rod rosenstein have flou responded to the president s inquiry? so legally this is not a game changer. all it s saying is that the department of justice inspector general investigation of the fbi that is already been going on about the 2016 campaign, it s going to also include these new allegations. i have to say what is disappointing is that we have seen rod rosenstein get played by the president of the united states previously. when the president got him to write this memo. justifying the firing of james comey. this seems like another response to the president s political kind of instirvegts where i think he is getting played. i think you made the point earlier in the flam there already was on on going investigation into the investigators, so to speak. sorry, there was already an on going investigation into how the fbi carried out the
we know a few things about mueller, although his investigation is a black box. we know he s methodical. we know he s deliberate and it seems that the investigation beyond obstruction has just been expanding almost exponentially as we bring in issues involving qatar and uae and other attempts at russian meddling in the election so i find it inconceivable that the guts of this will be done, maybe within a year, and if giuliani wants to make this just about obstruction, well, i can see the political purpose of that, but there s a lot more for mueller dig into now. david, when you look at all the things that are still that we re still hearing in terms of subpoenas being issued out, the former son-in-law of paul manafort who was recently agreeing to cooperate with the justice department. there are certainly a lot of pieces that would suggest the exact opposite from something that is scheduled to wrap up relatively soon. and then we have the southern district of new york investigation.
rudy giuliani as he often does on sunday afternoons did a series of phone interviews with members of the media and spoke with the washington post and the new york times and spoke with our own kelly o donnell and he told her based on conversations with the special counsel team that robert mueller s team of investigators plans to have the obstruction of justice piece of their probe wrapped up by september 1st. he tells kelly o donnell the special counsel team gave him that time line about two or three weeks ago and the way giuliani puts it, he says we didn t want to get into what i call comey territory meaning he didn t want this to happen one or two months before the election. giuliani tells nbc news that would be unfair. that would be unfair to both sides. i would just point out that legal experts that we ve talked with say investigations like this are often measured in years, not in months. the benghazi probe took two and a half years and the ken starr probe took at least four yea
so what was once an investigation into russia s attack on the election and interactions between the trump campaign and the russians, now includes, you know, pay to play. it includes hush money payments to a porn star. it may include manafort s operations and the uae/saudi arabia stuff that the new york times brochet other day, so it s no longer the trump/rush scandal. it s just the trump scandal, and, i mean, having covered iran-contra and other investigations in the past, the ken starr investigation, these things do not wrap up quickly, especially when they start escalating or widening for good cause. malcolm, what are many so is the unanswered questions that you think bob mueller would still need more information on whether it is the issue of obstruction of justice that giuliani would be referred to wrapped up by september 1st or on any of the other issues that david just outlined for us, among them collusion or some of the other financial questions.
would already be investigating, a pro forma request that presidents use to show they are involved and engaged in a situation. one of the dangers i think that happens with president trump is we get so used to him doing things that are outrageous and that are over the line and harmful to institutions, that when the really, real dangerous ones happen, people shrug their shoulders are and used to it and what he did in this tweet today, if he follows through that tomorrow, crossing a dangerous red line. presidents in this country do not tell the department of justice who to investigate and who not to investigate. they don t do it when it involves politics and political opponents of theirs, and especially if they are using that investigation to try to quash an derail an investigation into themselves, their campaign and their conduct. it is a dangerous moment, and what happens tomorrow when rod rosenstein comes in and faces some kind of request from the president i think, you know, has very p