however, the washington post then revealed another twist in today s development that, trump s announcement of mcgahn s departure came as a surprise, including to mcgahn and that is because according to a source, mcgahn had not discussed his plans directly with trump. trump s announcement comes today after the new york times reported last week that mcgahn has cooperated extensively with the special counsel, speaking to investigators for over 30 hours in total. that news reportedly rattled the president who realized, quote, he did not know what mr. mcgahn had shared with mueller s team. despite that reporting, the president today insists he is not concerned with what mcgahn told mueller. and he ll be moving on probably the private sector, maybe the private sector. and he ll do very well. but he s he s done an excellent job. any concern about what he said to the mueller team? no, not at all. not at all. joining me now is a former federal prosecutor and jonathan swan, a natio
well, obviously, you know, he s the 800-pound gorilla in republican politics. for more, i m joined by our round table, laura basset from huffington post, and an editor at commentary magazine. we were talking about this florida governor s race as sort of an illustration of where each party is in the trump era, and this seems like a big part of it. you ve got a congressman who a key part of his campaign strategy was get on fox, and he got the president s attention, and it changed the race. think about desantis. desantis is a harvard yale guy, okay? he s a harvard-yale guy. this is not a populist s resume. if there is an indication that the party of the the party of reagan has turned into the party of trump, it is that desantis isn t walking around saying, well, as a man who attended harvard and yale. he s like, defend trump. the elites are going after him. he is the elites. he s, you know, he s a classic
elie honig, thank you both for joining us. up next, we re going to pfie up the big board. we ve ngot nominees in florida and critically in arizona and some polling to show you. this is hardball, where the action is. ow you this is hardball, where the action is. implicated in two fel, and he s all but confessed to them on fox news. no one is above the law, so we have to make sure this president doesn t use pardons to cover up crimes. if you agree that a president should not be allowed to pardon himself or his associates, join us at needtoimpeach.com. the washington establishment doesn t have the courage to act, but the american people can.
comey, of maybe advice trump was getting, maybe what he was being told inside the white house, does it suggest anything about that to you? mcgahn seems to have been one of the main sources of sort of moderation and restraint and as jonathan alluded to, maybe his cardinal sin was that he would tell the president no and sometimes the best advice a lawyer can give a client, it s not easy to give is, no, don t do that. and you know, the most important thing, the most interesting thing to me as a prosecutor would be those conversations around the potential firing of mueller. it s been reported that mcgahn was the one who talked the president out of that or told the president, you can t or should not do that and i would want to know if i was a prosecutor sitting with mcgahn, why did he want to do it? what did he tell you were his reasons for wanting to do it? and if the answer is, he was freaked out about russia, that could be really important evidence. jonathan, the question is, what s
difficult position from day one and they are quite sympathetic to him. eli, in terms of this question here, this issue of cooperating with mueller s investigation, is there a difference in terms of the role he could play with mueller being the current white house counsel or the former white house counsel. does that affect that relationship at all with mueller s team. i think where it comes into play is if mcgahn were to stick around and continue to be in these conversations with the president, those future conversations would now become subject to mueller, which may be a reason for the timing here. it may be a reason why the president said, okay, i think the president was already freaked out by the 30 hours and he should be. 30 hours is an eternity for a prosecutor to spend with somebody. it means that the person s got something of interest. i would never spend more than 3 hours with somebody who had nothing of interest. and so, now that mcgahn s gone, he won t be in the room and h