perhaps even sitting in this chair listening to all this, wondering how we should think about all these talks about pardons. all these mentions of pardons. it seems to be in the background of so many of the tableaus. talk about that and how it might blow back on rudy giuliani. yeah. so let s level set for a moment here and set aside criminal allegations of obstruction, witness tampering that are related to dangling pardons. let s talk about ethics and integrity just for a second. this whole notion of the president s criminal defense attorneys, not white house counsel, not ethics and policy lawyers, but his defense team even entertaining discussion of a pardon, entering into so-called back channel communications, wholly inappropriate and puts us much more squarely in the obstruction category than, say, white house counsel explaining the facts of
say if i m an investigator i m really going to do a lot of investigating to see what more is there. and i think that s what we re hearing from the news stories. hey, frank, i m sitting home listening to all this, or perhaps even sitting in this chair listening to all this, wondering how we should think about all these talks about pardons. all these mentions of pardons. it seems to be in the background of so many of the tableaus. talk about that and how it might blow back on rudy giuliani. yeah. so let s level set for a moment here and set aside criminal allegations of obstruction, witness tampering that are related to dangling pardons. let s talk about ethics and integrity just for a second. this whole notion of the president s criminal defense attorneys, not white house counsel, not ethics and policy lawyers, but his defense team even entertaining discussion of a pardon, entering into so-called back channel communications, wholly inappropriate and puts us much
match. european diplomats describe a meeting between trump and putin as successful. at least for putin. then there are the e.u. back channel communications. following the helsinki meeting in july, the european diplomats talk about the damage control effort by the white house after president trump went off script in joint news conference with putin and said he would allow russians to question former u.s. diplomats in exchange for americans being allowed to interrogate russians who had been indicted by the special counsel robert mueller. then they assured them that president trump s agreement would be nipped down to ensure americans from being questioned. i included conversation with leaders in saudi arabia and israel. they only said that.
actually question the president? yeah. as you point out, andrea, it is far from ideal. i can imagine the way you conduct interviews you would much rather be there in person to follow up on the answers and observe body language and inflection. nonetheless, i think there s some value in getting written answers even though lawyers will be involved no doubt in crafting the particular language of them because it locks president trump into a story. for example, if they re asking about back channel communications with russia or meetings at the islands or things like that, president trump has to either say he knew about them or he didn t. he has to take a stand and so whatever stand he takes i think can be useful to robert mueller because it s difficult for president trump to wriggle out of the answers later. can he pick and choose what he wants to answer? well, he should answer all the questions but he could exert executive privilege and some reports of doing that with questions of acti