report contained substantial evidence of misconduct. First, special counsel muellers report confirms that the russian government implemented a social Media Campaign to mislead millions of americans. And that Russian Intelligence Services hacked into the dnc computers and stole emails and memos and systematically released them to impact the president ial election. Your march letter stated that there was no evidence that the Trump Campaign, quote, conspired or coordinated with russia, end quote. However, the report outlined substantial evidence that the Trump Campaign welcomed, encouraged and expected to benefit electerally from russias interference in the election. The mulleeller report details t and time again took steps from unlawful interference. For example, president Trumps Campaign manager, Paul Manafort, passed internal Campaign Polling data, messaging and strategy updates to constentine a russian national. The Mueller Report explains how Paul Manafort briefed her in early august of 2016 on and i quote, the state of the Trump Campaign and manaforts plan to win the election, end quote. Including the campaigns focus on the battleground states of michigan, wisconsin, pennsylvania and minnesota. Next, the Mueller Report documents the Trump Campaigns communications regarding secretary clintons and the dncs stolen emails. Specifically the report states and i wrote within approximately five hours of President Trump calling on russia to find secretary clintons emails, Russian Intelligence Agency gru officers, quote, targeted for the first time clintons personal office, end quote. The Mueller Report also reveals that President Trump repeatedly asked individuals affiliated with his campaign, including michael flynn, quote, to find the deleted Clinton Emails, end quote. These efforts included suggestions to contact foreign intelligence services, Russian Hackers and individuals on the dark web. The report confirms that trump new of wikileaks releases of the stolen emails and received status updates about upcoming releases. While his campaign promoted coverage of the leaks, donald trump jr. Communicated directly with wikileaks and at its request publicly tweeted a link to emails stolen from Clintons Campaign manager. Second, in your march letter to congress, you concluded and i quote, that the evidence is not sufficient to establish that the president committed an obstruction of justice offense, end quote. However, special counsel mueller methodically outlined ten episodes. Some continuing multiple actions by the president to mislead the American People and interfere with the investigations into russian interference and obstruction. In one example, the president repeatedly called white house counsel, don mcgahn, at home and directed him to fire mueller. Saying, quote, mueller has to go. Call me back when you do it. Then later the president repeatedly ordered mcgahn to release a press statement and write a letter saying the president did not order mueller fired. The Mueller Report also outlines efforts by President Trump to influence witness testimony and deter cooperation with law enforcement. For example, the president s team communicated to witnesses that pardons would be available if they, quote, stayed on message, end quote. And remain, quote, on the team end quote. In one case, the president sent messages through his personal lawyers to Paul Manafort that he would be taken care of and just, quote, sit tight, end quote. The president then publicly affirmed this communication by stating that manafort was, quote, a brave man for refusing to break. Similarly, the Mueller Report stated the president used inducements in the form of positive messages in an effort to get Michael Cohen not to cooperate and turned to attacks to deter information or undermine cohens credibility. Finally, while the march letter to congress and the april press Conference Left the impression there were no remaining questions to examine, this report notes several limitation s mueller faced while gathering the facts that Congress Needed to examine. More than once, the report documents that legal conclusions were not drawn because witnesses refused to answer questions or failed to recall the events. In addition, numerous witnesses, including but not limited to jared kushner, sarah sanders, rudolph giuliani, michael flynn, steve bannon and john kelly all stated they could not recall events. The president himself said more than 30 times that he could not recall or remember enough to be able to answer written questions from the special counsel. The special counsel also recounted that, quote, Relevant Communications or communicated during the relevant period using applications that featured encryption or do not provide for longterm retention of data end quote. Based on these gaps, the Mueller Report concluded and i quote, again. The office cannot rule out the possibility that the unavailable information would have shed additional light on or cast a new light on events described in the report, end quote. And contrary to the conclusion that the special counsels report did not find evidence of communication or coordination between the Trump Campaign and russia, the Mueller Report explicitly states and i quote, a statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts. Volume two, page two. Let me conclude with this. Congress has both the constitutional duty and the authority to investigate the serious findings contained in the Mueller Report. I struongly believe that this committee needs to hear directly from special counsel mueller about his views on the report in his march letter. I also believe senators should have the opportunity to ask him about these subjects in questions directly. I have requested this to our chairman to authorize a hearing with special counsel mueller and i hope that will happen soon. