that was 2007. patrick fitzgerald gets tonight s last word. more on james comey s book with two reporters who have actually read it, and that s on the 11th read it, and that s on the 11th hour with brian williams, and that starts now. the breaking news we re covering tonight. james comey and the book that could rock the foundation of the trump presidency. tonight the detailed allegations revealed by the former fbi director and two reporters who broke the details of this story are standing by. plus an nbc news exclusive. interview talks break down between the mueller and trump teams in the wake of the michael cohen raid. and tonight the washington post is reporting trump allies are worried that cohen raid swept up audiotapes of sensitive conversations. and the looming decision with global implications. how close are we tonight to an attack on syria? the 11th hour on a thursday night begins now.
and send a report to deputy attorney general rod rosenstein that can sum up their findings without that interview. and so the president could be reading this tonight thinking, gosh, i m now missing the chance to defend myself against an obstruction case. julia, our folks have gone ahead and put together a graphic showing some broad outlines of that obstruction case. if mueller received, for example, a kind of pencils-down command, and they had to put it together today, there is the comey firing. there is the trump tower meeting and the subsequent cover story. there is the floating of pardons, and there s the pressuring of sessions. those are kind of four starters, are they not? they are four starters. three sources who are close to this told me that is kind of the overlap of what they re hearing. there s some other areas that we know mueller has looked into. he s very interested in the firing of flynn.
he s interested in what or when flynn had to leave, he was very interested in the pressure that he put on james comey not to investigate flynn. but these four areas that you just laid out there seem to be areas where mueller has collected the most evidence and is likely to touch on those areas. but i will point out it could be possible that in some of those areas, he s found exculpatory evidence. as a lot of your legal experts on this show will tell you, intent is the thing that drives an obstruction probe. so if he can show not just he would need to show not just that the president was involved in these things but that he intended to take these acts in order to obstruct this probe. and so without that intention, he could have found exculpatory evidence. we just know that these are the areas where he has findings, and we need to see, as this time line moves forward quickly, where he actually takes us in the end. and that, ladies and gentlemen, is why we re so happy to have julia
potential questions and they were working out kind of the scope of this interview. these are the things you can do when your client is not being subpoenaed by a grand jury but is sitting down for a volunteer interview. it means his lawyers could come with him. it could be an easier route for the president to take. but after those raids on michael cohen s office and hotel room that you just laid out, the president basically just said, no, i m not going to cooperate, and he s taking a much more aggressive stance. meanwhile, mueller s team is moving forward with an obstruction case with or without that voluntary interview. it s unclear whether or not they might try to subpoena the president then before a grand jury, but from what i ve been told, they really want to try to wrap this obstruction case quickly between may and july, and they may be able to do that even faster now that it looks like the president will not be interviewed. if he doesn t want to be interviewed, they don t need to
willing to issue a pardon for these particular types of crimes to someone who had this high level of standing inside of the white house. almost as though it s a message to paul manafort or to mike flynn in many ways. it feels like the circle of hypocrisy in this administration is fully complete at this point with trump starting out complaining about hillary clinton and potential release of classified material and now pardoning the quintessential conviction for that same sort of conduct with scooter libby. i can t thank our opening panel tonight enough for joining us and adding to our conversation. philip rucker, jonathan lemire, joyce vance, thank all three of you so much. coming up for us, there is more breaking news we re covering tonight. two stories with critical details of where the mueller investigation may well stand involving a breakdown between teams trump and mueller. the upcoming obstruction report apparently and fears among trump allies the feds have gotten