Starting to do. Focused on obstruction, corruption, abuse of power, et cetera. If we find the president is guilty of that, then we have to decide what we can do about it. Impeachment is one option, but impeachment is the decision to be made further down the road. And its a very high bar. But its certainly on the table if we were to find that. By insisting that impeachment is not the goal, but rather uncovering criminal conduct, democrats are depriving donald trump of his favorite straw man argument that democrats are on s obsessed with the i word. They like to use the impeach him. We will impeach him. The people say, he hasnt done anything wrong. That doesnt matter, we will impeach the president. The only president in history, what a job hes done, were going to impeach him. Hes doing a great job. That doesnt matter. Well impeach him. It is a hell of a place in washington. Guy needs a new stump speech. Democrats effectively check mating republicans in congress by saying, we will only move toward impeachment if theres evidence of criminal conduct and practically daring the gop to say theyd let crimes committed by the president slide. And speaking of crimes, potentially committed by the president , we know that one of the flashpoints in the obstructions of justice investigation into donald trump is his use of attempted use of pardons. Former cia director john brennan says he has no doubt trump plans to pardon Paul Manafort who will be sentenced in a d. C. Court tomorrow. Personally, i dont have any doubt that mr. Trump is going to pard pardon Paul Manafort at some point. The question is when. Thats a significant statement. Yeah. That you have no doubt that hes going to pardon him. I think its you know, whether or not its when hes leaving office, whatever, this is a person hes spoken highly of, hes a good man, feels the whole investigation has been a lark and a witch hunt. Why would donald trump allow him to stay in jail if those were his views . And thats where we start today with some of our favorite reporters and friends. New york times chief White House Correspondent peter baker. Matt miller, former chief spokesman at the department of justice. Former federal prosecutor glenn kirchner. With us at the table, assistant former assistant u. S. Attorney mimi and donny deutsch. Mi many mimi, let me start with you. This sort of picture emerging of the standards seem very strategic and republicans unsurprisingly stumbled into the trap, the white house stumbling into the trap. Up a nancy pelosi made clear yesterday was that im going to lock arms with the republicans and i cant imagine that they wouldnt be as alarmed as i would be. If Robert Mueller, or the Southern District of new york, or the Eastern District of virginia, or anywhere else thats investigating donald trump and his cohorts, finds criminal wrongdoing. Yeah, i mean, she set it up so that first of all, let me say this. My view, which is sort of out of my lane a little bit because its more political than legal, i feel like nancy pelosi has earned my trust on this, the way shes handled trump so far, i think has been pretty brilliant. And so if this is what she feels she needs to say right now to get to a point when and if impeachment is a real possibility, im willing to indulge that. And i think that she set it up so that now when and if the facts come out, which they will, eventually, i mean, theyre starting to, right . I mean, but slowly but surely coming out, but when that criminality is showing, how will republicans say, you know, no, like, thats okay . And shes set the youre right, shes almost raised trying to raise the bar back up. Its been set, i dont know if you tall it too high or too low in some ways. So high that, you know, russian collusion or nothing, he gets to stay president. No crime. Right. Or so low that we tolerate anything. Shes saying, once the facts come out and theres criminality thats found, that is when its time to say, impeach or not. Matt miller, this might be an example, too, where the president and his allies, their strategy of letting it all hang out, caught up with them. I was told almost a year ago by a trump ally, a former Senior Justice Department official, that the whole strategy before the midterms, was to protect the senate to avoid conviction. That donald trump was already socializing himself to the idea that, hey, impeachment might help me, bill clinton was in the high 60s when he was impeached. Bring it on. It seems that that came back and bit them in the rear end, and the fact that they made it too public and nancy pelosi said, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, i know there was a big brouhaha over her comments yesterday especially on the left. I didnt find them that controversial, to be honest. I think what shes saying is, look, these investigations need to continue, and remember, there are a lot of different investigations. Theres the mueller investigation. The sdny investigation. And, of course, all these separate and in some cases overlapping probes being done by various house committees right now. And if any of these i think there are two things that have to happen. One, if any of these probes produce evidence of criminality, and, two, that evidence is such that it moves Public Opinion in a way that republicans, you know, are impacted, thats when you move to impeachment. If they dont produce evidence of criminality, then you dont. I think the tricky question is what happens if we find clear evidence of criminality by the president and the republicans dont move . But that is when they have to explain it to the voters, and if impeachment becomes off the table, not because theres no evidence of a crime by the president , but republicans are just being intransigent, youre going into an election cycle when you have all the republican members of the house up for reelection, you have a number of them in the senate, including in swing states, and you have the president , himself, and all of a sudden, the whether you want to allow the president to sit in office after theres clear and compelling evidence of him committing