interviewed by mueller. if they have not already. if they haven t been there. joyce, we were talking a lot lately about the coordination of lies told about contacts with russians. we ve spent a lot of this week analyzing mueller s, one of his top deputies, andrew weissmann s comments that we learned about in a transcript from a closed-door hearing, the contacts between trump s campaign officials and russians or russian associates, are the heart of the special counsel s investigation. it would seem on the other side of your investigation is the obstruction of justice investigation, which we haven t heard as much about lately but at the heart of that probe, a prosecutor involved in that prong of it might describe this trump tower meeting cover-up. the lies crafted aboard air force one as john heilemann just did, the heart of the obstruction probe. do you agree with that? i agree with that 100%. there would be no reason to craft lie around this meeting.
revealing he opened the obstruction probe and counterintelligence investigation of the president. how long was it after that that you decided to start the obstruction of justice and counterintelligencings haves involving the president? i think the next day i met with the team having the russia cases and i asked the team to go back and conduct an assessment to determine where are we with these efforts and what steps do we need take going forward? i was concerned i was able to put the russia case on solid ground that were i removed or reassigned or fired, that the case could not be closed or vanish in the night without a trace. you feared they would be mod to go away? that s exactly right. i m joined by democratic
trump tower moscow, but it s in some ways a bigger problem because this can t be spun as part of the russia hoax. this is its own crime. it s about impeding congress s legitimate oversight functions and really interfering with the checks and balances in our structure of government, which means that congress has to take it seriously as an institution regardless of how they might feel politically about the russia investigation itself. garrett, what about you? how big is this? i very much agree with asha. this is a very big development and for some of the same reasons she just laid out. the fact that this is separate from the underlying questions of what actually happened with russia, points to i think one of the things that we have seen sort of bread crumbs of in many of these court filings, which is that robert mueller we think of the bob mueller obstruction probe as this binary question of
was on that flight back from hamburg germany on air force one. something else was happening that day as well n that very sim flight he s dictating a statement back to other colleagues of mine at the times about the story they re about to break at the trump tower meeting from 2016 with don why are, paul manafort and jared kushner meet with russians on the promise of getting incriminating information. let s hit pause, not to re-create this day, joe becker and investigative reporters pressing on donald trump jr. to answer questions about how that meeting went. just remind us, that was really sort of the dam that broke, that really, mark corralio, longtime republican strategist quit over the lies that were crafted on that airplane. everybody on that airplane involved in crafting the lie that came out of the white house that day has been of interest to robert mueller in the obstruction probe at least. that was as big of a watershed moment in the effort to obscure and obstruct potentiall
moscow situation. we have the alleged russian intelligence, and now it feels like there are a lot of dots out there we don t know if mueller is connecting those dots, if they will lead to anything, but the idea that this is a mostly obstruction probe, but it is kind of being put to rest right now, the collusion question is on the table right now and he has not bonded that at all. i want to read you one more thing. individual one is the president. cohen discussed the status and project with individual one. a clear reference to trump within and he bereaved triefed y members on the meeting. how much trouble could he be