chairman s comments? does the doj letter have any real impact? i don t think it s going to have much of a practical impact. for one thing, as we all know, mueller has said very publicly that he s not going to go beyond his written report. and so in that sense doj s letter is really more belt and suspenders. they re basically saying we want you to adhere to the promise you previously made. the other thing to keep in mind is it s not as though a doj or white house lawyer is going to be sitting next to bob mueller at the hearing. so even if the white house or doj felt that mueller was treading into an area where he shouldn t go, they re powerless to enforce it at the time because they re not going to physically be there at the hearing to lodge an objection. so when it comes to tomorrow, then, sara, we heard ken talk about the democratic expectations. but what s the goal for the republican mobs of those house committees? does that five-minute format and alternating questioners work in
plan. but as happens so often in this white house, the plan is really dictated by the president s gut and by what he wants to put out on twitter and what he wants to tell reporters. so i would pay attention to him as opposed to any sort of step-by-step crisis management plan that comes together. well, phil, it s interesting that you talk about those talking points and his gut, because there s also the reality of this letter. tom, i want to turn to you because the hus judiciary committee chairman asked about the impact of that doj letter on mueller s testimony. listen to this. i think it s incredibly arrogant of the department to try to instruct him as to what to say. you don t think she have any authority to instruct him in that way. must he comply with that letter? no, he does not have to comply with that letter. he doesn t work for them. and that letter asks things that are beyond the power of the of the agency to ask, even if he still worked for them. so, tom, the questi
determination as to whether the president did commit a crime. under longstanding department policy, a present president cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office. that is unconstitutional. charging the president with a crime was therefore not an option we could consider. so, betsy, break all of that down for us. where are the boundaries? is there a realistic expectation from committee members that mueller will, in fact, go further than that statement we just saw? what mueller said in that statement through a little bit of legalese is that him, himself, and his investigators were not confident that president trump was innocent of potential obstruction of justice. so at the same time, of course, what he said there is that he wasn t able to do the thought experiment of whether or not the president could be charged with obstruction of justice because of a longstanding doj policy that blocks the indictment of a president. so this is something that you can expect with
to try to tease out more from mueller as to what mueller himself thought, whether he thought that the president may have crossed the line into criminal misconduct but was prohibited from saying so because of his doj restrictions. i suspect the democrats would be better advised to take the former roo former route, to get mueller to tell the stories about what he found in the report, and hope people will see this for the first time and start thinking about the report as a whole. you talk about building this narrative, getting inside mueller s head and what he was thinking. betsy, i want to play a portion of robert mueller s may 29th statement. take a listen to this. this a second volume the report describes the results and analysis of our obstruction of justice investigation involving the president. and as set forth in the report, after that investigation, if we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so. we did not, however, make a