Transcripts For MSNBCW Morning Joe 20190419 : comparemela.co

Transcripts For MSNBCW Morning Joe 20190419

Simply frustrated. So of course he, quote, launched public attacks on the investigation and the individuals involved, engaged in a series of targeted efforts to control the investigation, attempted to remove the special counsel, sought to have attorney general sessions unrecuse himself and limit the investigation, sought to prevent Public Disclosure of information about the meeting between russians and campaign officials, used Public Forums to attack potential witnesses and praised witnesses who declined to cooperate with the government. Good morning and welcome to morning joe. It is friday, april 19th. Along with joe, willie and me we have National Affairs analyst for nbc news john higheilemannhd lust susan del percio, Michael Schmidt, Benjamin Wittes and former aide to Robert Mueller, now an msnbc law analyst, chuck rosenberg. Joe, a lot to get through this morning. A lot more questions still out there than answers. It was fascinating, yesterday was fascinating. I think the most remarkable thing about yesterday was the fact that a man who had had the respect of attorneys of both sides of the aisle, attorney general barr, humiliated himself, shamed himself by just a pathetic performance. Im not so sure that he didnt do that im not so sure he didnt do that to gain actually the sort of notoriety he got yesterday. He took the heat from donald trump. Youll notice yesterday half of the talk was about what barr did and a lot of pundits couldnt focus long enough on what donald trump did. Dan balso summed it up, the document is replete with evidence of lying of Public Officials and others, of the president urging them not to tell the truth, of the president seeking to shut down the investigation, of a Trump Campaign hoping to benefit politically from russian hacking and leaks of information damaging to its opponent and of a white house in chaos and operating under abnormal rules. Now, willie, the politician in me says that the democrats need to keep their head down, focus on, you know, issues that are going to matter around the dinner table of americans and just win the election in 2020 if they want to get rid of a man who obviously is unfit to be president of the United States. But you see, heres the rub they also have a constitutional responsibility, a constitutional responsibility to follow the rule of law. And this Mueller Report documents explicitly that he obstructed justice. And Robert Mueller even said in the report of course william bar lied. Thats just what he does now. But he said in the report, listen, i cant come to this conclusion, congress, this has to be up to you. So the democrats have a choice, are they going to play it safe, are they going to do what polls would tell you will actually get donald trump removed from office in an election or will they begin the impeachment proceed g proceedings that this Mueller Report suggests donald trump deserves . He is unfit to be president of the United States, and anybody who suggests otherwise has not read the report. That debate among democrats began almost immediately yesterday. You had some Congress Women and men talking instantly about impeachment saying what ive read in these two volumes in the mule are report constitutes ground to begin the impeachment process. Jerry nadler came out pretty quickly and said lets go through the process. I want to have bob mueller sit before the committee, i want to have william barr sit before the committee. I think the attorney general went even further and was more aggressively partisan than we could have even predicted as he made the case no conclusion, no collusion, no collusion. William barr did attempt to shape the publics perception by excusing the public as behavior detailed within it. President trump faced an unprecedented situation, as he entered into office, prosecutors were scrutinizing his conduct before taking office and the con didnt of some of his associates and there was relentless speculation in the news media about the president s culpability, yet as he said from the beginning, there was no conclusion. The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the russian government in accordance with its election activities. It did write while the investigation identified numerous links between individuals with ties to the russian government and individual associated with the trump cam pan, the evidence was not sufficient support criminal charges. In barrs march 24th letter, it said the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the russian government in its election interference activities. Barr left out the left flattering beginning of the statement saying the investigation did nestablished the russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump Presidency and worked to secure that outcome and that the campaign expected it would benefit from information stolen and released through russian efforts. Thats incredible. Completely off base. William rehnquist once wrote an opinion about wretching words of a political hack. John heilemann, when this presidency is over, John Mitchell will not be sitting alone as the worst attorney general in modern american political history, he will be side by side by william barr. I want to say, though, how ridiculous for barr to try to excuse Donald Trumps obstruction of justice, for barr to try to excuse donald trump running around telling people to fire the special counsel, telling people to lie to investigators, because he was angry, he was frustrated because of political enemies. My gosh, listen, i voted to impeach bill clinton twice. One on obstruction of justice or abuse