Question of obstruction. Barr just revealed that mueller did not indicate that he wanted congress to make that decision on obstruction of justice. He also said that mueller did not specifically ask the attorney general to make that decision. He said thats generally how it works, the Justice Department makes that decision about charges with obstruction of justice. Now theres been lots of questions about the redactions. Hes making it clear that he plans to hand over a redacted version of this report but has not discussed overruled redactions with the mueller team and has not discussed redactions with the white house. Little more information than yesterday but still democrats want to see that full report. No indication thats going to happen. Kate . Manu, thank you very much. Joining me right now and well add other players to this, but let me bring in evan perez. This was some of your reporting this morning, about how bill barr was assembling a team to look into origins of the russia investigation, something he suggested yesterday and you had more on it today. What did you make of his, i guess, further explanation of what hes interested in looking into and why today. Yeah. Kate, i think that was a little bit of a cleanup in the fisa aisle there at the hearing. But then the attorney general seemed to wave more deeply and cause more spills in that aisle. Here is what he said to jean shaheen. I think we have the sound about what exactly hes trying to do with regard to the origins of the fbi investigation. News just broke today that you have a special team looking into why the fbi opened an investigation into russian interference in the 2016 elections. I wonder if you can share with this committee who is on that team, why you felt the need to form that kind of a team and what you intend to be the scope of their investigation. Yeah. As i said in my confirmation hearing, i am going to be reviewing both the genesis and the conduct of intelligence activity activities directed at the truch campaign during 2016. And a lot of this has already been investigated in a substantial portion of it has been investigated and is being investigated by the office of Inspector General at the department. But one thing i want to do is pull together the various investigations that have gone on, including on the hill and in the department. And see if there are remaining questions that need to be addressed. Can you share with us why you feel the need to do that . For same reason were worried about foreign influence in elections, we want to make sure that during i think spieg on a Political Campaign is a big deal. Its a big deal. Generation i grew up in, the vietnam war period, people were all concerned about spying on antiwar people and so forth by the government and there were a lot of rules put in place to make sure theres an adequate basis before our Law Enforcement agencies get involved in political surveillance. Im not suggesting that those rules were violated. Youre not suggesting, though, that spying occurred . I dont well, i guess you could i think spying did occur, yes. I think spying did occur. That was quite a statement from the attorney general. And i think youre going to hear, there will probably be phone calls from the fbi to the attorney general to clarify exactly what hes trying to do. This is a highly political issue. The president today called the beginning of the investigation illegal. As far as we know, it wasnt illegal. The fbi was investigating whether or not certain people who were associated with the campaign who were doing things we with russians and thats the job of the fbi. Whether as a result of this there are changes in the way the fbi, what the standard is for the fbi to begin a counterintelligence investigation. That seems to be where the attorney general is looking at. Huge deal. If thats the case, thats a huge deal. Right, exactly. And, again, political leaders, members of congress, the president , everybody has to get together and say if we change the standard we have to understand what the consequences of that need to be. If something in the future happens and the fbi says you missed this, they will say you told us we have to change the standard to start an investigation. We can talk more about this later on but members of Congress Last year exposed the fact that there was a fisa. Those are not supposed to be ever known publicly. And so thats the result of what has happened here. And now it looks like the attorney general is calling for a broader look at this. And i think, again, its going to be a big deal going forward. We dont know exactly he said later on, our colleague manu raju tweeted about it, he has concerns about various aspects of the fbi investigation or how it was launched. Hes not being specific, nor should we really expect him to be, considering what weve been seeing, about which aspects hes talking about. Is it the fisa surveillance for carter page, the Campaign Adviser that they distanced himself from . Theres been saga about that. When you talk about the origins that launched the counterintelligence investigation that then led to the russia investigation, it had to do with george papadopolous. Thats exactly right. So far everything we know about what the fbi did, including about george papadopoulos, if youre the fbi, you have to look that the and investigate that. None of that is supposed to become public if it ends up at nothing but some of this stuff became public because republicans in congress decided they needed to make public the fisa application on carter page. And then that sort of because they believed that was done nefariously. So far, everything weve seen, it was not. Again our political leaders have the ability to change the law, if they want to increase the threshold for the fbi, they can do that. What bill barr was feeling around this dark room