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you. Before we receive your testimony, mr. Barr, we have the letter that mr. Mueller sent to you on march 27th, 2019. Ill put that in the record now. The floor is yours. Got to swear you in, sorry. Do you solemnly swear the testimony youre about to give this committee is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you god. Yes. Sorry about that. Thank you, mr. Chairman and Ranking Member feinstein, members of the committee. During my confirmation process, there were two concerns that dominated as i think you will all agree. The first was whether i would in any way impede or curtail special counsel muellers investigation and the second whether i would make public his final report. As you see, bob mueller was allowed to complete his work as he saw fit. And as for the report, even though the applicable regulations require that the report is to be made to the ag and is to remain confidential and not be made public, i told this committee that i intended to exercise whatever discretion i have to make as much of the report available to the public and to congressional leaders as i could consistent with the law. This has been done. I arrived at the department on february 14th and shortly thereafter i asked it to be communicated to bob muellers team that in preparing the report, we requested that they make it so we readily identify 6e material so we could quickly process the report. Did you tell the public what 6e is . Grand jury material that cannot be made public. Its prohibited by statute. And i wanted that identified so we could redact that material and prepare the report for public release as quickly as we could. When i arrived at the department i found and was eventually briefed in on the investigation. I found that the Deputy Attorney general and his principal associate deputy were in regular discussions with the counsels office, had been and they communicated this request and had discussions about both the timing of the report and the nature of the report. On march 5th, i met with bob with the principle associate deputy bob mueller. I met with bob mueller. To get a read out on what his conclusions would be. On march 25th, and at that meeting i asked, i reiterated to special counsel mueller that in order to have the shortest possible time before i was in a position to release the report, i asked that they identify 6e material. And when i received the report on march 22nd and we were hoping to have that easily identify the 6e material, unfortunately, it did not come in that form. And it quickly became apparent that it would take three or four weeks to identify that material and other material that had to be redacted. So, there was necessarily going to be a gap between the receipt of the report and getting the full report out publicly. The deputy and i identified four categories of information that we believe required redaction. And i think you will all know of them, but they were the grand jury material, the 6e material. Information that the Intelligence Community advised would reveal sources and methods and information if revealed at this stage would impinge on the prosecution of related cases and information that would unfairly affect the privacy and reputational interests of per h peripheral third parties. We went about redacting this material in concert with the special counsels office. We needed their assistance to identify the 6e material in particular. The redactions were all carried out by doj lawyers with special counsel lawyers in consultation with Intelligence Community. The report contained a substantial amount of material over which the president could have asserted executive privilege. But the president made the decision not to assert executive privilege and to make public as much of the report as we could, subject to the redactions that we felt required. Now, you see the report has been slightly redacted. The public version has been estimated to have only 10 redactions. Almost the vast bulk of those redactions relate to volume one, which is the volume that deals with collusion. And it relates to existing ongoing cases. Volume two has only about 2 redactions for the public version. So, 98 of volume two dealing with obstruction is available to the public. We have made a version of the report available to cub congressional leaders that only contain reaction of grand jury material. For this version, overall redactions are less than 2 for the whole report and for volume two dealing with obstruction, they are less than 0. 1 of 1 . Given the limited nature of redactions i believe the publicly released report will allow every american to understand the results of the special counsels work. By now, everyone is familiar with the special counsel bottom line conclusions about russias attempts to interfere in the election. In volume one the special counsel found that the russians engaged in two distinct schemes. First, the Internet Research agency, a russian entity with close ties to the russian government conducted a disinformation and social media operation to so discord among americans. Second, the gru, Russian Military intelligence, hacked into computers and stole emails from individuals affiliated with the Democratic Party and hillary Clintons Campaign. The special counsel investigated whether anyone affiliated with president Trumps Campaign conspired or coordinated with these criminal schemes. They concluded that there was not sufficient evidence to establish that there had been any conspiracy or coordination with the russian government or the ira. As you know, volume two of his report dealt with obstruction. And the special counsel considered whether certain actions of the president could amount to obstruction. He decided not to reach a conclusion. Instead, the report recounts ten episodes and discusses potential legal theories for connecting