investigation. democrats and republicans are holding mock hearings with top aides sitting in as mueller. cnn learned that democrats on the house judiciary xhe committee will focus on five areas of potential obstruction of justice laid out in the mueller report including trump s order to don mcgahn to fire mueller, his iftefforts to have mcgahn deny that the president ordered him to have him removed. and also the order to cory lewandowski to tell jeff sessions to limit the investigation to exclude the president and later threatening to fire sessions if he did not meet with lewandowski. and also episodes of alleged witness tampering, including trump encouraging paul manafort and also michael cohen not to cooperate with federal prosecutors. as he says it to the american people so they hear it, that will be very important. reporter: democrats plan to
to shift public opinion here. obviously high stakes next week with robert mueller. they re hoping this changes it dynamics of not only the mueller report and how it s perceived publicly but also could change the dynamics on that question about impeachment. the house judiciary committee is looking at identifying five areas of alleged obstruction of justice from the president. and just to give you a sense of what those are, itcludes tuchl telling don mcgahn to fire mueller. trump telling mac began to deny publicly he was told to fire mueller. and trump telling lewandowski to tell jeff sessions to limit the investigation. and then telling lewandowski to tell sessions he could be fired if he didn t. and finally the committee will focus on alleged witness tampering of paul manafort and other deputy. now, the house intelligence committee is going to be looking at communications the campaign had with russia and wikileaks. but there s a lot of preparation happening. those mock trials behind
tonight we learn details on how both sides are preparing for the long-awaited hearing. tonight lawmakers are preparing for the most anticipated hearing in decades. when special counsel robert mueller testifies about the findings of his two-year investigation. democrats and republicans both sharpening their questions and their strategy as they hold mock hearings with top aides sitting in as mueller. tonight cnn learned that democrats will focus on five our yeahs of potential obstruction of justice laid out in the mueller report, including trump s order to then white house counsel don mcgahn to fire mueller, his efforts to have that mcgahn deb denied to have him removed and then cory lewandowski told to limit the investigation to exclude the president. and later threatening to fire sessions if he did not meet with lewandowski. there were also episodes in the mueller report of alleged
to my point about getting something in plain english, the report is wring in legalese, for instance, one question i would have is, mueller concluded that if they could conclusively say there was no obstruction, they would so state. what does that mean? why not the follow-up? does that mean you did find evidence of obstruction, and what was that evidence of obstruction? please unpack that for us, in plain english. do you think he will answer the question, would you have indicted this person if it weren t the president of the united states? that question s going to get asked, i m sure it s going to get asked a bunch of different ways, i m sure robert mueller is going to find a way not to answer it. i could see him saying we didn t investigate the way we would have any other person who weren t the president of the united states. let me switchgears to the president s former communications director, hope hicks. we learned a lot through some
distraction to highlight, including don mcgahn to fire mueller, and deny trump directed him to fire mueller. he s with us now. if mueller sticks to what he says he s going to do, which is just basically reiterate what s in his report, will this be a game changer? i don t think it will be a game changer, but i think it s so important for the american public. you re right, that s a great point, he s going to stick to the script 448 pages of his report, but what i think the public needs and everyone needs is a nice little cliff notes summary in plain english of what that report means. you re not going to have five hours to read all 448 pages, they re going to have to ask some very pointed questions. what would be your key question if you were questioning him? i think a key question going