As well . Plus, new reporting this morning on the Mueller Probe from the New York Times. Democrats are not satisfied with William Barrs summary, and neither, apparently, are members of. Special counsels team. Why they feel the a. G. Undersold the reports damaged to President Trump. Well bring in one of the reporters behind that story. Well also speak to the reporters from the miami herald, as that paper dig noos into a federal investigation into possible chinese spying operations targeting the president at his florida golf club. Were also following the latest developments with joe biden, former Vice President biden now promising to be more respectful of personal space as other women come forward saying he made them uncomfortab uncomfortable. Welcome to morning joe. Joe is back with one more day. Along with willie and me, we have mike barnicle, contributor to Time Magazine and former aide to the george w. Bush white house and state department, elise jordan,richard haas is with us and Senior Security analyst for msnbc news juan zuarrte is with us and jake sherman is with us. The New York Times reports that some of muellers investigators have told associates that barr failed to adequately portray their finding, which government officials and others familiar with their frustration say were more damaging for President Trump than indicated. The times reports the special counsel investigators had already written multiple summaries of the report and some team members believe that barr should have included more of their material in his fourpage letter. But government Officials Say the Justice Department determined that the summaries contain sensitive information, like classified material, secret grand jury testimony and information related to current federal investigations that must remain confidential. Whe while the report said it was not clear what special investigators viewed as troubling, barr said the report sets out evidence on both sides of the question. And President Trumps legal team responded to the the New York Times piece late last night. Rudy giuliani saying, quote, if there was a significant difference, mueller would have corrected it as he did the false bu buzzfeed report. This is from disgruntled mueller staffers who are rabid Democrat Supporters supporters. The Justice Department declined to respond to the New York Times story but the party reports that attorney general barrs team has its own frustration with mueller. Barr and other Justice Department officials believe the special counsel investigators fell short of their task by declining to decide whether President Trump illegally obstructed the inquiry, leaving barr to make a decision. But as nbc news reported, mueller gave barr and the d. O. J. Three weeks notice that he would not make a conclusion on obstructi obstruction. Officials familiar with the attorney generals thinking tells the times that barr and his aides limited the details they revealed because they were worried about wading into plit te political territory. Michael schmidt of the times joins us this morning. Let me ask you to dig in to these members see the conflict to what bill barr put out and the report . Theres an issue here with the narrative. The problem that the members of the special counsel team have are with the fact that barr was able to come out, essentially clear the president , but not give the details, the sort of fruits of the investigation, the fuller picture of what was found. They believe there is some troubling conduct there and that it needs to be looked at and the public should know about it. But in the way inthat barr did that, he essentially cleared the president and gave no other information, and this has allowed in the eyes of sum for the narrative to be set that the president did nothing wrong. Now, the president himself has exacerbated this by going out and saying that he was completely exonerated by the Mueller Report. That is not what barr said the Mueller Report does. The Mueller Report does not exonerate or condemn the president. It seems like it more provides a bunch of facts. And the special counsels team looks at what the president says and says he is taking it out of context and twisting their work and that bothers them. Do the people, michael, that you spoke to contest to the conclusion as presented by the attorney general that there was no collusion . Thats been the headline from the white house and do the sources you spoke to out of the special counsels office dispute that headline . The sense is less on the issue of collusion than it is on obstruction. Barr was pretty definitive in his letter about what mueller found on collusion, essentially saying theres no case to be made that the campaign conspired with the russians. What it comes back to is the issue of obstruction and the picture the report paints of actions the president took in office to interfere with the investigation. That even barr acknowledges in his letter is something that mueller couldnt make a decision on and sort of lays out reasons for and against why some of the president s actions are so problematic. And the folks that are frustrated here see the president come out and say he was completely exon raerated on this issue. They know this is not accurate and they want the contents of the report to be out there. The question is when will that happen, when will the report be out and when will people be able to decide. The question is how do you deal with the president s conduct . The Justice Department is there to decide whether people broke the law or not. They decided that the president has not broken the law. The attorney general has made that determination. So what information should be released to the public . In