president s attorney at the time. you have these new attorneys coming, the raskins who have done a job and said we re not going to let and jay, we re not going to let the president anywhere near an interview. that was a moment when the president could have been interviewed, and he wasn t. you know what s interesting? there s the interview part, and then the idea of the president and his team, especially since it changed and they became so much more aggressive toward robert mueller, spent so much time trying to delegitimize his report and his investigation. now they re saying it vindicates him. can they have it both ways? they will. an i m not sure. we re also getting reaction from the 2020 democratic presidential candidates, bernie sanders tweeted this. quote, i don t want a summary of the mueller report. i want the whole damn report.
this. barr seemed to say, you know, this was not an audition for a job. right. he said that was ludicrous, and of course it wasn t. by the way, he not only sent it to folks at the justice department but he also sent it to the president s lawyers. the raskins and the jay seck lows. and even if he didn t give them the piece of paper he certainly discussed what was in it. and i think the president knew. he recalled today the president actually at one point had tried to hire him as his personal counsel, they had a meeting. and the president raised what do you think of mueller, and at that meeting he said, i said he s a straight shooter and he should be dealt with as such. and the president asked him about mueller s integrity. so we know he didn t hire him because he thought mueller was a good guy and straight shooter. there had to be another reason. well, the reason was this memo which said that one particular case of obstruction was a case
misconceived. democrats pushed back a lot on this. barr seemed to say, you know, this was not an audition for a job. right. he said that was ludicrous, and of course it wasn t. by the way, he not only sent it to folks at the justice department but he also sent it to the president s lawyers. the raskins and jay sekulow. and even if he didn t give them the piece of paper he certainly discussed with them what was in it. and i think the president knew. and you know, he recalled today that the president actually at one point had tried to hire him as his personal counsel, they had a meeting, and the president raised, you know, what do you think of mueller. and at that meeting he said, i said he s a straight shooter and he should be dealt with as such. and the president asked him about mueller s integrity. so we know he didn t hire him because he thought mueller was a
different the politics are than they were back then, back then the judiciary committee confirmed him unanimously. there was a simple voice vote on the floor. expect a tougher hearing this morning in the senate judiciary committee. john? lauren fox for us in the hearing room where all the action will take place very shortly. lauren, thank you very much. joining us now is alberto gonzales, former white house counsel for george w. bush. dean at the college of law. thanks so much for being with us. we have had a chance to talk about william barr already. there have been new revelations since our last discussion. not only did he write a memo outlining why he did not think an investigation into certain kinds of obstruction of justice was valid. we learn now he shared it with the president s lawyers, even holding discussions with jay seculo and the raskins about this. a discussion about defense strategy yet now he s sitting in
them. so they ll need to make sure that the president is comfortable with what s being said. once that s all said and done, they ll send them back to mueller and mueller will review them to determine whether or not there are follow-up questions that need to be asked, new topics that need to be asked, or whether or not he s good with this and moves on to the next area. i mean, that is actually, i think, an important question. after they send the answers back, what do you think then happens next? i don t know if there s a typical case, but is there a lot of back and forth or is this the one shot of getting the answers to these questions? we don t know what the terms of the deal that the raskins and sekulow struck with mueller and his team, but in ordinary litigation, you have what they call written interrogatories, and there are a first set, a second set, third set. so oftentimes there s an iterative process in the