thing be kept under the hood of the car, right? and it seems to me just reading and, again, we are readi reading tea leaves here, but if we know anything about whitaker, we know how he feels about this investigation, and it would seem to me this will be the next big fight if mueller issues a report and it is redacted or it is or they try to keep it secret. but there s going to be a democratic majority in the house, so they can they have subpoena power to get what they want. maybe. maybe. i mean i m not the lawyer here and i don t know how this would i don t know how this would play out, but it seems to me it would be a big constitutional question here about whether the congress deserves the right to open this up to the american public or whether because of privilege issues for example, it should be kept secret. what do you think, rebecca? well, a congressional fight i think is where this could possibly go, wolf. on the house side, you can count on democrats fighting t
basically? why would he want to help? mueller is not sitting around, twiddling his thumbs and waiting for giuliani to make a decision on whether he is going to produce the president for an interview. i mean, the scope of this probe is so vast and so wide by necessity based on turn over one rock and there is more stuff underneath. but any good investigator is going to want to talk to a key witness and find out what he has to say. and he might have or might not have sufficient evidence to actually bring and prove a crime. and of course there is an addition, a big constitutional question as to whether he could actually indict the standing president. what is it he wants from trump in an interview? i don t get this yet. why would trump give him what he wants? i don t get this. it s about the legal situation, chris, because mueller knows when you talk to people close to the investigation that the president declines a voluntary interview,
tell the vice president and they didn t act for 18 days until this became public. and the next day he s calling comey in for dinner. the question is, what is it about flynn that has the president so frantic that he would delay firing him, that he would ask the fbi director in an extraordinary way not to go after him? i think that s what needs to be pursued. the president said or the president s attorney said he feels vindicated by comey s statement. the president s own comments last month contradict another part of comey s statement about letting the flynn investigation go. i want to play what he said. did you at any time urge former fbi director james comey in any way, shape, or form to close or back down the investigation into michael flynn? and, also, as you look back no, no. next question. so comey is going to refute that directly tomorrow. is that a problem for the president? no, i don t think so. if you look at it there s a lot
he s stopping the investigation. nobody talked about obstruction of justice. you cannot have obstruction of justice when the president exercises his constitutional authority to pardon, his constitutional authority to fire the director of the fbi or his constitutional authority to tell the director of the fbi who to prosecute, who not to prosecute. so let s get out of the weeds and let s look at the big constitutional question. but let me just ask you, professor, just to be clear, according to director comey the president told him, i quote, i hope you can let this it go, discussing michael flynn via the investigation. you don t believe he was trying to influence or impede any possible or further investigation of michael flynn? what i m telling you is even if he did want to impede it and even if he did impede it, that is his constitutional power. he has the right to say you will not investigate flynn. the best proof of that is he could have simply said to comey stop the investigation
and shut this thing down or telling comey to complete the investigation and do what you need to do and i think that i take it which he did according to comey and described as satellites who may have done something, it would be good to know that. i interrupted that as the president saying make sure you continue to right. i think folks can t have it both ways on this. that s my point there. don t we need to come back to the question, though, the president himself said that he was firing the head of the fbi because of this russia thing? and that s why i keep saying, these two things are not separate. meanwhile, special prosecutor has hired former head of the fraud division of the justice department to be his assistant in one area of investigation which has to do with money, follow the money. that is going to go into the trump organization. it s going to go into the finances of the campaign. it is going to go into paul manifort s accounts.