the case of hillary clinton, a lot of pop criticized james comey for holding his press conference and laying out what the fbi found, but in this case it looks like the Justice Department is going to release a lot of what they did find in the investigation. So its a very difficult balancing act when you have a highprofile investigation in which the public really wants to know what has been found out but there may not have been criminality. The attorney generals letter made it it did not fully exonerate the president , the way the president has. Bob mueller couldnt determine one way or another whether there was obstruction. Are you saying your sources inside the special counsels office say they do have evidence that the president of the United States obstructed justice . Im not sure how clean and clear cut the special counsel is on their determination of whether the president broke the law. What our sense is is that there is a lot of information and fact that they have found on this issue. They were unable to make a determination and they wanted for that information to be passed to the attorney general to make the call or to someone else. But they couldnt come to it. They did a lot of work on that issue. They spoke to a lot of white house officials, they really delved into the actions the president took in office. What we dont know is why they didnt come to a determination, why was it that they couldnt decide whether the president broke the law. And we wont have clarity on that until we see the report. So, michael, would it be accurate to say that part of the issue here with this mornings timess story centers around the fact that you had professional investigators, both legal, fbi investigating things for two years, they did an enormous amount of work, interviewed hundreds of witnesses, especially on the obstruction component and within the report, they are upset because of barrs reference sort of lightly referencing the obstruction component when the Building Blocks of the obstruction investigation we wont know until we read it but bob muellers career is such that he would never issue a report leaving large questions like that unanswered. He might give direction but wouldnt leave the questions unanswered and that is the source of their anger over the attorney generals behavior . I think their frustration is with the fact that barr comes out and clears the president but doesnt give the larger sense of what they found. Doesnt provide the additional sort of fruits of the investigation that they thought were problematic. They didnt come to a determination on whether the president broke the law for some reason, and they obviously want some of these facts to be seen in a different light, either by the public or by congress. Maybe, and im not sure of this, maybe they think that the conduct was such that it was problematic that congress should look at it and that congress may want to look at for impeachment but may not be criminal. Maybe that is why they want it out there. Whatever it is, theres a rub here. Theres a frustration here in how the end of this investigation was conducted. And that is clear. Did you pick up anything in your reporting, michael, that would indicate some of the investigators were upset that they knew that bob mueller would not indict the president because supposedly the Justice Department does not want the rule the president cannot be indicted and he didnt want to tie the thing up for another year, year and a half in court . Im not sure that they got that far. And when barr puts out his letter, his determination, he said that they had not taken into consideration the question of whether the president could have been indicted on the criminal question, essentially saying i dont think that they got that far, i dont think that they thought there was even enough of a case to have made that determination. That in barrs eyes. Mu mueller had not done that. Meanwhile, after the Justice Department missed House Democrats tuesdays ledline to hold over the Mueller Report, the House Committee authorized jerry nadler to issue a subpoena for the full report and all of the underlying evidence but nadler said he wants to give barr, quote, time to change his mind about redacting the report before submitting it to congress. Were going to work with the attorney general for a short period of time in the hope that he will reveal to us the entire Mueller Report but if that doesnt work out in a short period of time, well issue the subpoena. Are you saying im just going to say very short order. Im not saying how many times. I dont need to see the grand jury testimony. I dont have this paranoia that my friends on the left have that the conclusions are really not what they are. You made reference to the Mueller Report. Have you seen it . Because we havent. Ive seen the principal findings by the attorney general. Bob mueller has provided his findings to the attorney general, who has accurately summarized those. These investigations should end. We should move on. What basically were doing here is in my opinion the democrats are asking attorney general barr to violate the law. The attorney general is doing exactly what he said he would be doing, making as much of the report public as to be under federal law and department policy. Whats the rush . Spring break probably. Lets go to jake. Tell me your reporting on this. I wonder what william barr would have to gain by completely misleading the American People. Im just wondering, should his summary be given more benefit of the doubt or does the times reporting suggest a real conflict here . The last couple days on capitol hill with members of congress, one thing has come up constantly, if barrs letter was so