Mueller Report: Team Couldn't Rule Out Obstruction ... Or Firmly Establish It

Speaker 1: 00:00 A redacted version of the mullah report was released this morning after a press conference held by Attorney General William Barr. Speaker 2: 00:06 As the special council report makes clear the Russian government sought to interfere in our election process, but thanks to the special council's thorough investigation, we now know that the Russian operatives who perpetrated these schemes did not have the cooperation of president Trump or the Trump campaign or the knowing assistance of any other American for that matter. Speaker 1: 00:33 President Trump had this reaction, but I said it Speaker 2: 00:35 a friend of my friends, this should never happen to another president again. This hoax that should never happen to another president again. Speaker 1: 00:45 Now we're joined by Democratic Congressman Mike Levon to get his reaction to the report and this morning's press conference 11 represents San Diego counties, 49th congressional district. Welcome congressman 11 thanks for having me. So the report is long over 400 pages. What is your reaction to the parts of it that you've read so far? Speaker 3: 01:03 Well, I've had a chance to absorb quite a bit of a, I guess before getting to the substance, I would say that Congress should have received the report and been thoroughly briefed before train general bars press conference today. Uh, I felt, uh, that his press conference was partisan spin, uh, and that, uh, doing it before the release was unacceptable. I also think that the special counsel Mueller, based on what I read and some of the uncertainties really does need to testify before Congress to explain some of the report. And I think the American people deserve ultimately to hear directly from the special counsel. In terms of the substance. A couple of things stuck out to me. One obviously is that the special counsel found at least 10 instances where the president may have sought to interfere with the investigation and, uh, specifically says that Trump's obstruction failed because others didn't follow his orders to obstruct. And I quote, the president's efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful. But that is largely because the person's who's surrounded, the president declined to carry out orders. I think it's important for your listeners to know that you're not exonerated from obstruction of justice just because you didn't succeed. It's the intent to obstruct justice. And Mr. Mueller makes clear multiple times that there is a lot of intent, which means, uh, I think it does warrant further investigation from the Congress Speaker 1: 02:28 and from what we understand, Congress will receive a less redacted version. What does that mean to you and we'll congress be satisfied with that? Speaker 3: 02:35 Well, I'm looking forward to reviewing whatever we do get with a fewer redactions and uh, you know, ultimately, uh, the redactions seem like they're sheltering the president's actions in any way. I'll, I'll work with my colleagues to try to access the full report, although I do believe that we did see the bulk of Mr Miller's a analysis and conclusions both factually, legally, uh, in the report that was released to the public. And it appears redactions were related to, uh, other items before the grand jury or other ongoing investigations. Uh, but, uh, you know, I, I think we have to put this in some context. Uh, we, we now know a of the presence reaction. When Mueller was appointed to be special council, he actually said, this is terrible. It's the end of my presidency. And even worse than that, and my contention is that innocent people don't say this. Speaker 3: 03:27 I'm a strong believer that generally where there's smoke, there's fire, but we need to take it one step at a time. And I plan to follow the facts. Uh, and we're a president is quick to make decisions without the facts and fire off impulsive tweets. I think the congress should be a much more deliberative body. Uh, and again, uh, I think it's really important to remember what Muller said about obstruction, which, and I quote again, if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts of the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state, however, we are unable to reach that judgment. And he specifically says that Congress needs to make that determination and it has the constitutional duty to do so. And that's a duty that I think we all take very seriously. And you know, I think we also have to be mindful of when this was all being debated in the court of public opinion. Speaker 3: 04:21 Uh, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle said they were confident that the president, uh, was never going to fire. Mr. Mueller. Uh, and the report makes clear that that's not the case. Uh, he, uh, tried multiple times to fire Mueller and his own aids, uh, save the country from another Saturday night massacre, potentially as detailed within the Don McGahn threaten to quit because the presidents demands the fire Mueller. And so I think we owe it to the American people to hold the president of the same standards as regular citizens. Uh, no president, not this one or anyone, uh, is above the law. So we need to take this day by day as we get more information. And hopefully that includes testimony from Mr. Mueller. Speaker 1: 05:01 And what do you say to the Trump supporters who are in your district who say, you know, we should move past this report and focus on more pressing issues in their opinion? Speaker 3: 05:09 Well to them. I would say it's the duty, the constitutional duty of the Congress to ensure that the rule of law applies to everyone including the presence of United States. This is an important precedent, not just for president Trump but for future presidents as well. Speaker 1: 05:26 I've been speaking to congressmen, Mike Levin who represents San Diego counties, 49th district. We've invited Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter to give us his reaction to the report and he declined our request a congressmen 11 thank you very much for joining us. Speaker 3: 05:40 I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Speaker 1: 05:42 Instead of ending interest in the Mueller investigation, today's release of the report may be starting a whole new phase as we just heard from Congressman Mike Levin Democrats and tend to press for the release of an unredacted report and have Robert Muller testify in person. As Speaker 4: 05:58 members of the press and public read deeper into the 400 page report, we can follow the trail of evidence on both the Russia connection and obstruction of justice and then decide if we agree with Attorney General William Barr, that since no crime could be proved, no crime was committed. Joining me as Carol Lam, a former US attorney for the southern district of California. She oversaw the corruption case against former San Diego congressmen, Duke Cunningham and Carol, welcome to the program. Thank you. Thank you for having me. So it's out. It's been released a couple of hours ago. The full full well the redacted 400 page report. From what you've been able to read so far, what stood out to you? A couple of things stood out to me. It was a, one thing that stood out to me for sure was the difference between the attorney general's characterization of the report and the portions of the report that I was actually able to read myself. Speaker 4: 06:50 One thing that did strike me was that the attorney general was really emphasizing the positive aspects of the report