documents. he believed the special counsel has access to the documents and based on his conversations with michael cohen s attorneys, according to rudy giuliani and the conversation that i had with him last week, he felt as though it was better to get ahead of this curve. he told my colleague, peter alexander, overnight that his advice to the president focus on foreign policy. focus on the issues of the presidency. leave all of this legal wrangling to his attorneys. but if you take a look at the president s twitter feed, he doesn t appear to be doing that. earlier today, he tweeted out the russia witch hunt is rapidly losing credibility. house intelligence committee found no collusion, coordination or anything else with russia. so now the probe says okay. what else is there? how about obstruction, for a made-up phony crime. there is no o. it s called fighting back. a second tweet referring apparently to prosecutors as the 13 angry democrats in charge of the russian witch hunt. as yo
obstruction for a made-up phony crime. there is no o. presumably he means obstruction. he writes, the 13 angry democrats in charge of the russian witch hunt are starting to find out that there is a court system in place that actually protects people from injustice and just wait till the courts get to see your unrevealed conflicts of interest. part of that tweet appears to be a reference to pointed criticism from a federal judge of mueller s handling of the paul manafort case. giuliani said that that makes the president, quote, more reluctant to testify. he insisted to me that mueller privately, as you were talking about, stef, expressed sensitivity about the length of this investigation. telling him and the president s legal team, quote, he s sensitive to the fact it s been going too long. i should note i spoke to a former federal prosecutor who worked closely with mueller when he led the fbi. he said there wasn t, quote, a chance in hell that mueller would have said that.
we re joined by sara murray. sara, what s the big picture here? i think what we re learning is special counsel robert mueller has questions with regard to how they relate to collusion. he has questions as they relate to obstruction of justice and there s not just a few of them, there are dozens. tonight a new glimpse into some of the areas robert mueller wants to cover with the president according to the new york times. among them, why did president trump decide to fire fbi director james comey? what did candidate trump know about russian hacking during the 2016 campaign? and when did trump learn about that june 2016 trump tower meeting between his son, top campaign aides and a russian lawyer. trump lashing out today, tweeting it was made up, phony crime, collusion that never existed. and it would seem very hard to obstruct justice for a crime that never happened. witch hunt! legal experts say that argument
fbi has no reason to leak it. the questions are legitimate and there s no stormy daniels and nothing else in there. donald trump has every reason to leak it because he needs to show that there s no credibility to this investigation. he s got motive and he has the weapon. if you read the new york times story, there s a little hint in there a little where s waldo hint that it came from donald trump and his team when they talk about the attribution of where this came from. julie: i didn t see waldo in that one. i don t know. the line is julie: so you re thinking the president of the united states actually leak add story to the new york times, the one publication that he hates more than any on this planet. and then he said they leaked to it the media. you have a made-up phony crime. collusion and illegally leaked
cue the no collusion tweet. quote, so disgraceful that the questions concerning the russian witch hunt were leaked to the media. no questions on collusion. oh, i see, you have a made up, phony crime, collusion, that never existed and an investigation begun with el li l illegalillega illegally leaked classified information. quote, it would seem very hard to obstruct justice for a crime that never happened. witch hunt. one thing the times report makes clear, the questions that were shared with the president s legal team were shared when attorney john dowd was still on that team. dowd resigned from the team at least in part over a dispute with the president about the wisdom of his participation in an interview with mueller. and after making the determination that the lines of questioning for mueller s investigators were potentially too perilous for trump.