pushing garland to do that by changing department regulations so that it will be harder for a future administration to roll back rather than just issuing a policy memo that someone else could make an exception to or rescind without even telling the public about it. without getting into what he said to them, they described themselves as extremely pleased with how the meeting had went and what they heard from biden justice department officials, so it looks like, i surmise, that he is, indeed, considering changing that regulation to borrow this practice. charlie, i want to ask you about some other reporting in your paper. your colleague at the new york times, katie benner, saying that trump wanted him to back him, so clearly he had no problems pushing this through the justice department. katie benner is the latest fallout from e-mails executive
powerful woman in government not have said thanks, guys, the seven of you, i hear you, they said they are going to release the transcript let s see what it says and then he wouldn t already be on the road to impeachment. juan: what happened with mueller? dana: nothing. juan: bill barr comes out and says no obstruction, no collusion. he steers the whole narrative and conversation in the country as a spin effort to protect donald trump. jesse: there wasn t any spin. juan: oh yeah there is evidence, they decided not to indict on the basis of the evidence or the contacts between the russians or they left open obstruction to the justice department because of a policy memo that said you can t indict a sitting president. katie: that s not true. juan: that s different. jesse: that s not true. juan: that s why speaking to dana here. nancy pelosi said bill barr and the justice department say no, you don t have to release this. don t go forward. we have questions about what th
determination one way or the other about whether the president committed a crime. i m going to do some parsing here because that seems to be what the attorney general is engaged in. what the attorney general said in the cbs clip we played is he could have reached a decision whether it was criminal activity. he clearly found it was criminal. and mueller uses the word would. we decided we would not pursue that line of arguing that it was criminal because we were adhering to the office of legal counsel policy memo that says you can t indict a sitting president. why is barr still splitting hairs? i think what we re seeing is what it looks like when politically driven people like this unfortunately attorney general and president meet up with somebody driven by principles, rules and ethics. mueller is saying i took the fairness route. he used the word fairness or it would be unfair to accuse someone when you can t actually that person can t defend themselves in the court
whether you like the way it tastes or not. for your analysis, ken, mr. barr writes tonight his determination that while mueller said trump may have obstructed justice and the congress is the place where that s resolved, our determination that trump did not obstruct justice was based on and criminal prosecution of a sitting president. footnote two to what is now i think to americans maybe the most famous doj policy memo that exists. a sitting president s aminability to criminal prosecution, ken, explain. it says they didn t have to get to the question of whether we can indict the sitting president. barr and rosenstein, julia made that point, you know, we can talk about how could barr make this decision in 48 hours. rod rosenstein has been living with this case the entire time. and he participated in this decision and they decided that on the merits, even if it was a close call, it didn t rise to
respect for the rule of law, and i think justice is coming, and i think bob mueller, when he issues his report, when he returns what i am certain will be a large conspiracy indictment based on what he finds with respect to campaign and russian collusion, i think everything will come home to roost. when you say return a large indictment, do you think that would include the president? can you indict a sitting president? i think, rev, we have to revisit the wisdom of the department of justice policy memo by the office of legal counsel that says you can t or shouldn t indict a sitting president for a couple of reasons. one, the constitution doesn t prohibit it. two, there s no law that prohibits indicting a sitting president. three, and perhaps most importantly, rev, think about this hypothetical, which in another time might sound crazy. but i think it s appropriate