for the president. But there's a lot in the report that is very disturbing. There were a lot of pieces of the report that indicated that the president had attempted to sort of create evidence that would exculpate him by instructing or encouraging members of his cabinet and staff to put things in letters or to, uh, fire people that really didn't come out very much in the attorney general's statement. And Robert Mueller evaluated 10 episodes for possible obstruction of justice, but said in his report that he could not conclusively determine that president Trump had committed criminal obstruction of justice. What's the legal standard for obstruction? Well, criminal obstruction of justice of course, requires some sort of proceeding that there is an attempt to interfere with. And the, the Mueller report does set that out and it's pretty clear that there was such a proceeding. Speaker 4: 07:58 And then from that point on, obstruction is pretty broad. Any attempt to interfere with witnesses, to withhold documents to anything that keeps the investigation from a running in a, in the way it's supposed to operate, uh, you know, outside of legally defensible positions. So, uh, but, but the interesting thing, and this is what everybody was really waiting to see was whether Bob Muller declined to recommend criminal charges be brought because he was in part relying on that department of Justice policy that says you can't indict a sitting president. And it turned out, in fact, that was one of the reasons that he decided that he should not recommend criminal charges, although he was not exonerating the president. Um, and interestingly it was bill bars decision, uh, to put aside that policy. He said, he said, I'm making the decision not to bring charges and I am not relying on that policy. Speaker 4: 08:57 So that was, that was a very interesting thing to see. Our attorney general bars seem to indicate that they, the president didn't have the intent to obstruct justice. He was just frustrated with the proceedings. How much does intent to obstruct play into the idea of charging someone with obstruction of justice? Well, that was a very curious thing for the attorney general to emphasize in his press statement this morning where a statement to the press this morning because that's really getting into more subjective views about what was going on in the president's mind. And again, remember the president declined to sit for an interview with the special counsel. So, uh, it's more of an excuse being made. It's more saying he didn't really mean it and that is something that you would hear perhaps from a defense attorney at trial, but not somebody who is necessarily trying to look at the facts objectively. Speaker 4: 09:54 It could play into a defense at trial. You could say he was just beside himself and just sort of ranting. But I, it really didn't sound appropriate for a conclusion to be made, um, in a press conference this morning. Well, I didn't Robert Mueller subpoena the precedent to find out what was in his mind? Well, I think that Bob Mueller was pretty clear in his report this morning that that was considered, but they ultimately declined to not to do it and that they ultimately declined, uh, the subpoena route because they felt that that would delay things so much because there would then be perhaps objections and negotiations that go on there. There are always very, very heavy negotiations that go on. When a president's testimony under oath is sought, you'll, you'll see it with every president whose, whose testimony or interview has been obtained. And the Mueller team ultimately decided that it would take too long and that they had enough objective evidence from other sources to make it not critical that they actually have him under oath either in the grand jury or in some other setting. Speaker 4: 11:02 Let me move to the idea of contacts with Russia. The report outlines various contacts between members of the Trump world and Russia, including on page 68 of the report, the special counsel outlines Donald Trump junior's interactions with wiki leaks. Wiki leaks apparently sent direct messages via Twitter to Trump junior asking him to help them disseminate information damaging to Clinton. And Trump jr followed through with those requests. How is that not coordination? Well, this is an issue that has been very troubling for prosecutors. Uh, it was, it was troubling for the Obama administration prosecutors and it's troubling for these prosecutors as well. And I have some sympathy for the difficulty here because if you look at the Julian Assange indictment, it's very clear that they were indicting Julian Assange for actually hacking into or participating in the hacking into somebody's account illegally and not for the dissemination, not for the pure dissemination of infor information because, uh, there is a first amendment protection for the press and there's a real concern that the government has about, uh, either actually are being perceived to be cutting back on the freedom of the press. Speaker 4: 12:19 It's been determined that no further criminal chargers are coming out of the Justice Department on the basis of this report. But what about Congress? Can they view this information in a different light? Well first, let me say that it's, the special counsel has indicated that the special counsel's investigation is over, but you can see from the reaction from the redactions in the report that there are ongoing investigations that are being taken up by other parts of the Justice Department. And then yes, the uh, report actually makes clear and it is clear that Congress can go ahead with its investigations. What Bill Barr, the attorney general said, was that he was making the decision that's the justice department was not going to pursue criminal cases against the Trump administration or the president for obstruction of justice or the, um, the Russian situation. But, uh, and Bill Barr has made this clear also in his previous writings that does not impact the ability of Congress to move ahead if it decides to, with its investigations and perhaps impeachment or the American people to take their own remedy in the form of the voting electoral process. Speaker 4: 13:32 A federal judge has already said publicly that Attorney General William Barr is sowing public mistrust by his handling of the Miller report. As a former us attorney, what do you think is the reaction to all of this inside the Justice Department? My guess is that there was some dismay in the justice department. I listened to the press conference this morning and I was very, very surprised to be hearing what I was hearing. You know, there is a, any presidential appointee will feel at times that he or she is being instructed or it's being very strongly suggested that they say something or do something that doesn't feel quite right to them. The impression I got today listening to bill abar was that he was carrying out instructions that he was given. It seemed very atypical for Bill Barr and somebody who has worked within the Justice Department for as long as he has to be saying the kinds of things he was saying in the way he was saying them and frankly to be having that press conference at all. So, um, I think he was following instructions. I think he drew the line in a different place from where I would have drawn the line. Um, and I think that the people in the Justice Department probably feel that way too. I've been speaking with former US attorney, Carol Lam. Carol, thank you very much. Thank you. Speaker 5: 14:47 [inaudible].