interesting. but this is a real tense and slightly angry meeting. while they re not yelling at each other, they are warning and threatening each other in legalese. in one, look, you re messing with the president s work. literally he said you re screwing with the president of the united states. and in the other, bob mueller says, look, if you don t want to have him sit down, we can always subpoena him. for both sides, by the way, joe and mika, i think that this is a difficult negative because if this interview doesn t go forward and if there is a subpoena, both sides lose in a way. the president wanted to cast this shadow away from him and away from his presidency, answer these questions. get the obstruction probe, the portion of it over with. and if they fight over a subpoena, it s going to take months and months and months because it will surely go to the
happen. that s been the trajectory of this entire investigation. i think mueller, like most prosecutors, is happy to try his cases in the courtroom and leave it to others to try their cases in the press. julia, there s reason to believe that people have spoken publicly about investigations wrapping up real soon. by thanksgiving, by christmas, by tonight, for an audience of one. have you in all of your reporting been given any indications this thing is going to wrap up anywhere close to soon? i think what we have learned as this investigation has continued is that it s very possible that mueller will be able to sort of lob off part of that, that part being the obstruction probe. we believe that may be able to wrap at some point this summer. but of course, as the washington post points out tonight, mueller wants to see trump interviewed first. he wants to be able to get to
have you in all of your reporting been given any indications this thing is going to wrap up anywhere close to soon? i think what we have learned as this investigation has continued is that it s very possible that mueller will be able to sort of lob off part of that, that part being the obstruction probe. we believe that may be able to wrap at some point this summer. but of course, as the washington post points out tonight, mueller wants to see trump interviewed first. he wants to be able to get to that key question that underlies each case of instruction and that was intent. he wants to know what the president s intentions were when he made that statement on air force one about the trump tower meeting. he wanted to know what the president s intentions were when he decided to fire jim comey. he wanted to know if the president was in any way trying to talk to michael flynn and get him to lie about his conversations with russia. trump s mindset and intentions underlie every bit of thi
have to figure out. before i turn to my panel tonight, let s reflect on this. we do know the trump administration is under a very serious criminal investigation for obstruction of justice. and now we know that during that very probe, take it all together, donald trump has tried to fire the lead prosecutor, bob mueller. he s talked about firing mueller boss, rod rosenstein. he did fire the fbi director. he pushed for the ousting of the deputy fbi director. he s raged publicly against his own attorney general for not taking more control of this obstruction probe. and tonight, add to all that, we learn the trump justice department may try to jail that same deputy fbi director. this is not normal. i m joined by maya wiley, former counsel of new york city mayor and a practicing attorney, as well as matt miller who has worked at the justice department under eric holder. and former federal prosecutor
he no longer wants to cooperate. he doesn t want to sit down for that interview where he d be able to bring his lawyer and possibly negotiate the terms, the scope, the questions that could be asked. instead what he wants to do is sort of go to war. we re hearing more about the possibility that he could fire the deputy attorney general. we re hearing about other ways that trump wants to be on offense and he does not want to be cooperating in this case. this also comes as robert mueller is moving ahead with the obstruction probe. we re also reporting here that on at least four areas mueller is combining findings and wants to include that in an obstruction report that could be coming out in the coming months. the areas include how he drafted the trump tower statement on air force one that was misleading, the pressure that he put on attorney general jeff sessions not to recuse himself from this investigation, of course his intent behind firing former fbi director james comey and the pardon