the president s actions to elements of obstruction offenses. Now, we first heard that the special counsels decision not to decide the obstruction issue at the march 5th meeting when he came over to the department and we were frankly surprised that they were not going to reach a decision on obstruction. And we asked them a lot about the reasoning behind this and the basis for this. Special counsel mueller stated three times to us in that meeting in response to our questioning that he emphatically was not saying that for the olc opinion, he would have found obstruction. He said that in the future, the facts of a case against the president might be such that a special counsel would recommend abandoning the olc opinion but this is not such a case. We did not understand exactly why the special counsel was not reaching a decision. And when we pressed him on it he said his team was still formulating the explanation. Once we heard that the special counsel was not reaching a conclusion on obstruction, the the deputy and i discussed and agreed that the department had to reach a decision. We had the responsibility to assess the evidence as set forth in the report and to make the judgment. I say this because the special counsel was appointed to carry out the investigative and proscatprosc proscutorial and the powers he was using including the power of using a grand jury and compulsory process the function of the department ofu justice i this arena to determine whether or not there was criminal conduct. Is there enough evidence to show a crime . And do we believe a crime has been committed . We dont conduct criminal investigations just to collect information and put it out to the public. We do so to make a decision. And here we thought there was an additional reason, which is this was a very public investigation. And we had made clear that the results of the investigation were going to be made public and the deputy and i felt that the evidence developed by this special counsel was not sufficient to establish that the president committed a crime and therefore it would be irresponsible and unfair for the department to release a report without stating the departments conclusions. And thus leave it hanging as to whether the department considered there was criminal conduct. So, the Deputy Attorney general and i conducted a careful review of the report with our staffs and legal advisors and while we disagreed with some of the legal theories and felt that many of the episodes discussed in the report would not constitute obstruction as a matter of law, we didnt rest our decision on that. We took each of the ten episodes and we assessed them against the Analytical Framework that had been set forth by the special counsel and the evidence by the special counsel was not sufficient. Let me just talk about this march 24th letter and bob muellers letter i think, which i received on the 28th. When the report came in on the 22nd and we saw it was going to take a great deal of time to get it out to the public, i made the determination that we had to put out some information about the bottom line. The body politic was in a high state of agitation and massive interest in learning what the Bottom Line Results of bob muellers investigation was, particularly as to collusion. Former government officials were confidently predicting that the president and members of his family were going to be indicted. There were people suggesting that if it took any time to turn around the report and get it out, it would mean that the president was in legal jeopardy. So, i didnt feel that it was in the Public Interest to allow this to go on for several weeks without saying anything. So, i decided to simply state what the bottom line conclusions were, which is what the department normally does. Make a binary determination. Is there a crime or isnt there a crime . We prepared the letter for that purpose to state the bottom line conclusions. We used the language from the report to state those bottom line concluzs. I analogize it to announcing after an extended trial what the verdict of the trial is. Pending release of the full transcript. Thats what we were trying to do. Notify the people as to the bottom line conclusion. We were not trying to summarize the 410page report. So, we released that i offered bob mueller the opportunity to review that letter before it went out and he declined. On thursday morning, i received it, probably was received at the Department Wednesday night or evening, but on thursday morning i received a letter from bob. The letter that has just been put into the record. And i called bob and said, but, what is the issue here . Are you and i asked him if he was suggesting that the march 24th letter was inaccurate and he said, no, but that the press reporting had been inaccurate. And that the press was reading too much into it and i asked him, you know, specifically what his concern was. And he said that his concern focused on his explanation of why he did not reach a conclusion on obstruction. And he wanted more put out on that issue. He wanted, he argued for putting out summaries of each volume. The executive summaries that had been written by his office. And if not that, then other material that focused on the issue of why he didnt reach the obstruction question. But he was very clear with me that he was not suggesting that we had misrepresented his report. I told bob that i was not interested in putting out summaries. And i wasnt going to put out the report piece meal. I wanted to get the whole report out. And i thought summaries by very definition, regardless of who prepared them, would be underinclusive and we would have sort of a series of different debates and public discord over each information that went out and i wanted to get everything out at once and we should start working on that. So, the following day i put