and i think he caused himself more problems there in trying to explain this, later on he also said there was no panel. Not yet. It sort of is very unclear exactly what he means. Absolutely. All right. Ev evan, weve got much more to come on this. Stick with me. Let me bring in deplora borger on this. I want to get your take on what you heard from barr. It is quite a statement when he says he believes spieg on the Trump Campaign did occur. Right. It is a huge statement. And i think that, as he said, he doesnt have evidence but does have questions about it. Compare that with what the president said this morning. The president said that what occurred with illegal and was treasonous. So you have the president of the United States saying, you know, this never should have begun. This was illegal. This was you know, this was because you had all these angry democrats, et cetera, et cetera, and the president gave a list of names, you know. He talked about lisa page, mr. Strzok, mccabe and went on and on. You see what the attorney general is saying, i have questions about this and im going to look into it. The question i have about this, is he listening to the president , who clearly wants this investigated and republicans in congress, who clearly want this investigated or is this something that the attorney general looked at a little bit and said wait a minute, maybe we have to change the way things are done here . His line is, but the question is, was it adequately predicated . I believe there was spying. My translation was, was everything kos hechlt r when they were issuing the fisas . That may be something that he wants to get to the bottom of. He may end up saying, you know, yes, it was completely fine, that they had real reasons to worry about whether spying was going on and they had an obligation to follow up on, which would put him in conflict with the president of the United States. Thats a great point, gloria. It seems there will be a long road to get to that conclusion, if you will. Sure. Stick with me. Elie honig and Jennifer Rodgers are with me as well. Is it fair if we dont know. If what bill barr is talking about, that spying did occur on the campaign, if that has to do with the fisa warrant on carter page, theres a universe where spying did occur and it was entirely appropriate. Hes saying theres a universe where if spying occurred and it was appropriate. Am i getting that right . I think really he means surveillance, the carter page fisas and other that kind of thing that went on. On one hand hes saying we have the doj, Inspector Generals report coming down, there are areas where there was pieces of information. I want to look and see if anything more needs to be done. Meanwhile the president is yelling in my ear this is treason, illegal and i have to appease him by doing that. The question, of course, then is does he open an investigation . Review is short of investigation. Yes. Do you think with all the information that he would be gathering, do you, and the fact that the ig is also investigating this, do you think its appropriate for the attorney general to be launching a review or an investigation . I think what he has actually said he is doing to date is fine, which is collecting the information that is being gathered by others and has been gathered by others, and taking a look at it to see whether anything is warranted. The problem is we, of course, dont have all the information that he will have access to, right . Some of what has been learned is not public. Its hard to say whether it would be appropriate to open an investigation beyond that. Thats what we dont know. He did Say Something that troubled me, which is after saying, you know, that he really was just looking at other information, he didnt know where it was going to lead, later he said he didnt have any evidence, he just had concerns but he did say he thought there was a failure of leadership at the top of the fbi. The fbi is great, blah, blah, blah, but we saw a failure of leadership. Hes going after comey. Hes saying the opposite in the same hearing. Hes saying a lot of conflicting things at the same time. Thats to appease the president and that troubles me. Yes, i would say so. On the most basic level, elie, why would barr be launching review of his own if the Inspector General is doing i think doing exactly this at the same time . It certainly looks political. Do you think it is . I do. Its not necessary. You have a very competent, nonpartisan, in fact obamaappointed News Reporter general. He issued a scathing report on andrew mccabe. You never want to run two investigation investigations parallel to one another. The idea to investigate the investigators, we know prosecutors and criminal investigators open cases all the time. A lot of times you have to walkway. Maybe theres some evidence, no evidence. Maybe theres not quite enough to charge. The idea that if that happens, now its time to investigate the investigators feels really political, especially when this comes, what, 20 minutes after the president , before hes about to board his helicopter, talks about this was a coup and this was treason. I think its a problematic message thats being sent. No matter what motivations are for bill bar, you can rest assured he didnt hear what the president said on his way out to air force one and doesnt appreciate it. Clarifications giving somewhat different answers and more context than even his hearing yesterday. Well take a quick break and be right back. 