the new yorker about what the president had to say. what s the difference between ordering and asking or suggest ing? erica, she hit the nail right on the head. most presidents avoid this problem by not making these public statements and not being caught giving directives, whether explicit or implicit, to their subordinates. so here if the president has explicitly ordered someone to interfere with the justice department prosecution or the civil action to stop the merger, that would have been really, really improper because we have to keep apart the political from the career individuals at the justice department. so now, if it was more of an implicit like i want this to not go through or i want this to be blocked and that individual to the justice department felt pressured or felt like they had to do that to make the white house happy, that s also really problematic. this is why presidents avoid this tension by not laying into highly charged political cases
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
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
mcgahn s suggestion to the president, and if he were to order such an investigation, such a prosecution by the justice department, that could lead potentially to impeachment. it s unclear whether that did have a negative effect on the president, forcing him to step back, right? oh, i think it did. i think repeatedly, anything that has come toward the third rail of impeachment appears to get through the president as a problem. again, whether he tried to do something on his own, he could put in place, i don t know. but i do think that at least for a time and possibly permanently, it got him to back off. in your article, maggi, you say a white house spokesman declined to comment. a spokeswoman for the fbi declined to comment on the president s criticism of director wray. but there is a statement here from the lawyer for don mcgahn, white house counsel. let me read it. mr. mcgahn will not comment on his legal advice to the president. like any client, the president is entitled to confid