is not the truth. is that just misspeaking or part of a campaign of deception? it s time to go deep. let s get after it. in an on the record interview with reuters, the president says that he could run the probe himself if he wanted. all this coming after his biggest tweet storm yet about mueller and word that his white house counsel cooperated with mueller s probe more than trump might have known. here to discuss that and much more, former attorney general michael mukasey. judge, good to have you as always. good to be with you. so if you were to hear that the president has decided, i m taking over this probe. i m taking it over. what would your reaction be? i would shake myself and wake up. just a dream? yeah. can he, or should he not? i i have no idea whether he can. i can t believe that he can. he d have to fire mueller in the
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making a false statement to an fbi agent.
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he said that initially. they later reversed themselves and flynn was indicted for making a false statement to an fbi agent. but as point of fact, judge, he s told them things that were not true and things that he should have known and recollected in realtime. right. maybe he did. and maybe he did it because he thought there was some impropriety about having the conversation with kislyak. that s why sally yates, then at the a.g. s office, then went to don mcgahn and said you better figure out what s going on with this. i don t think there was any impropriety in that conversation at all. in fact i think flynn would have been committing malpractice if he had not had the conversation with kislyak. he is the guy who was going to be the national security then why did he lie about it? beats me. that s a good question, no? it s an excellent question, but i don t know the extent t
Does the shamelessness and openness of it, put yourself in an investigators role and you ve taken the blunt of it and know how these folks are, does doing it in the open as an investigator indicate guilt or just a lack of knowledge that what you re doing is illegal? well, i certainly think it indicates the brazenness and probably a lack of sophistication or care what they were doing. you can say you re doing something and have all the intent in the world to do something that s wrong. you know, what is really interesting to me is georgia is part of a pattern you talk about things being in the open, the deputy attorney general today talked about the d.o.j. was looking at all these states with these alternate electors that had slates sent into the national archives. many of those people said straight open to the media what was going on, yes, we re doing it. just because people are talking about it doesn t mean they weren t breaking the law but means they re dumb or didn t care because t
it s actually not respect those aren t exclusive, chris. i think from a legal advice perspective, it is. certainly trump s lawyers have taken and that s and will continue. i think bakari alluded to it. if i were on the trump legal team, i d be advising him not to sit down with mueller for both of the reasons you started out with, chris. again, they re not exclusive with each other. and rudy giuliani, in his examples inartfully talked about who do you believe? is it only one or the other? his example is it comey s truth or is it trump s truth?
I m not sure this president is equipped to actually function with just mueller and a few investigators because what he will do is lie. what he will do is deceive. what he will do is mislead the investigators like he misled the american public, and he s going to find himself with criminal charges. where were you last night? too slow. you re a liar. ken, let me ask you this. i was on the grill. i was on the grill. too late. you had to think about it. ken, the idea of it s not about mueller needing to trap the president. it s about the president trapping himself. that his guys are worried if you put him in the chair, you can t control what he ll say. he ll freelance. he ll abuse the truth, and when he does it in this context, it might be a crime. i know they re not going to charge him. i get all the doj guidance about indicting a president and all that stuff. right. but it s still bad. yeah, it s actually not those aren t exclusive, chris. it can be both, and i think from a