a crime, thats on the ballot for everyone. Peter baker, you have written brilliantly throughout about some of the historical parallels to bill clintons impeachment proceedings and i believe its something that you wrote about the clinton proceedings and you know, he was ultimately impeached for a bucket of conduct around the obstruction prong of this Mueller Probe. We havent talked about it quite as much lately because the folks whove been in court have been down the collusion corridor. Paul manafort, Konstantin Kilimnik has been in the news. Roger stones home was raided. Your papers have chronicled for many, many months all the flashpoints in the investigation. I want to put it up, nancy pelosi seems to be saying any criminality Robert Mueller finds would be worthy of reopening this question of whether impeachment is appropriate. The firing of jim comey, we know Robert Mueller is looking at. The attempt to fire mueller, the pressure on sessions to unrec e unrecuse. The pressure on comey around the flynn investigation. Dangling pardons which is back in the news and we heard director brennan talking about that. And the public and private conduct around witnesses in the Mueller Probe. Where do you see things at this point in terms of everyone bracing for the known unknown of what that Mueller Report will contain . Yeah, i think its very interesting, all of washington, of course, is on pins and ne needles waiting for something. We could guess, we could speculate. Were drawing, you know, lessons from these tea leaves or those and we dont know. I found Nancy Pelosis comments interesting, differently perhaps than others on this panel. I think she was warning, basically, that what we already see, what we already know, isnt enough. Nor in other words, we already know they fired jim comey. Up to the house to decide whether or not thats part of a obstruction plot or not even without further evidence. We already know that at least the prosecutors believe the president of the United States has a candidate conspireing with his former attorney to violate Campaign Finance laws by paying hush money to keep them quiet for the election. These things are already known. What nancy pelosi is saying is thats not enough. That does not meet the standard she has set. Her standard is compelling, overwhelming, and bipartisan. And that last one is the most important. Critics may think what weve seen so far is compelling and overwhelming, but its not bipartisan and as long as there are not 20 republican senators willing to look at this in the senate, then theres no point in going forward. Thats what shes saying. Its going to take a whole lot, it seems to me shes saying to change that dynamic. It could change. Shes given herself a big loophole if she wants to. For the moment shes saying i dont think its worth it and i think shes sent the signal about where she thinks the politics are in washington right now. Glenn, let me ask you about the sentencing tomorrow for Paul Manafort. The president s former Campaign Chairman who will be sentenced in d. C. And expected to face a tougher judge who may possibly levy a tougher sentence. Any insights or projections about what to expect tomorrow . You know, nicolle, i hope judge Amy Berman Jackson gets right and makes right what i think judge ellis got wrong. I think judge ellis inordinately low sentence when the guidelines set out that the absolute bottom of manaforts sentencing range should have been 19 1 2 years. Now, mind you, that was not muellers calculation. That is the considered opinion of the u. S. Sentencing commission that drafted the guylinegu guidelines. For ellis to announce that the two main reasons that a judge usually goes below that bottom number do not exist in manaforts case. He didnt accept responsibility for his crimes. And he didnt provide substantial assistance to the prosecutors in helping them investigate crimes committed by others. In fact, judge jackson found that when manafort agreed to cooperate truthfully, he lied about significant matters. So once judge ellis sort of knocked out those two pillars that would ordinarily allow him to go below the 19 1 2year floor, he said im going to give him 3 years and 11 months because hes led an otherwise blameless life. That, i think, does harm to the criminal justice system. I think its a travesty. I think judge jackson, who is a very serious nononsense law and orderoriented and fair judge is not only going to sentence manafort appropriately, i hate to make predictions, but somewhere between the five and tenyear range on top of, that is consecutive to, the nearly four years that judge ellis just gave him. It wouldnt surprise me if you heard something from her that was a rebuke of judge ellis observation. I could see her saying, like, Something Like, sir, you have not led a blameless life. But lets see what kind of comments she chooses to include as part of her sentencing. Donny . I want to go back to nancy for a second, nancy pelosi. My new hero. You know, theres two democratic parties right now. Theres the Democratic Party, whos 78 years old. Someone said to me today shes running the country. Theres the newbies in the news, 32yearolds, 20yearolds, who clearly cant see in front of their nose and dont understand things. Its a marvelous contract. Im in the peter camp. She is have shrewd. She wants to obviously take the trump victim card off the table b. She wants to set up so that i agree. We are not going to, nor should we, indict a president i mean, impeach a president , on process crimes. Its not going to happen. The obstruction is out there. Forget whether its right or wrong. Its not going to happen. So i believe, and i think se knows its pretty much as far as as its going to go. I believe going back to the Southern District, she knows whats coming there also and does not want to make it seem were going to get trump any way we can, were going to get him on very clear blackandwhite criminal nonpolitical terms. So if for some reason there is more there with mueller, shes opening up the door to go, if shes not, shes really free to run unabashed