i wouldn t say i read every single word. that s a big part of why democrats say they wanted robert mueller to testify tomorrow anyway, right? so people who haven t read the report can, you know, watch the movie instead of reading the book. who knew that would include the director of the fbi himself? we know democrats on the judiciary committee held a mock hearing today for about 2 1/2 hours as part of their prep complete with somebody playing the part of a likely interrupter who was trying to get them off their game when they were building up momentum. one of the lawmakers who of course will have questions for robert mueller is the vice chair of the house judiciary committee. she s got a big day ahead of us tomorrow, but before that she s going to join us here next. stay with us. beep goes off ]
russia intervening in our election to help put donald trump into the white house, but for all of those dozens of indictments, mueller s investigation has only led to two trials before a jury. the first one, of course, put president trump s campaign chairman paul manafort in prison for at least seven years. that s his federal prison sentence. and that is separate and apart from any time he may get if he s convicted on the state charges. he s also now facing at the same time. so manafort was only the first jury trial that came out of mueller s investigation. only the second jury trial that has come out of mueller s investigation ended in dramatic fashion today, this afternoon, with that jury walking into that courtroom in the eastern district of virginia at 2:21 p.m. eastern time to announce their unanimous decision to issue guilty verdicts on all counts against bijan kian, who was a trump transition official the number two official in the trump transition working on intelligence issues.
that s danforth testifying to congress about that investigation and his findings. ahead of special counsel robert mueller testifying early tomorrow morning, the justice department now has essentially suggested that mueller s lucky to be allowed to be testifying at all, implying that they never let this sort of thing happen with people who have jobs like robert mueller s. well, the jack danforth tape tells us that that s not true. but how else should we think of mueller s testimony tomorrow in terms of how it fits into history? joining us now is nbc news presidential historian michael beschloss. mr. beschloss, thanks so much for being here. it s great to have you here tonight. thank you, rachel. i was struck by the justice department letting robert mueller know in this sort of terse letter that he was basically lucky to be allowed in there. there is precedence of special counsels testifying to congress about their findings. absolutely. kenneth starr in november of 1998, a month be
as well as some other witnesses before the committee, so i say, you know, the more the merrier. if we can bring along don mcgahn and ms. donaldson and some of the other witnesses we ve subpoenaed, i d like them all to come by. surely, though, mueller s own team is is another matter. there had been some discussion that they would be testifying in a closed session that would sort of augment what we were able to see in open session. do we know if there is any plan for a closed session at this point with anyone from mueller s team? my understanding is that there isn t at this point, but mr. mueller also did give us some additional time with himself. i think it s a great idea, as one of your previous guests noted, you know, something of this complexity, the amount of time that was spent, the length of the report, the amount of evidence underlying it, i think it s a good thing if we re able to get more information by having one of his deputies there who can assist and help move the hea
and that means that the expectation is that at the intelligence committee tomorrow, aaron zebley will be answering questions from members of that committee alongside mueller. now, again, that s the second hearing tomorrow. the first hearing we still don t have clarity. as far as we understand it, with the judiciary committee what we think is going to happen is that mueller will be sworn in and zebley will be sitting there with him, but zebley himself won t be sworn in. he will be there basically as a counselor, as an adviser to mueller. that means that mueller will be the one answering all the questions in the first round with judiciary tomorrow and zebley can speak in his ear and can advise him what to say, but zebley himself won t be sworn in and directly asking questions. that will be the case for the morning and in the afternoon zebley and mueller will both be witnesses and both be testifying and they will both be sworn in. literally while i was describing this tonight, this news d