Well. Jon meacham, always such a pleasure to have him as part of our broadcast, especially on a consequential friday night. That is our broadcast indeed for this friday and for this week. Thank you for being here with us. Have a good weekend. Good night from our nbc news headquarters here in new york. A couple of hours ago, maybe even less than that, i was standing knee deep in a trout stream in tennessee. But now its mueller time and so im in a studio in the great state of tennessee. The trout are basically just as safe as they were when i was flailing away at them ineffectually this afternoon. But now it is listen, its this is history. This is a reason to stop fishing and go to work. Our job tonight as a country sort of or at least what
everybody in the country is going to be doing tonight is trying to figure out what it means that the report of special Counsel Robert Mueller has finally been submitted. Weve heard it said so many times that it was imminent, that it was done, maybe it
big picture i d like to ask you first, if this is the way you thought this part of the process would unfold, william bar submitting this letter to corning tonight is the way it was envisioned when the special counsel s regulations were envisioned in the first place. yes, barr did the right thing today in transmitting the document and so on. so far the process has worked. one thing we didn t anticipate is the president, if he were the subject of the special counsel investigation calling it a witch hunt and all the things the president has done. in terms of the process today, played out as we thought. on the issue of the president and the way the president has pressured this investigation from the beginning. if the president is on the phone from mar-a-lago to william barr
thank you for your time tonight. it s an exciting night. thank you for helping us understand the extent of the reporting so far. much appreciated. joining us now a national security reporter for the washington post. mr. barrett very nice to have you back with us tonight on what is a very exciting evening. i first want to ask, we ve been on the air for about a half an hour here talking about what we think we know. let me ask if anything we ve discussed thus far, that i ve discussed this far doesn t comport with how you understand things are going right now, if we ve gotten anything wrong, or if you understand anything differently or if you can add anything in terms of what we know about what s been handed up. i think what i would add, when you talk about the principal conclusions, we know what the big questions r the biggest questions are. did any trump associates conspire with the kremlin to interfere with the election? did the president, is there enough evidence to show or prove t
volunteered a big long sharply worded memorandum to the trump white house that criticized the special counsel, because of the circumstances under which bill barr was brought on. his predecessor jeff sessions was fired as attorney general. the president said openly because sessions recused himself from overseeing the mueller investigation. well, here comes bill barr who has volunteered to the white house when he was in private practice, hey, i ve got tons of criticism of the special counsel, i think he s doing tons of things wrong. then bill barr gets nominated and confirmed as a.g. there s been worries and speculation that the reason bill barr got that job, the reason he was seen as a suitable replacement for jeff sessions and therefore what might be expected of bill barr in that job is that once he got confirmed as attorney general, he d stick his foot out and trip the special counsel, right? he would use his power as attorney general to block mueller from something that mueller was o
maintains that a sitting president cannot be indicted to then withhold evidence of wrongdoing from congress is to convert justice department policy into the means for a cover-up. anything less than full transparency would raise serious questions about whether the department of justice policy is being use ds as a pretext for a cover-up of misconduct. strong words from those democratic committee chairs demanding not only the report itself but the underlying evidence to be handed over to the relevant committees. joining us now is congressman adam schiff, it is great to have you with us tonight. thank you for being here. i have to ask you top line what you make of this development today, attorney general barr s letter, what he has explained and what it suggests to you about the process? well, what i make of it is this is the logical conclusion of the special counsel s work, that other aspects of the investigation will be farmed out to either main justice or the southern district or other