president s preview to ask for any investigation to be shut down. he has the constitutional authority to do it. he said investigations could take on different tones. if president john f. kennedy had ordered j. edgar hoover to stop investigating martin luther king, would that have constituted an obstruction of justice? karl rove on the mark and ane answer is no. if president trump says to jim comey, there is more important things to do. terrorist investigations and i want you to move resources away from the russia and flynn investigation and not to others, that is a benign and lawful interference but if he does so for corrupt reasons because he fears flynn might be indicted and become a government witness, that s an unlawful interference. we don t know which one. we don t know what jim comey has said about mueller but we do know bob mueller has the duty to
investigate whether it s reasonable suspicion to believe there may have been a crime. whether he can indict the person or not. we also know that the fbi investigates to exculpate someone, exclude them from the realm of criminal activity. we don t know the status. john: prosecutors are saying proving a negative is difficult. proof that the dog did not bark. president saying: they made up a phony collusion with the russians story, found zero proof, so now they go for obstruction of justice on the phony story. nice. then he says: you are witnessing the single greatest witch hunt in american political history - led by some very bad and conflicted people! we do not know that he was talking about mueller but there s a threat out there because mueller is a buddy of comey s, maybe he s conflicted. the president could be right about all that but i think it s
unbelievably imprudent for him to be tweeting about it. you can make an argument that had he not tweeted about this entire story, not made statements, not complained about it, he would be infinitely better off. let it develop itself. it s pretty clear that the original rationale, the original excuse, if you lh collusion with the russians is, as of today, there is no evidence. show us the evidence. because the president was enraged that comey wouldn t clear him in public, having said in private you are essentially exonerated. we are not investigating you. he got into this twitter stuff and by speaking obliquely about tapes, he triggered the
the entire thing has been witch hunt. there is no collusion between certainly myself and my campaign, but i can always speak for myself and the russians, zero. it s not a witch hunt. he s got a job to do. we understand that. it s in everybody s best interests if we let him do his job and we do ours. this is a man who many believe on both sides of the aisle has tremendous integrity and will do his work in a very diligent way and in a straightforward way. john: this time last night, we were talking about the fact it had been leaked that the president was being investigated potentially for obstruction of justice. we come back to the panel. laura, does there appear to be any obstruction of justice? certainly haven t seen it to date and getting back to the question of leaks, if the leaks are coming from the office of special counsel or individuals who work for the intelligence chiefs who ve been interviewed,
including the deputy nsa director, who worked for obama. we have obama s former guy, head of the dni and you had dan coat dan coats. and admiral rogers. whoever is leaking this information is committing a crime. that s illegal. you can t do what they are doin doing. that s one issue we have to examine. on the issue of obstruction, david french s peace said you cannot have obstruction with a motive that is not corrupt. donald trump understood from comey he wasn t under investigation. so if you talk to the intelligence chiefs, there is no reason for this. he truly believes there was no reason. that s not obstruction. and he has the right under the constitution to fire jim comey