out a letter explaining the process we were following and stressing that the march 24th letter was not a summary of the report, but a statement of the principle conclusions and that people would be able to see bob muellers entire thinking when as made public. So, mr. Chairman and glad to take any questions. As to the actual report itself, was there ever an occasion where you wanted something was redacted from the report that mr. Mueller objected to . I wouldnt say objected to. My understanding is the categories were defined by me and the deputy. I dont think that i have no did you work with him to redact the report . Right. Those categories were executed by doj lawyers working with his lawyers. I think there were maybe a few judgment calls, very few, as to whether or not something is a prudential matter should be treated as a reputational interest or something. So there may have been some occasions of that. But as far as i you did not want to hurt somebodys reputation unless it really affected the outcome, is that correct . Right. So, was there any disagreement about 6e material . Not that im aware of. Any disagreement about classified information . Not that im aware of. Okay. So, the conclusions in your fourpage summary, you think, accurately reflect his bottom line on collusion, is that correct . Yes. And you can read it for yourself if you got any doubt. As to obstruction of justice, were you surprised he was going to let you decide . Yes, i was surprised. I think the very purpose, the function he was carrying out is perform for the how many people did he actually indict, do you know . I cant remember off the top of my head. It was a lot. Yeah. He has the ability to indict if he wants to. He has used that power during the investigation, is that correct . That is correct. And the other thing that was confusing to me is that the investigation carried on for a while as additional episodes were looked into. Episodes involving the president and so my question is or was, why were those investigated if at the end of the game you werent going to reach a decision on them. So, did you consult Deputy Attorney general rosenstein about the obstruction matter . Constantly, yeah. So, was he in agreement with your decision not to proceed forward . Yes. Im sorry, the agreement not to proceed forward. Right. With obstruction. Right. So, very quickly, give us your reasoning why you think it would be inappropriate to proceed forward on obstruction of justice in this case . Well, generally speaking an obstruction case typically has two aspects to it. One, theres usually an underlying criminality. Lets stop right there. Was there an underlying crime here . No. So, usually there is. Usually. But its not necessary, but a typical case, theres an under lying crime and then the person implicated or people implicated are concerned about that criminality being discovered and taken inherently malignant act as the Supreme Court has said to obstruct that investigation. Such as destroying documents. People were worried about that he fired comey to stop the russia investigation. Thats one of the concerns people had. Let me tell you a little bit about comey. I do not have confidence in him, comey, any longer. That was Chuck Schumer november 2nd, 2016. I think he, comey, should take a hard look at what he has done and i think it would not be a bad thing for the American People if he did step down, bernie sanders, january 15, 2017. The president ought to fire comey immediately and he ought to initiate an investigation. That is congressman nadler november 14, 2016. Did you have a problem with the way comey handled the clinton email investigation . Yes, i said so at the time. Okay. So, given the fact that a lot of people comey should be fired, did you find that to be a persuasive act of obstructing justice . No. I think even the report at the end of the day came to the conclusion if you read the analysis that a reason that loomed large there for his termination was his refusal to tell the public what he was privately telling the president , which was that the president was not under investigation. As to where we go forward, as to how we go forward, would you recommend this committee and every other committee of congress do our best to harden our infrastructure against future russian attacks . Absolutely, yes. Do you think russia is still up to it . Yes. Do you think other countries may get involved in our elections in 2020 . Yes. So you would support an effort by Congress Working with the administration to harden our electoral infrastructure . Yes. Is that one of the take aways of the Mueller Report . Yes. Do you share my concerns about the fisa warrant process . Yes. Do you share my concerns about the counterintelligence investigation, how it was opened and why oit was opened . Yes. Do you share my concerns that the lack of professionalism in the clinton email investigation is something we should all look at . Yes. Do you expect to change your mind about the bottom line conclusions of the Mueller Report . No. Do you know bob mueller . Yes. Do you trust him . Yes. How long have you known him . 