of power. Would bill clinton what bill clinton was charged for, i mean, again, were talking about lying before a grand jury, lying in a deposition about his personal life, so pales in comparison to what Lindsey Graham, who prosecuted that case in the senate, to what Lindsey Graham now excuses every day of the week. It is shameful. And republicans like myself were going after Blill Clinton from day one. So thats no excuse. What about Mitch Mcconnell before barack obama even got d elected president of the United States saying his only focus was making barack obama a oneterm president. They were going after i mean, what barr said, it was akin to a mother saying, please, forgive joey for not turning in his homework, the dog ate it. No excuse at all. Can you imagine back in your day if bill clinton said i lied because i was frustrated offver the way the republicans treated me on health care. It being too nice to barr to say he is a political hack, something we discussed on the show before, i agree with ththat that but worse than just spin the story, knowing he was going to get found out for that lie, whats the strategy, whats the game that barr is playing . He had to know he was going to be, po exposed. The no collusion mantra, its not that the report found no collusion, its that the report explicitly says we reject the notion of collusion as meaningful. It says it right there on the page. It says collusion is not a meaningful firm, we were focused on a much narrower definition of what constitutes coordination and conspiracy, yet barr is saying they fond no collusion. Thats not is whats at issue. The second really compelling this evening that goes to this obstruction piece is that barr yesterday essentially said Rod Rosenstein and i looked at what mueller wrote here, the evidence of obstruction, which was not definitive in the report for various reasons well get into but he didnt make a d determination so Rod Rosenstein and i doo siecided he hadnt obstructed justice and he fully cooperated with the special counsel, yet the 448 pages is full of ways in which the president did not cooperate with the special. Its studied noncooperation. Barr is saying the reason we didnt find obstruction is because trump cooperated. Youre right about where the place in history that bill barr has earned himself. Why doesnt we move beyond barr. Hes made himself really irrelevant to the discussion and to history. Hes now a hack of donald trump. Lets talk about the Mueller Report, what we know about it so far. There are still redacted parts that need to be unredacted. But talk about the Mueller Report, what you saw in it, what stood out and what congress has to work with now moving forward. So there are still redactions and they are less substantial than pop believed theople belie be. We actually do know what bob mueller said and he created a mammoth record on two front. The first of course is the russia investigation itself, where as you guys have been talking about, i mean, he did not find prosecutable conspiracy beyond that which he had already found, which was of course substantial. But he did detail more than a hundred pages its literally more than a hundred pages of contacts, probes, recruitment efforts by russians toward People Associated with the trump organize and campaign, and these included everything from his business to the campaign itself. And, you know, i think theres a legitimate whenever a criminal investigation closes, hey, the criminal investigation is over but this material as a factual matter is now part of history and part of the political assessment and the Fitness Assessment of donald trump. The second area, which is probably more immediate because it deals more with trumps personal conduct and less with the people around him, is this unbelievable record that mueller created on obstruction. And i dont think any summary of it or talk about it on a show like this can entirely do it justice. I really think people need to spend the time to, if only read the executive summary of it but to actually look at the document and ask yourself is this okay. Is it okay to have a president who interacts with the Law Enforcement and intelligence apparatus of the country, his own staff with respect to those communities and the law itself in the fashion in which in is depicting the president doing. This is conduct as president , in his capacity as president and i do think it will have a very long tail. I dont know how the political system is going to react to it. I do think it will have a very long tail in terms of the way people understand who this man is. Well, and that brings to mind the quote in the report by the president himself, joe, where he says im you know what because it does actually spell everything out, all of his conduct, all of his behavior, all the things that, you know, arent completely confirmed. Even Sarah Sanders lying, flat out bold faced lying to the media is now out in the open. This presidency is different now. The president saying, oh my god, this is terrible, this is the end of my presidency, how he responded to finding out that Robert Mueller had been appointed obviously goes to intent of him trying to obstruct justice throughout entire last two and a half years. You also look at the 100 pages that benjamin just talked about, remarkable, 100 pages of contacts. And then you go back and look at a clip from the campaign where donald trump says nobody connected with me, nobody in my organization has had any contacts with russia. Its one lie after another lie after another lie after another lie. But obstruction in effect couldnt ultimately be proven by Robert Mueller because he could never get donald trump to come sit down with him