this case shrinks depending on who occupies it. thanks, very much, jeff. the president was there in kansas city earlier to talk about who william barr is. i want to go to charlie safe annual, at new york times and author of power wars, the relentless rice of presidential authority and secrecy. . i guess jeff stated the question. what people want to no he is where barr, an establishment conservative, stands on the issue of the russia investigation. he has made comments about jim comey and other things. where do we know he stands on the russia investigation if anywhere snt. well, he has made other comments that suggest a skeptical vau of the mueller investigation. he said he thinks mueller hired too many people who donated money to democratic campaigns to work for him, echoing in a way the trump line about the angry democrats working for mueller. and he also told my krieg peter baker here at the new york times about a year ago that it
actually president trump i believe speaking on the south lawn. he said that barr was his first choice from day one. well the question everyone wants to know is what does barr make of the russia investigation, because depending on how long his confirmation process goes be with he will likely oversee the end of the probe. all we have to go on are the op-eds he wrote as a pundit including for the washington post in which he defended the decision to fire james comey, the former fbi director. including this line. he says by you know i laterally announcing conclusions regarding how the matter should be resolved james comey abrogated the attorney general authority to himself. certainly there are already senators democrat and republican who say they want barr to pledge to protect the mueller probe should he be confirmed, ali. let s switch over to heather nauert, an anchor at fox, a spokesperson at the state department. then she became the a deputy
originally that allowed for this type of being, the special prosecutor. that was critical, critical to uncovering watergate. the american people of course supported watergate. i mean, president trump, with all due respect needs to read the articles of impeachment against richard nixon has though get a little history lesson about what s going on. but the issue is if he wants to protect the democracies he should let the rule of law proceed as it should and not interfere and not accuse prosecutors of engaging in a witch hunt. and not offering pardons to people to ko stop them from cooperating. and not encouraging witnesses to lie or do anything else that s wrong in front of a grand jury or prosecutor. that s what that s where the where the responsibility falls. it s on his shoulders, not on mr. mueller s. but the american people are looking to mueller for a proper, author o, fair professional investigation. elizabeth holtzman, we are making sure you get fed and you get a comfortab
information we get in the next few hours. i think we may be a little smarter, ali. but we would be well to temper expectations about the content of the documents given the extent of the redactions in president mike flynn presentencing memo we saw earlier. the robert mueller has decided to not use these documents as a way of speaking to the public about the progress of the investigation. to the contrary, anything that is sensitive it seems won t be public. and anything public won t be sensitive. to quote chuck rosenberg. but one thing particularly in the cohen sentencing memo is any indication of how valuable michael cohen has been to mueller. we know he has been valuable in the southern district investigation involving campaign finance violations where he implicated donald trump essentially. but we don t know to what extent his cooperation with mueller helped mueller for example implicate other people. and given the circles that michael cohen traveled in the last ten years as lawyer
special counsel robert mueller is expected to file another round of documents that could shed light on the russia investigation. the iris first document will be a sentencing memo which details former trump lawyer michael cohen s cooperation. the second document will lay out why federal prosecutors cancelled the cooperation agreement with paul manafort. in a morning tweet storm, the president revealed he is working on a plan to fight the special counsel finding as the investigation ramps up. writing, quote, we will be doing a major counterrorpt to the mueller report. this should never be lourd to happen to a future cht of the united states. actually, mr. president, most of us are happy with the fact that there can be investigations into the president of the united states. that s the stuff that keeps us safe. joining us now, nbc intelligence and national security reporter ken delaney. and ken, it s a lot of stuff we expect tonight. are we expected to be smarter as a result of these piece