30 years roughly. Do you think he had the time he needed . Yes. Do you think he had the money he needed . Yes. Do you think he had the resources needed . Yes. Do you think he did a thorough job . Yes, and i think he feels he did a thorough job and had adequate evidence to make the calls. Do you think the president s campaign in 2016 was thoroughly looked at in terms of whether or not they colluded with the russians . Yes. And the answer is no, according to bob mueller . Thats right. He couldnt decide about obstruction, you did, is that correct . Thats right. Do you feel good about your decision . Absolutely. Thank you very much. Chairman, mr. Attorney general, the special counsels report describes how the president directed bob mcgahn to fire special counsel mueller and later told mcgahn to write a letter for our records stating that the president had not ordered him to fire mueller. The report also recounts how the president made repeat efforts to get mcgahn to change his story. Knowing that mcgahn believes the president s version of events was false, the special counsel found, and i quote, substantial evidence, end quote, that the president tried to change mcgahns account in order to prevent further scrutiny of the president towards the investigation. Special counsel also found that mcgahn is a credible witness with no motive to lie or exaggerate given the position he held in the white house. Heres the question. Does existing law prohibit efforts to get a witness to lie to Say Something the witness believes is false . Yes. Lie to the government, yes. And what law is that . Obstruction statutes. The obstruction statute. And you dont have it, i guess, before you . Im not sure which one they were referring to here. It was probably 1512 c 2. So these things in effect constitute obstruction . Youre talking in general terms, youre not talking im talking about specifically yes, youre correct in a sense, that the special counsel in his report found substantial evidence that the president tried to change mcgahns account in order to prevent and this is a quote further scrutiny of the president toward the investigation. End quote. The special counsel also found mcgahn is a credible witness with no motive to lie or exaggerate. So what im asking you then, is that a credible charge under the obstruction statute . We felt that that episode, the government would not be able to establish obstruction. The if you go back and look at the episode where the president gave mcgahn an instruction, mcgahns version of that is quite clear and each time he gave it, which is that the instruction said go to rosenstein, raise the issue of conflict of interest, and mueller has to go because of this conflict of interest. So theres no question that that that the whatever instruction was given mcgahn had to do with muellers conflict of interest. Now, the president later said what he meant was that the conflict of interest should be raised with rosenstein, but the decision should be left with rosenstein. On the other end of the spectrum, it appears that mcgahn felt it was more directive and that the president was essentially saying push rosenstein to invoke a conflict of interest to push mueller out. Wherever had fell on that spectrum of interest, the New York Times story was very different. The New York Times story said flat out that the president directed the firing of mueller. He told mcgahn fire mueller. Theres something very different about firing a special counsel outright, which suggests ending the investigation, and having a special counsel removed from conflict which suggests youll have another special counsel. The fact is that even under mcgahns and then as the report says, and recognizes, there is evidence the president truly felt that the times article was inaccurate and he wanted mcgahn to correct it. We believe it would be impossible for the government to say beyond all reasonable doubt. Mcgahn before had given testimony to this special counsel and the president was aware of that. And as the report indicates, it would also have been the case that he was primarily concerned about press reports and making it clear he never directed the outright firing of mueller. In terms of the request to ask mcgahn to memorialize that fact, we do not think in this case that the government could show correct intent beyond a reasonable doubt. Just to finish this, but you still have a situation where a president essentially tries to change the lawyers account in order to prevent further criticism of himself. Thats not a crime. So you can, in this situation, instruct someone to lie. To be obstruction of justice, the lie has to be tied to impairing the evidence in a particular proceeding. Mcgahn had already given his evidence, and i think it would be [ applauseplausible was to make record that the president never directed him to fire. And there is a distinction between saying to someone go fire him, go fire mueller, and saying have him removed based on conflict. They have different results. What would the conflict be . If you remove someone for a conflict of interest, then there would be presumably another person appointed. Yeah, but wouldnt you have to have it in this kind of situation, an identifiable conflict that made sense or else doesnt it just become a fabrication . Well, now were going to shift from the issue of writing the memo or somehow putting out a release and the actual direction to mcgahn. The question on the direction to mcgahn has a number of Different Levels to it. And first, as a matter of law, i think the departments position would be that the president can direct the termination or replacement of a special counsel. And as a matter of law, the obstruction statute does not reach that conduct. Putting that aside, the next question would be, even if it reached the conduct, could you here establish corrupt intent beyond a reasonable doubt. What makes this case very interesting is that when you take away the fact that there were no underlying criminal conduct, and you take away the fact there was no inherently maligned obstructive act, that is the president was carrying out his constitutional duties. The cessiquestion is what is th of taking away the underlying crime . And its not the report suggests one impact is well, we have to find some other reason why the president would obstruct the investigation. But theres another impact, which is if the president is being falsely accused, which the evidence now suggests that the accusations against him were false, if and he knew they were false. He felt that this investigation was unfair, propelled by his