voluntarily. And, chuck rosenberg, a lot of people asking yesterday why Robert Mueller did not push for that. I understand he says it would have delayed it. I must say it makes no sense to me at all that he didnt subpoena him. Again, i cant read the minds of Supreme Court justices, but i find it hard to believe there were not at least six, seven votes that would go Robert Muellers way deciding that a president is not above the law. So why didnt Robert Mueller push for that facetoface deposition and have the answers that America Needs . Thats an open question for me, joe. In the report what the mueller team says is two fold. One is that they had lots of other stuff that enabled them to gauge credibility and, two, they were worried if they did subpoena the president , it could lead to a protracted fight. All that said let me ask you about the second one, though. I heard three years, it could delay it three years. The Supreme Court would have expedited a hearing on this. It wouldnt have taken that long, would it . No, i dont think so. And moreover in u. S. V. Nixon, the 1974 case on executive privilege in which the president was required to turn over tapes and documents pursuant to subpoena, i believe the amount of time from subpoena to Supreme Court decision was about four or five months. So its an open question for me. There could be another plausible explanation. Mueller didnt mention this but if a target of an investigation signals to you through his or her attorneys that they would invoke the fifth amendment, their privilege against selfincrimination if subpoenaed to the grand jury, would you not then subpoena the person to the grand jury and make them invoke there. Mueller doesnt maengs that nor frankly should he talk about a fifth amendment invocation in the public report. Thats the only other thing i can think of. As a prosecutor, you always want to talk to the subject. Chuck, help me out here. If the president if everybodys operating under i believe the faulty assumption can the president cannot be indicted and if Robert Mueller is operatingnd that assumption, which i believe again is a bizarre assumption in a land where we believe that no man or woman is above the law, how could anybody be allowed to their fifth amendment p amendment rights in you cant be indicted anyway . The policy you cant charge a sitting president. The key word is sitting. He would theoretically have a fifth amendment privilege because guess what, he could one day no longer be and you broke a lot of the news in the report. Im specifically on the quest n question that is largely because the persons who surrounded the president declined to carry out orders or accede to his request. In other words, time and again donald trump, who was obsessed with this investigation wanted to have bob mueller fired, despite his claims that that never happened. But people like don mcgahn, the white House Counsel, Jeff Sessions, the attorney general and even Corey Lewandowski stood in the breach and prevented that from happen ing. They were really guardrails for the president anz stopped him. Had they followed through on these things, there may be a much stronger obstruction case to be made against the president. The interesting thing about this document is that the reason there is so much damaging political stuff for the president , even if its not criminal, is that donald trump decided himself to cooperate with this investigation. And he opened the door for his aides to go and speak with mueller. And thats how they learned all these things. The reason that you have unfiltered donald trump in there is because you had direct access to his lawyer don mcgahn. And the president okayed that. The president okayed mcgahn as cooperation. And im not sure that the white house at the time understood the depth and breadth of what mcgahn knew. They had looked at the documents that the white house had handed over to mueller and thought there were no problems, but a lot of the stuff mcgahn gave up was not in the documents and it is politically damaging. It is the stuff about trumps attempt to fire mule are and the lengths that mcgahn went to to stop that. And while the white house today, you know, there was a report earlier but b how the president may not be very happy with done mcgann, the reason the stuff is there is the president allowed to go in. Also, you have the Mueller Report talking about, willie, that they couldnt prove certain charges beyond a reasonable doubt because there had been destruction of emails, destruction of messages on app devices that just didnt allow them to get there. But, chuck rosenberg, i think i heard you Say Something about this yesterday. Whatever i hear anybody say that there wasnt obstruction of justice, that hes cleared of obstruction of justice, i just apply these fact patterns to what would happen if a mayor in iowa had done this, if a governor in nebraska had done this or illinois had done this, or if any ceo, i believe you said, if any fortune 500 ceo had told his Board Members that he wanted them to ent fear with an investigation one half of the way that donald trump did, they would be sitting in jail today, would they not, chuck . Thats what i said, joe. And heres how i framed it. Read the report but take out the words trump and president of the United States and substitute smith and bank ceo or any title that you want. If that person did if any person on the planet did what is described in this report and again strip it of democrats, republicans, liberals, conservatives, left, right, take all that out. Just read the facts, they would be in handcuffs yesterday. This is a damning report. It outlines

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