somebody, let s just go ahead and just stay with the facts, donald trump has now said he knew that michael flynn lied to the fbi and he had to fire him because he knew that michael flynn had committed a crime. when you have the president of the united states going a step further and going to the prosecuter and saying time and time again, pressuring him to not pursue this investigation of michael flynn lying. and then you have the president of the united states going to his lawyer not his lawyer but the white house counsel saying go over to the justice department and pressure the attorney general to not recuse himself so we can maintain control of the investigation. what is the legal import of that? or is that just something that you put in a time line to show a grand jury in proving an overall
case? so this is where i have to put on my prosecuter hat and say not so fast. there are a couple of hurdles that mueller would have to clear here. first off, and we ve discussed it before, there s this idea that you don t prosecute a sitting president. a little bit of controversy on that and we ll have to see how mueller calls that one. even if he got past that and decided to pursue an obstruction indictment, the charge would have to fit into one of a couple of varying narrow statutes. you would have to find that the president specifically did one of engaged in one of the types of obstruction the law prohibits with a corrupt motive. he would have to try to influence a witness, for instance, would be one of the easiest ones to prove. so mueller will, in fact, fit all of this into an order of events and determine whether or not there is specific on justice
when he talks to people has likely read their e-mails, knows what they ve said to other witnesses and has leverage over them. if you re him and come with prosecuter s tools and you have people willing to talk about their co-workers and the president this way, you re pushing on an open door. look at the structure of the mueller team. he s been pretty quiet. if you look at the players involved and what they re doing in the indictment so far, what do you think he s leading? is this about russia of collusion or this heading more toward money laundering? i think it s all of the above. if you look at the team he put together, he has prosecuters with expertise from across the landscape. he has money laundering experts, russia experts, national security and counterintelligence ek perts. he s divided up this piece. you see different people.
not acting on behalf of vladimir putin and the russian government? in other words, could she have been freelancing? there s no chance. we have multiple pieces of evidence that she was acting as an agent for vladimir putin. we have the evidence she was working closely with the general prosecuter of russia, the equivalent of the attorney general who is putin s main enforcer. and many other things as well. she was an agent for vladimir putin showing up in trump tower. that s for sure. and what she was asking for is also for sure which is repeal of the act. what we do not know is the reaction to her request. bill, jeremy bash has a question for you. jeremy? bill, i m going to put you on the spot here. have you been interviewed by robert mueller or the intelligence committees investigating the money trail between vladimir putin and the trump organization? i can only talk about what i ve done publicly. i have been interviewed by the senate judiciary committee.
mueller. mueller is a marine, former u.s. attorney, and has been a prosecuter for years. i think if the president takes real steps to push mueller to the side, then we ll start to find out what people on the hill are made of. i think that s a constitutional crisis and a line even this president understands. he can t cross it. if he does, it s a constitutional crisis. the president is tweeting this morning. , good. about it literally draws a laugh when you see the president is tweeting this morning. he writes despite thousands of hours of wasted and many millions of dollars spent, the democrats have been unable to show any collusion with russia. so now they are moving on to the false accusations and fabricated stories of women who i don t know or have never met. fake news. all right. so he s moving from russia now to the allegations. so joyce, it s interesting when