was legal. basically according to reports, no surprise if you know trump, kill that deal, i don t like cnn. th this is something so outside the realm, so nothing to do with campaign finance, so nothing to do with money laundering. let me put that to you, frank. is it possible if the obstruction of justice is what donny described, ongoing daily conduct, that mueller has to offload that somewhere to another office or another place to pursue it? because as donny says, it s hard to find an end point to that conduct. i think so. i think the logical, you know, breakage there would be, look, if the obstruction s dealing directly with something within mueller s remit, he takes it, addresses it in his sport or sfin spins off the prosecution. if it s not in his remit, it he hands that off to the appropriate office. what i ll be interested in watching closely is the interplay between the contents and tone of mueller s report and the optics and perception in how trump s going to use it with re
for any period of time also understands. i want to ask you about the mueller report. the white house, i think, probably feels that they ve done a lot of spadework to sully mueller s reputation, but it s probably a known unknown what will actually be in it. jim comey adding his voice in an op-ped to the chorus of people saying that some transparency in the mueller probe is a good thing. you re laughing already. give me a second. republicans are wrong now, they claim justice department rules forbid transparency about the completed work of the special counsel. it s difficult to imagine a case of greater public interest than one focused on the efforts of a foreign adversary to damage our democracy, an image the president of the united states is a subject. don t listen to those who tell you transparency is impossible. every american should want a justice department guided always by the public interest. sometimes transparency is not a hard call. his complicated standing, if you will, asi
mueller says or includes or chooses not to, is going to impact the public s perception of what congress is doing, and whether congress should or should not be pursuing something, and trump is going to use it in that fashion and try to drive a wedge and say, so, for example, no collusion found, congress should stop what they re doing. even though the two are not linked. right? crimes, russia, conspiracy. but that s got to be carefully calculated as well. jim comey s right. we need more details rather than less. it s an unprecedented time in our history. applying criminal standards to how we shape this mueller report will not work for us. alyssa, there s something about watching this white house brace for a real crisis. they don t pull off the easy days. they don t pull off trips to cemeteries on foreign trips to honor veterans. they don t pull off low-hanging fruit. they don t they don t utter, you know, platitudes about members of congress with cancer. i mean, they don t pull off t