Former u. S. Attorney. Julia, this is your reporting. Youre part of the team at nbc news that discovered this approach. What more do we know about it . Lawrence, on the one hand it seems obvious. We know two weeks ago special Counsel Robert Mueller delivered a scathing indictment of 13 Russian Hackers not just hackers but influencers. Those were people able to get into social media and influence the way the election was being talked about to sow some distrust in the process. But what we have thats significant here is that a lot of information has recently been turned over to Robert Mueller from the Intelligence Community. This is information that includes the electronic signatures, malware the methods i dont think so. Theres never been a precedent for the United States indicting an elected foreign leader, even a country we dislike like russia. So i dont think were going to see that. I think its important to focus on the significance of this development. These wikileaks, these emails w
look, this is a chaos president. it was a term i believe coined by jeb bush. in a way the president likes that. he likes doing things differently, keeping everybody and everything on their toes. he even likes some of the internal push and pull that can happen, but i think what we ve seen over the last week really exceeded that. and if the announcement of this tariff was meant to change the subject, it actually has done quite the opposite. it seems to have caused a lot more consternation both within the white house with gary cohen, someone who contemplated leaving and was urged by republicans to stay in there because they didn t know who else would come in and they wanted him to stay on and be a stabilizing force. possibly leaving over this again because of the impact it s likely to have on a lot of u.s. companies and potentially cost u.s. jobs in that sense. so it doesn t seem to be getting any better.
the president was making up on the spot, that s the way it looked to some white house staffers who were surprised by that. the plan was not to announce that, according to some reports. the only way the president can raise tariffs by executive order is to cite a national need to do that, otherwise congress could pass legislation to block the president s action if the president actually does take this action that he announced today. the stock market reacted badly to it today, dropping 420 points because wall street knows that tariffs are taxes. and those taxes are not paid by countries they re paid by american consumers, in effect. wall street knows that tariffs increase the cost of imported goods and increase the cost of goods in the united states. the president got zero support, not surprisingly, in congress today. here is the reaction of senator orrin hatch, who has
prosecution, they ll never submit to the jurisdiction, come to this country so they re never prosecuted. so, therefore, do you use a lower standard for indictment because in the back of your mind i m thinking i m never going to have to prove this beyond a reasonable doubt, or given the visibility of a case like this and the importance of it, do you use a higher standard for indictment? i think the justice department s practice is the right one and it s the ethical norm to which all federal prosecutors are sworn to subscribe, which is the only time you can bring a criminal case is if you are confident you can prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury. that s the constitutional standard. that s not what you need to get an indictment, to get an indictment you need probable cause. that s not the way bob mueller was trained, the kind of prosecutor he s been in his career. if that happened, i would be surprised. i think as julia said there is a reason to bring an indictment
wasn t enough for the president he was set on obliterating justice and taking control of the investigation in a way that does harken back to watergate. the horrible thing, lawrence, is we have an attorney general who when i worked at the judiciary committee was rejected for a job because he was so racist, who lied to the committee twice and has to be out of the russia investigation who was the god father of trump s anti-immigration thing. the horrible thing is not that he s our attorney general. the horrible thing is we re rooting for the guy. it s like trying to figure out which creature we re rooting for. that s where the investigation is right now. the president has given new meaning to the word disgraceful calling his attorney general disgraceful. it is so beyond imagining,