him. expert care for every new beginning. nbc news is reporting president trump s chief of staff, former general john kelly has been called in and answered several questions from the special counsel. those questions focused on a reported conversation kelly witnessed in march where president trump allegedly asked then white house counsel don mcgahn to fire robert mueller. the report suggests the special counsel is looking into people who ve witnessed possible
front four, peter baker, chief white house correspondent for the new york times. former u.s. attorney joyce vance who spent 25 years as a federal prosecutor. frank figliuzzi, former fbi assistant director for counterintelligence who in the past has worked for one robert mueller. and jeremy bash, former chief of staff at the cia and the pentagon. joyce, i would like to begin with you. did we get it about right that this is trump s own doj just alleging that he directed a felony and part two of my question to you is if this were donald trump civilian, would today s papers have included an indictment perhaps? i think that those are the perfect questions to start with. you re absolutely right. this is not robert mueller and 17 angry democrats making these allegations. this comes from the southern district of new york, a venerable u.s. attorney s office that s tough but fair and charges people with crimes and
bob mueller is signaling to all of the targets in this investigation, including the person who sits in the o s is i office is that if you try to obama outbound instruct an investigation, we re coming after you. we have a better-than-average white house correspondent on this panel. the president responded to today s court filings related to his former personal lawyer michael cohen by saying, quote, totally clears the president. thank you. we should take pains to note that no serious person who read these court documents tonight came away with that same take away. and earlier tonight we got this summation of what it all means from the government s former lawyer before the supreme court, this is neal katyal and he said this about today s filing from the feds here in new york. this is southern district prosecutors, his own justice department, trump s own appointees saying that you, mr. president, are directly
has a great track record of convictions. so that s where this charge comes from. by the same token, if president trump were citizen trump, he would likely be charged in this indictment. the protection he has against indictments stems from doj s policy of being very hesitant, if not forbidding the indictment of a president and then i think in fairness to the president, we have to mention that this violation that he s charged with, the campaign finance violation, typically you hear prosecutors or police say ignorance of the law is no excuse. when it comes to the campaign finance violation, though, prosecutors have to prove defendants knew that they were violating the law, so that s maybe the one outstanding issue here is whether there s evidence that trump when he engaged in this conduct with cohen knew he was violating campaign finance law. but that s pretty slender hope for the president. so, frank, after a life in and around the law as an
that? if it s meaningless to him he wouldn t even mention it but he threw in the there because it goes to the core of what his investigation is about. he already knows what the russian involvement is. cohen likely corroborated that for mueller from his end. jeremy bash, i know you told one of our producers that what leapt out at you was the money, the huge amounts of money where russia is concerned. december 7, brian, a date which will live in infamy for the trump legal team because i think today the full gamut of trump s legal troubles were laid bare for everybody to see and the thing that i really honed in on when reading the sentencing memo about michael cohen was the fact that the moscow/trump tower deal was going to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. those are the words on the page. hundreds of millions of dollars in licensing and licensing fees for the trump organization, for donald trump. so contemplate this for a moment. the government has proven through evidence tha