office, but he could have reached a decision as to whether it was criminal activity, but he had his reasons for not doing it, which he explained, and i m not going to argue about those reasons. just think through barr s claim right there. he s saying he would prefer that bob mueller conclude that donald trump committed criminal activity on obstruction without indicting him. how can i say this nicely. that s very hard to believe. and also, if that is what barr preferred and demanded, he could have demanded it. barr was mueller s boss until yesterday. he could order mueller to update the report with that very decision if he wanted. he didn t. he made the decision for himself. but when he didn t make a decision, the deputy attorney general, rod rosenstein, and i felt it was necessary for us as the heads of the department to reach that decision. well, he seemed to suggest yesterday that there was another
more breaking news now. more trouble for celebrity lawyer michael avenatti. a federal grand jury indicting him for allegedly stealing from former client stormy daniels and with trying to extort millions from sportswear giant nike. let s go to our national correspondent, sara sidner, who s working the story for us. sara, update us on the very latest. yeah, wolf. so federal prosecutors have indicted michael avenatti in two separate indictments. one we all knew about. that is the case involving nike, which involves extortion of more than $20 million that prosecutors say he was trying to get out of nike after trying to expose wrong doing at the company involving recruitments for college athletes. now, the other indictment was a bit of a surprise to the public, at least. it involves his financial dealings with his, perhaps, most famous client, stormy daniels. and you see her there. the two have been working together for many, many, many months on the case that they brought against the pre
revelation that could come out of this explanation of the deck lynn nations. i would have charged him with a crime if he wasn t president of the united states and there wasn t something prohibiting me from indicting him. that remains a possibility. rudy giuliani clearly doesn t think that that s part of what s possible here, but that would be extremely dramatic. other than, this compressed review, i can t imagine we re going to get a huge amount of information tomorrow. but don t forget there s that other paragraph in the barr letter where he says there is this other information that is more sensitive that i m going to have to consult with lawyers about whether it can ever be made public and go to congress. that could the most interesting stuff and that s the stuff congressional democrats are going to demand to see because it may go to the whole
earlier is even if the white house does not release a counterattack, they will consistently push back on anything that suggests that the president and his team did anything nefarious as they have been doing since day one. they re campaigning for 2020. that s a central piece. and to that point, the trump team says they re confident it will exonerate the president. they re ready to go with tweets, fundraising, blanketing air waves, campaign rallies. we know one thing for sure. mueller is not going to indict trump. because the constitution doesn t let him. it s easy to predict that team trump will jump on that. claim vindication even if mueller found terrible things and was prohibited from indicting him. and i think building on that earlier point of will the president s children still face legal jeopardy or will they pull
so, basically robert mueller does know at least roughly, unofficially, what roger stone s testimony was. that closed door testimony that he gave in the fall of 2017. but you can t bring an unofficial transcript to the grand jury if you want that grand jury to give you an indictment based, in part, on that evidence. you need the official record of his remark it is you re going to bring it to the grand jury for the purposes of indicting him. i did not know that. getting the official transcript turns out in this case kind of takes a village. it takes the committee to agree to hand it over. but the washington post reports tonight that they are going to have to deal with this tomorrow.