prosecution. mr. mcgahn said while he could request an investigation, that too could prompt accusations of abuse of power. to underscore his point, mr. mcgahn had white house lawyers write a memo for mr. trump warning that if he asked law enforcement to investigate his rivals, he could face a range of consequences, including possible impeachment. laura, this is an explosive article we re getting. and clearly, they didn t go ahead and the justice department didn t begin to prosecute hillary clinton or james comey. but this is pretty explosive right here. it s remarkable reporting, wolf. and it s interesting that mcgahn obviously saw the writing on the wall, saw how this could turn bad and fast. even resulting in possible impeachment. so he had the lawyers in the white house counsel s office, according to this reporting, draft up a memo, trying to outline for the president all of the different down sides of this. according to the reporting from maggi haberman and michael
of donald trump s favor all of the time. but you come in and out of favor because you re not using the justice department as a way to settle personal political scores. we remember at least some of us that richard nixon, then president tried to use power to influence law enforcement. the justice department, to go after individuals, political rivals. but this is pretty extraordinary. if this president, president trump, were to try to do something similar, right? yes. i mean, this is this is as far as we know, nothing happened beyond this discussion. but, you know, there s a statement in our story from a lawyer for don mcgahn saying that to his knowledge, the president never ordered anyone to do this. i think that is a very specifically worded statement to make clear that we don t know whether the president tried to go around the white house counsel and tell anyone else to do anything. you know, our reporting does not show that he did. but i don t think people are willing to r
about them publicly. presidential meddling could undermine the legitimacy by attaching political overtones to investigations in which career law enforcement officials follow the evidence and the law. so potentially, this is explosive if, in fact, the president would have ordered the justice department to launch this kind of prosecution, that could be seen as an abuse of presidential power. that s right. it s sort of the red line, the third rail, this political interference in doj investigations so if there is evidence, that s a big problem. department of justice is supposed to be independent, not for the president to investigate his enemies or foes. so that is a real key issue here. more was there any interference, did this message make it to doj and did they act it on it. i want to bring in jeffrey toobin. give us your thoughts. as we ve been saying, this is
wrote that memo he said he was going to write to the president explaining the negative consequences of potentially launching this kind of justice department prosecution? a memo was written about the parameters. i m not sure about how detailed it was about the possible ramifications. and do you know if mueller has that memo? i do not know the answer to that. but i think if he doesn t have it already, he will after this story. yeah, i m sure he will. this is once again, explosive information. and just to be precise, want to be precise. there s no indication that any such prosecution no such investigation was ever launched. correct. we have our reporting did not show that anything like that happened. again, i want to refer back to don mcgahn s very carefully worded statement. to his knowledge, nothing was done. to your knowledge, nothing was done either. and the relationship that don mcgahn had with the president when he left the white house was
go after his political rivals, wolf. stand by. you mentioned maggi haberman. she s joining us on the phone, one of our cnn political contributors, the coauthor of this explosive new article in the new york times. so step back and give us the big picture, maggi, on your celebrity reporting. what have we learned? thanks for having me and reading the reporting. what we have learned is that the president engaged privately in frankly what he has talked about publicly on and off for quite some time, that he tried to use the levers of power to do so, which was prosecute his political enemies. he made clear to the white house counsel s office he wanted the justice department to go after james comey, the fbi director, who he fired and hillary clinton, his rival in the 2016 campaign, who he claimed just a week after the election, you know, he didn t want to do any more damage to. but he has changed his tune and he himself has found himself under investigation. he made clear at the white ho