interference when the criminal indictments come from new york. So for her, its a brilliant, brilliant move. Ive said all along, two things to the democrats, step away from impeachment, step away from socialism. She certainly stepped away from the first one. Matt miller, i want to let you jump in here. Theres some sort of republicans who mostly keep their head down and their names off the quotes, but think it would be a remarkable thing if every single republican in the house and senate were to look the other way. If Robert Mueller also a lifetime republican were to find a cornucopia of crimes under the obstruction umbrella, which lying to the fbi, those used to be thing the that republicans cared about. Yeah, thats right, and it might even be so much looking away. They might be actively attacking the investigation no matter what it concludes. Thats been the precedent weve seep so far. You have some republicans who have been quiet but really the main voices weve heard in the party have been attacking. Look at the Michael Cohen hearing, had a former associate of the president come present evidence to a Congressional Committee of a crime and brushed it off and spent the whole time attacking him. I think republicans have been making a gamble that this president is really a teflon president. Theyve seen him withstand all these attacks and his approval rating, while hes historically unpopular, has basically stayed around the same level in the low h 40s. Theyre gambling that past, present, ors futur future. Thats a hell of a gamble to make when you have these investigations that could produce clear evidence of criminality. We dont know if that evidence bears truth. They might be right. His approval, the alternate universe, fox news, breitbart world, that they and so many of their constituents live in, that might be his floor and may not be possible for him to go under it. But if i were them, and my political future was tied to that question, i sure wouldnt want to bet on donald trump. Mimi . So, i just want to go back to this point about whether obstruction could be enough because i agree that, you know, pelosi seems to have made the calculation that right now, its not, but i think its very different for us to hypothetically talk about obstruction, even if we think we know all of the facts. I mean, even many of us weve seen it, though. Weve seen it already. We dont know that we know everything we dont know everything it sh. Im already saying weve seen weave seenve seen a lot of. Yes. True. I think its different if its laid out by a prosecutor in a coherent narrative if you see all the different instances. Right . Its about a pattern. Explain that, mimi. Hope hicks said, yes, i was asked to lie. We dont know what she said privately. Another, we though he quit but he turned over his notes to the special counsels office. We dont know what was in them. I mean, don mcgahn spent 30 hours with mueller. We know he spent 30 hours. We have no idea what we said. I mean, we dont know what we dont know, right . We still dont know exactly what was said with cohen about the obstruction that he pled guilty to which i always thought was significant that mueller had him plead guilty to that because he didnt really need to have him plead guilty to that but he wanted those facts out there. We know vaguely from cohens open testimony, my understanding, it seems like there was more in the closeddoor testimony and dont know what exactly he told mueller about that, so, i mean, youre right, i think especially in a crime like obstruction, details matter. Maybe it wont matter to the public, but in terms of a prosecutor laying out a narrative, it really matters. Glenn, let me just ask you, what kind of picture, what kind of granularity would we have, reince priebus, don mcgahn, steve bannon, hope hicks, Sarah Huckabee sanders, all sat down and told us about a day in the life in the donald trump white house. Yeah, it would be ugly. It might even be nauseating. But, you know, nicolle, what you said a minute ago is exactly right. Were sending so much time trying to decide whether what we have seen publicly reported that maybe 5 of what bob mueller has is enough to impeach, is enough to charge somebody with obstruction, with a coverup. I mean, thats like sitting here and talking about whether after the first inning of the baseball game, we can predict with 100 confidence which team will win. And i got to tell you, knowing bob mueller and actually seeing him investigate a case in real time when he was my chief of homicide, he investigated and indicted a case, i then took it over for trial, and, nicolle, i looked into the boxes that made up bob muellers investigation. I had been a prosecutor for almost ten years at that point in time, and i thought, you know what, i know my way around a criminal investigation. And then i looked in bob muellers investigative boxes, and i was blown away. Thats not hyperbole. I mean, the man was investigating somebody who shot a police officer, and he started with the defendants birth certificate and he moved forward through the defendants life. He knew things about the defendant that i bet the defendant had forgotten about himself. So for us to debate whether we have enough to begin impeachment proceedings, whether we might have enough to bring a criminal charge against the president or his family members, is really foley. Its foley that we enjoy and its important because i think we have to try to assess an assemble this evidence in realtime. You know, this is still the first inning, with respect to this game, and, you know, it may go into extra innings before we know who wins and who loses. You guys, its not its obviously criminal. Im talking about the politics and the voting. At the end of the day, at least 40 in a republican primary, you know, 80 , no matter what trump does, i mean, unless hes really on the phone with putin, they still want him if there. If you are a u. S. Senator and you were getting primaried within the next year or two, to protect your job, its what these people do for a living. There just arent that many her