people speculated, unreasonable speculation, that donald trump wants to be more aggressive. that s shown in tweets over the past few days, and degree he s personally naming mueller when he attacks the investigation in the way in which he dploet eglo about the firing of mccabe. that suggests, i think, a more pugnacious posture, but unclear whether or not the departure of john dowd fuels that. higher chance now that the president will fire mueller? i ve heard a senator on the show suggest that. i m not quite as panicked as some people who think that is necessarily going to happen in the next week or two, but it s a significant worry. you know, the reporting has been, i don t trust all the reporting, especially when it s talking about what lawyers tell their clients in secret, but it sounds like john dowd was in favor of, you know, cooperating with the mueller investigation
is asking the right questions? well, those first two would be questions around collusion, and the second two maybe even the last three, around obstruction of justice. i suspect those are not all the questions he d ask, but those do define some of the core issues that have been examined both in the house and senate in our judiciary committee investigation and from what we know of it publicly, the intelligence committee questions. those do strike me as some of the core issues i would expect mueller to be looking at. meanwhile, senator, congressional investigators in the house intelligence house committee are wrapping up their probe, republican majority, and as you heard moments ago, republicans on the committee simply say there s nothing left to explore. your reaction? i don t think that s accurate. we just had a conversation in the senate judiciary committee earlier today about how many of the witnesses we should have called on a bipartisan basis, have not yet come in similarly
president of the united states, one of the most pgreatest jobs lawyer could have, not particularly this time. can you imagine, in washington, they can t find lawyers? this is absurd, and they keep calling lawyers to add to the team, but law firms are either conflicted or they don t want to work for this president, and i you know, who can blame them, but i would also add that the president is making a political case here, and he is going out there and saying, of course i want to testify. if he ends up not testifying, which i think is likely, if he ends up not testifying, they ll take it to the supreme court. but he can then say, look, i wanted to testify, but this investigation is so corrupt and it is so contaminated that why would i testify before these people? so he is out there now taking on mueller, which is exactly what dowd did not want him to do.
when the president saw that those buckets of questions we were reporting about, he understood that it is not going to be over, so he either felt that he was misled or his lawyers were misled, and he started to act out and say we have to punch back. in the end, i think what did it is a bunch of things. i think, fist of all, dowd did not want to be co-counsel while he respects joe, former u.s. attorney, et cetera, he believes he was conflicted, remitting marc carallo, his wife also represents another person who is tangentially involved in the investigation, so he felt conflicted, and so in the end, i think strategy-wise, they were not on the same page, and then he felt that legally this was
with the house intelligence committee. it was a very powerful decision. house intelligence committee democrats vowing to keep looking for russian collusion. we will continue to do the investigation. we have never had the power to call witnesses. the real action turns to the senate where two committees continue their own investigations of collusion. at a pace that has the parties at odds. bluntly the judiciary committee investigation has been painfully and glacially slow. the only collusion investigation appears any and from the hyperpartisan influence of this election year is one being undertaken by the justice department as vector general. he has no power to indictment his findings can be used in a criminal proceeding. bret: thank you. federal judge says former trump campaign chairman paul manafort