come out of the special counsel s office but instead was written on the basis of topics that were provided by the special counsel. nick? yeah, i think that the questions give you an idea of the general topics. but wheat s really important ar the detailed questions as to the follow up of what trump s answers are going to be. and those are going to be based on what mueller has gathered from his cooperation, from the witnesses that have pled guilty, other documents, documents that were taken in the search warrants on manafort s home, the ones from michael cohen s office. i think all of these things they give you an idea of where this is going. but i think the real critical piece here is what the follow up questions are going to be. and of course the big question is why did they leak this out? and i really believe that the people who are responsible for this leak are trump s lawyers,
in 1992 a grand jury in the iran contrau case came out just days before. in the final days of the campaign the last thing george bush needs is a reminder of the arms for hostages deal with iran. a former indictment places bush at a key meeting. that was a huge deal. nowadays a key from mueller is that he does have to follow those doj rules or norms if you want to call it that which would appear to include the 2012 memo. because the rules that give mueller his power still say he has to notify the attorney general of key events in the probe. and since sessions accused himself that means rod rosenstein, which goes back to question of what mueller would do if he s in a position to make major steps or file charges if the election approaches. you can imagine people on both sides having strong opinions on that. if he were to wait for for example after mid-terms with a big charge, some would say would
president s former and apparently exiled adviser suggested this, if you fire rosenstein and you put a new guy in there as the deputy attorney general to oversee mueller investigation, you don t have to fire mueller, you can restrict him, are you concerned about that? the same steve bannon that accused the president s son of act of treason, the same steve bannon that did something no one else in the world can do, elect an democrat in alabama, i don t know who the hell would take advice from steve bannon and if i were the president, i would say go get advice from anyone else in the world other than steve bannon. chris: just to make it clear, you rule out flatly the firing of mueller, you leave the door open to firing rosenstein? it depends. it depends look, the president is the head of the executive branch. he doesn t have to run this hiring and firing decisions by us, so if he s upset with rod rosenstein because rod rosenstein is not producing documents to congress, that s a legit
first, i don t know what mueller was supposed to do other than what he did, when a prosecutor comes in contact with information or evidence of a crime, what are you supposed to do other than to refer it to the appropriate jurisdiction? now, if mueller had kept something unrelated for himself, then i d say fine, you can criticize him but he came in contact with potential criminality, potential criminality, he referred it to the u.s. attorney s office of jurisdiction and he did so with the permission of rod rosenstein, i don t know what else he could do. as for rod rosenstein, i don t see a basis for firing him in his handling of this probe, now he s the one who drafted that original jurisdiction for mueller, if you think it s broad, you have to direct your criticism toward rosenstein an not mueller. if you re ub set with rosenstein because he s slow-walking documents to congress, take that up with him. but how this is mueller s fault, just defies logic to me, chris. chris: yeah, here is
to go that. the this is a rule of law system. i don t know what mueller was supposed to do other than what he did, when a prosecutor comes in contact with evidence of a crime, what are you supposed to do, other than to refer it to the appropriate jurisdiction. as for rod rosenstein, i don t see a reason for firing him in this probe. he s the one that handed that directive to mueller. if you think it s too broad, you have to address it to rosenstein instead of mueller. but how this is mueller s fault, just defies logic to me. so what would firing rosenstein mean for the president? joining me right now, cnn analyst and congressional analyst page pate. page, good to see you, if rosenstein were to be fired, this might allow for an opening