senior legal analyst and former prosecutor ali hoenig. let s start here, what specifically does the president want to block? pam, what we have is what appears to be a treasure trove, for lack of a better term, of what trumps saying and what people in the white house were writing down on the days before january 6th and on january 6th about election fraud and the certification of the presidency. so these are not documents we ve seen. all this is is a list so far from the national archives that was put in a court filing that details the itemization of all of the things that donald trump does not want to have out there in the public. what we know is it s white house visitor logs, call records, it s 30 pages of trump s daily schedule, it s officials notes and memos on efforts to undermine the election. there s handwritten notes from the chief of staff, mark meadows, about election integrity, trump s election
they shouldn t be having public hearings. this is a hoax. it s like the russian witch hunt. this is just a continuation. our legal analyst and former state prosecutor ali hoenig with us this morning. good to see you. how damaging is it? the revelations we got late this week about mulvaney were extremely important. mick mulvaney we now know is a central witness and he was essentially involved in the with holding of the aid. that was the thing that came through yesterday. one of the things we steerting to see and he hinted to this in the audio we heard, he said, no firsthand information. we had the information. it didn t involve me, but now we have the chief of staff, the
president trump is insisting the justice department should, quote, come to his rescue. the victim does not recall the incident. joining us now ali hoenig. there s a lot in here, but i want to start with the president s tweet. former federal prosecutor, do us a favor. remind us. what is the role of the department of justice? that tweet shows, i think, really ignorant and i think dangerous view of what the department of justice does. here s what the doj does not do. they do not weigh into partisan battles. they do not settle political scores. they do not seek to silence the media or victims. what doj ought to do is follow the facts, get to the truth, and do justice. this tweet i think is a new low. we don t even know what rescue means. what could the justice department do? that s the question you have to ask. saying the justice department should come in and big foot
that. i m actually a little surprised that mueller backed off of that. he really let the president get away with ever having to answer any question in writing or in person under oath or not under oath about obstruction of justice. and michael, you ve worked for mueller. you know him. why do you think he backed off? well, because in order to meet the standard for subpoena in a case like this, you re going to have to establish the need for that information and know alternative means of getting it. and i don t think without an underlying crime he could have met that standard. and so i think that probably he thought this through with michael dreeben from the solicitor s office on his team and people in main justice and they thought it through and determined they might not win a subpoena fight. and rather than lose a subpoena fight, let it be decided along traditional grounds, and that s how it ended up. the president was never interviewed, of course. but he did have to answer questio
today is the day of national consequence. the attorney general revealing special counsel robert mueller did not find the trump campaign or associates conspired with the russian government in the 2016 presidential election. the president and the white house are declaring total victory, total exoneration. there s a lot we still don t know. some are latching on to one sentence from attorney general barr s summary regarding obstruction of justice. here it is. while the mueller report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him. joining us now is michael zeldin, former special assistant to robert mueller at the justice department and ali hoenig, former u.s. attorney for of the southern district of new york. ali, the democrats in congress, they want to see not only the full mueller report, but all the underlying evidence, as well. do you agree with this? look, i think they can and should and will get their hands on the full mueller report and rema