so under existing policy or rather this is likely what we ll find out did he not do so because there wasn t sufficient evidence. i want to play for you what jerry nadler told me how he thinks the mueller team approved dealing with the president. listen to this. he cannot find that the president did or did not obstruct justice because his mandate is to look for crimes and the policy of the justice department is that you can t look for any criminal acts by the president. he cannot make that judgment. do you agree with that? we all know d.o.j. guidelines about indicting a sitting president. do you agree that robert mueller can t make the conclusion that the president obstructed justice. i don t agree. the mandate was the 2016
those lines, our determination was made without regard to and is not based on the constitutional considerations that surround the indictment and criminal prosecution of the sitting president. can i clarify something? it does say that they cannot conclude he committed a crime and it does not exonerate him. for the president s purposes and his team s purposes, he s been exonerated. i wanted to clarify that. that s an important point. what mueller is saying here is i didn t decide not to indict because of the doj guidelines against indicting a sitting president. he said it was not based on constitutional considerations, but the case itself. he couldn t prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. as a result, there were no formal charges. and it wasn t, as this letter says, the result of the long-time justice department guidelines that you can t indict a sitting president. and we should note that while we re reading over all of this, on friday when bill barr put out
mueller s investigation is done. and we may learn about his principal conclusions this weekend. laura coates is here. harry, it s dress down friday i see. yeah, in florida. spring training. good to have you both on. laura, jason just laid it all out in his story for us after almost two years of investigating. mueller is done. now what? i think people are celebrating if you re in the trump administration and the celebration may be premature. what needs to happen now is the actual information. sure the report is done but now what is actually in it and that will be the crux here. we re battling between indicting a sitting president but should
a cnn legal analyst from los angeles and a professor of government from university of essex joining us. good to have you with us. starting here with you, from what we know, so far, no new indictments. the report has been delivered. is it too soon for the white house and the president to call this a win? i think so, george. even though there are no additional indictments coming and the investigation is ended, we have so many questions that need to be answered. hopefully the report that is presented to congress will answer some of those questions. we know there s a department of justice regulation or guideline about indicting a sitting president. we know that for the department of justice or for mueller to indict someone there has to be, meet this really high standard
pursuing election or supporting a candidate. whether or not bob mueller has ultimately made some case for conspiracy, we don t yet know. as you pointed out correctly, it rests with the attorney general, but the leak by a senior justice department official that there will be no more indictments coming strongly suggests that at least for the narrow charge that robert mueller had, there may be no more everyday forthcoming. i ll join you if you can, briefly, michael, in thanking robert mueller for his service and the professional way if which he s conducted himself. the fact that there will be no further indictments doesn t necessarily mean there was not a cog nizable claim against the president or is that a reflection of that justice department policy that says you can t indict a sitting president. i guess what i mean, senator coons is this, might there nevertheless be evidence in that report that rises to the high crimes and misdemeanor standard for impeachment? reporter: that s poss