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There are a lot of questions that the attorney general is taking and answering with regard to the Mueller Report, special counsels investigation and how much he is going to release and went. Evan perez has been following this. Theres a back and forth between senator leahy and bill barr about the redactions and the process that is ongoing, he says, as they speak. Let me play what they what went on be and then we can talk about it. Have you overruled mr. Mueller or his team on any redaction question . No. One way or the other . No. Have you discussed any specific redactions with the white house . No. I think thats an important clarification of whats going on behind the scenes. Look, i think the question of who is making the redactions, one of the things that bill barr has tried to do is to lock arms with Robert Mueller, to sort of present a united front, saying look, this is my letter and this is going to be my version of the report, essentially, my redacted report. But bob mueller is fully on board with this. And im going to cut you off, only to head back into the hearing. Chris van hollen asking questions now. In making that assessment. Thats not a question i really can answer until i think you did. But you have made you looked at the report, right . And you looked at the evidence of the report and you made a decision. And you said that the president is not guilty of criminal obstruction of justice. Im asking you, in your review of the report, did you agree with mueller, that there were difficult issues of law in fact . Im going to give my reaction and comments, you know, about the report after the release. But you put your view of the report out there on this issue of obstruction of justice, right . Nobody asked you to do that. I didnt put my view of the report you put your assessment on you made a conclusion on the question of obstruction of justice that was not contained in the Mueller Report, and im simply asking you, when you looked at the evidence, did you agree with mueller and his team that there were difficult issues of law and fact . As i say, i am going to explain my decision and to the extent that requires any assessment of the Mueller Report did your decision require you to look into the intent of the president of the United States with respect to obstruction of justice . Im not going to discuss my decision. I will lay it out after the report is out. Mr. Attorney general, the thing is, you put this out there. The president went out and tweeted the next day that he was exonerated. That wasnt based on anything in the Mueller Report with respect to obstruction of justice. That was based on your assessment, on march 24th. Now you wont elaborate at all as to how you reached that conclusion . Because im not asking you whats in the Mueller Report. Im asking you about your conclusion. Let me ask you this. It was a conclusion of a number of people, including me, obviously, as the attorney general. It was also the conclusion of the Deputy Attorney general, rod rosenstein. I understand. Ive read your letter. And i will discuss that decision after the report is did bob mueller support your conclusion . I dont know whether bob mueller supported my conclusion. In your june 2018 memo, you indicated that a president can commit obstruction of justice in the classic sense. Did you see any evidence in this report about whether or not President Trump committed what you call a classic sense of obstruction of justice . Im not going to characterize or discuss the contents of the report. The report will be made public next week and i will come up and testify at that point. But the thing about it is, mr. General, you put your conclusion out there, and now you refuse to talk about any basis of your conclusion. Im not asking you for whats in the report. Im asking you how you reached your conclusion. Last question, can you assure us that the key factual evidence relevant to charges of obstruction of justice will be included in the public report . Are you saying can you assure us that the key factual evidence in the Mueller Report related to charges of obstruction of justice will be made available in the public report . I believe it will. Thats one of the reasons why i want to review it after the when the redaction team is done making the redactions, to make sure that theres nothing in there that would prevent that. And, by the way, redactions can cut both ways. My last question relates to redaction process. Youre allowing the mueller team to make the redactions in three of the four areas you mentioned, all of them except for intelligence. Is that a correct understanding of your testimony yesterday . In other words, youre leaving the discretion to them on the three of the four criteria that you mapped out . I have stated what the categories are and the people implementing it are the justice lawyers with the special counsels lawyers. Theyre implementing those categories. And resource thot going to overrule the special counsels judgment with respect to any of those categories, right . I havent. Can you tell us you will not . If an issue comes up, i dont want to prejudge it, but its not my intention. My intention is to allow the team to make the redactions and the people in the department are making those redactions. Senator boden . Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you very much for being here. We appreciate your service. We really talked about a lot of things that are very important. I want to talk about one that sweeping the country. As we mentioned briefly before, and thats the opioid epidemic. Not just that. We have an opioid epidemic. We have an addiction epidemic and in arkansas, were number questioning continues, moving on to topic, important ones like the opioid epidemic. I do want to pick up on the conversation what we are learning, this back and forth about attorney general bill barrs decision not to move forward on charges of obstruction. Jennifer rodgers, elie honig this gets back to what the attorney general wrote in his memo, his summary. This is the line that sticks out. The spes counsel states that, quote, while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also d