principle of criminal prosecution, particularly in what is essentially a white collar case is follow the money. you follow the money. so everybody knows that. that s what they re doing. we shouldn t be surprised. let me ask you about so something that was says to me by two white house officials. i called them about the russia sections of the book. steve bannon s quotes about, you know, he suggested don jr. may have committed treason. i called them and said the gravest effect of those comments is that they have enraged the president. but the most troubling thing when it comes to the russia investigation might be that these were just people as john heilemann has said in their offices dishing to a reporter on or off the record. when they re in a witness room, how would you evaluate this group of individuals who talk so freely and so invitingly about
contributor, form u.s. attorney and a former cia official who worked with both james comey and bob mueller. he will join tonight s panel, shane harris, heidi priss bowla, and ram herb pew due rue. chuck, let me start with you. i m curious today, when people like yourself, prosecutors like yourself, career prosecutors, see a president see people convicted of properly convicted of crimes get pardoned, what is their morale after something like this, especially if it looks like a pattern? when it look like a pattern, chuck, it can be pretty demoralizing. i can tell you from my own experience as a prosecutor, there are things you can control and things you can t control. you can work really, really hard on a case, a righteous case a white collar case, and a judge decides that that person not
it talks about if there is no slam dunk piece of evidence in a particular obstruction case and they often search for a larger pattern of behavior, how would the tweets fit in? sure. so it s very hard in a case involving intent. a white collar case where it s not like somebody robbed a bank or did or murdered somebody. has a crowbar. yeah. exactly. a pattern of behavior and you re trying to prove did this person have the intent to obstruct justice. you almost always will be looking at a wide range of evidence to piece together what s in somebody s mind because we don t have a magic telescope that tells us what somebody s intent is. what mueller will do is look at all the things the president said and did over a long period of time that includes his tweets, his verbal statements. it includes his actions.
were a regular white collar case, riches advice would be right. never let this guy within an inch of prosecutor who given lying and challenge rating. the difficulty is he s president of the united states. and he has said repeatedly he wants to testify. and it would like terrible for him to take the fifth. rich is exactly right that a lawyer s job is to keep him from testifying. but he s not gist an ordinary subject. he s president. if it looks like he s hiding from robert mueller that is a problem. they will flip that the other way. he s the president united states he s busy. he has to watch tv and tweet all the time. you have to show us a specific crime. and why you can t get any evidence. hasn t he laid the ground wok for mueller being biassed and the department of justice being biassed and transfer i won t do