it s no surprise that mueller found out. right. well you know what we saw what we saw, don, is a number of people from the white house denying that, including the president himself. if you search you will find comments from the president in which he said he never intended to fire mueller. wasn t going to fire mueller which is not the first time of course there s been dishonesty from the president. what i will say we had a conversation before the break about the legality of firing mueller or comey. i mean what i will say is the logical extension of the argument that there is no crime there is essentially that the president according to that argument would could fire every fbi director anyone in the leadership of the fbi, fire the special counsel after special counsel until he found people who were were willing to let him go, willing not to continue the investigation. but isn t that the prerogative of the president to fire anyone at will? well, not for any reason, right. for ex
tell you about on the russia investigation. a source confirms president trump called for special counsel robert mueller s firing last june, but backed down when his own white house counsel threatened to quit. joining me on the phone with more on this is cnn political analyst josh dawsey, white house reporter for the washington post. josh, thank you so much. i understand you have new information about who tried to intervene so that the president wouldn t do this. right. don, so what we were able to report tonight is in the time period, there was a possible concern inside the white house he was actually going to pull the trigger on this, leading his former chief of staff, reince priebus, and former strategist and others to ask for intervention, basically talk to the president s friends, associates, aids and say how can we talk him out of this? there was a series of conversations in the white house during that period because the president was fixated on this.
it tells us that the hints we had before that mueller is is really good at keeping information confidential seems to be proving to be true right now. and it also tells me that somebody is feeling the squeeze and feels the need to get this information out on behalf of don mcgahn, whether it s mcgahn himself or somebody who cares about mcgahn, it certainly seems to be an effort to paint him in a good light. i thank you for your time. and by the way i didn t do it your face i called you schwab earlier. i m sure it happens a lot. listen, if you get anywhere in the neighborhood of shaub, i ll be happy. thank you. i appreciate your time. bringing in robert ray who a form white water independent counsel. michael zeldin. robert mueller s former special assistant at the doj process legal analyst laura coates and thank you all for joining us
holds that position is going to find themselves in his crosshairs, and this is just sort of almost a child like response to someone who is bullying him in his estimation. i just don t know, don. not only did the president order the firing, but mueller learned this through his own investigation. you know mueller. how do you think he reacted it this news, michael? well, so, the question is how does this fit into an obstruction of justice analysis. because that s what this relates mostly to. does he ask him now, why did you try to fire me? well, i don t know if he asks that exact question. but what he does is he understands that in june he was going to be fired for made-up reasons. the conflict of interest that was going to be the basis for the firing is not real. so then mueller has to say, let s look at the actions of the president there after to
there truly was nothing there, the way he says there is nothing there, then he would say, i m an open book. investigate me. investigate my team. but we know that that s not the case. yeah. i think at the end of the day, there is going to be issues with moneylaundering, with his taxes, with how beholden he is to the russians. and then that will lead to whatever imbroglio i love that word happened on the campaign. well, kevin, listen, he said he can t wait to talk to the special counsel. maybe he is frustrated. what do you think. i think this is emblematic how much the white house spends fighting against this president s instincts. and his instincts when it comes to the special counsel is to really just create chaos. he has an incredible appetite for chaos. i think the white house in this instance actually won out against the president. and don mcgahn s threatening to quit actually prevented this from happening.