misrepresentative, why werent the mueller people complaining about it and then these two stories dropped last night with the mueller people complaining about it. So i found that fascinating. A few things to me seem abund t abundantly clear. Democrats are going to within i would assume days send the subpoena to the Justice Department for this report. They have already authorized the subpoena and the window of time is going to shrink. But their patience is going to shrink quite quickly. Number two, this issue is not going away on capitol hill at any point soon. I think theres going to be more subpoenas flying, more invitations for testimony, more hand wringing over there. Over the last 24 hours weve seen the ways and Means Committee issue a request for trumps tax returns, weve seen other committees issue requests for trumps Financial Information going back decades, we have the Washington Post reporting that Jared Kushner might have been subject to foreign influence and that why hes security clearance was at risk. I mean, this has suddenly turned into a very, very perilous 24 to 48 hours for this president when it comes to his relationship with capitol hill and the investigations on capitol hill, which are just frankly, just revving up. Elise jordan, whats the politics of this . Youve heard republicans saying weve seen enough of the report, weve seen the attorney generals version of it. I think trump won the first round on this. I think that what we are hearing from on background, its source, unidentified sources, thats what the mueller investigators feel and they want more information and they know the first draft of history has been set. Its very difficult to walk back that narrative once donald trump has been by his handpicked attorney general been correct. There are summaries that the mueller investigators, they could have used those summaries, they tried to give usable summaries so that the entire report didnt have to be released. Its definitely we would like to see the report. Everybody would. I dont know how anyone can make a plausible case against seeing the report. The attorney general says hell release the full report. Its a question of what report do you see . What are the redactions in there . I think there are appropriate redactions, theres classified material, grand jury testimony, all kind of things the public doesnt and probably shouldnt see. Was there any kind of conversation, it seems like there wasnt based on michael schmidts reporting, about what was going to be the rollout of the findings. Look it, to put a little perspective on it, were all kind of flying blind. Were talking about a report thats well over 300 pages, which was boiled down to maybe two sentence fragments in the attorney generals release. Exactly. This is its frustrating, its bizarre. On one level we should all hold off because theres no report to look at. On the other hand, the temptation to talk about it is obviously great given how significant it is. The democrats have to be careful here and others, it doesnt look almost like theyre sore losers, that theyre keeping a story alive that people are ready to move on. The politics again work in the president s favor. Curiosity aside, why would we want to see the report from a National Security perspective . Its a great question, mika. One of the things that Robert Mueller was doing was looking at and building a case around russian influence in the u. S. Election. It wasnt just a question of whether or not the president or the campaign was colluding. That was a critical criminal inquiry, but the broader question of what russian influence looked like, how they built their campaign in 2016, what the agents looked like, their methodology, all of that is exactly what Robert Mueller began to expose. You remember the very first set of indictments that came from the special prosecutor,special investigator had to do with the russians themselves. He was laying the predicate what it was the russians were trying to do and how they were doing it. The lingering question for me here and ive said all along, mika that what weve needed from Robert Mueller has been credibility, clarity and closure. We havent gotten all of that yet. The clarity will come with the release of the report, redacted as it will be. The closures not yet there. One of the interesting questions from a National Security perspective is what degree of influence and leverage have the russians had over the american political system, not just the president. Others, like the chinese, the iranian iranians, are looking at this, reading the play book and will try to influence and divide the country the way the russians did. House democrats have filed a formal request with the Treasury Department asking for six years of the president s business and personal tax returns. The request was made in a twopage letter sent to the irs commissioner seeking details about trumps personal returns from 2013 through 2018 including whether they are now or have ever been under audit. Statement neal writes we have completed the necessary groundwork for a request of this magnitude and i am certain we are within our legitimate legal and oversight rights. President trump told reporters last night that he would not be inclined to do so. The chairman of the Democratic House ways and Means Committee moments ago asked the irs for six years of your tax returns. Is that all . Thats all. Usually its ten. I guess theyre giving up. Were under audit, despite what people said as im always under audit it seems. Ive been under audit for many years because the numbers are big and i guess when you have a name, youre audited. Until such time as im not under audit, i would not be inclined to do that. Thank you. First of