Page 910 - Backgrounds News Today

Welcome back to "early start." im miguel marquez. >> im christine romans. its friday morning. david has the day off. i get miguel for the next half hour. up first, explosive new reporting this morning. the presidents lawyers are looking for ways to undermine the russia investigation by special counsel robert mueller. "the washington post." and "the new york times" report attorneys and aides are scouring the backgrounds of mueller and his staff searching for conflicts of interest they can use to ...

Blue collar backgrounds. they both went into the law and other things. why? >> i imagine if he worked in the white house these first six months as he has, tried real hard to push the policies and seen them flop as well as how trumps administrative policies have so far. you see the need to respond to reporters in a way thats less hostile than sean spicer did. >> and one of the issues that he has to communicate, he was kind of given a pass today, but trump stories about him in the newspapers, find...

Know, well see what other conflicts of interest there are, but the point is of all of this, it is to lay the groundwork for if he does it, that he will have put justifications behind it. now, are they justifications that i think are ultimately sort of sellable to people outside of his base? no. but i dont think hes concerned about that. hes concerned about selling things to his base and this stuff will work. he knows it. hes very good at that. >> yeah. calm down there. i mean -- >> reporter: i k...

Robert mueller. jeff, from a legal standpoint, what can the president do about pardons? >> he can pardon anybody he wants. one of the legal questions that has never been resolved is whether he can pardon himself. one of these things that is maybe not so terrible, you know, when i covered the star investigation, i wrote a lot about the backgrounds of some of these prosecutors. hickman ewing. they were politically conservative people who got involved working this case. i thought it was appropriate...

About new breaks news from "the washington post." number one, the president and his legal team are reportedly discussing his pardon powers, including whether he can pardon not just his family members and his staffers but also himself. the post also reporting that the spokesman for the presidents legal team has resigns. the post also reporting that the president and the white house are talking about ways to try to discredit bob mueller and his special counsel investigation. that presumably would ...

Then will intervene in some way or interfere, and i think thats, you know, suggested well, maybe theyve got problems here. so i think thats their issue. theyve got to be focused and disciplined in their responses on russia as well as every other issue, but for whatever reasons i think, again, it does start at the top not with the communications director. >> what do you and your colleagues -- and by the way, i asked the question of people from the freedom caucus, of democrats. youre all frustrate...

His staffers but also himself. the post also reporting that the spokesman for the presidents legal team has resigned. the post also reporting that the president and the white house are talking about ways to try to discredit bob mueller and his special counsel investigation. that presumably would be used either to retroactively explain actions that they set in motion to fire bob mueller or to try to make the case to deputy attorney general rod rosenstein if he stays in his post that he should fir...

Know as much as vladimmir putin. putin could bring up something the president doesnt understand and the president said something thats policy thats not in came keeping with what is national security team sees. >> very stark difference in their backgrounds. vladmir putin is ex-kgb. hes been in one-on-one international meetings for decades. he once brought a dog to intimidate angela merkel because he knew she doesnt like dogs. >> it wasnt any dog. it was his dog. >> president trump is a novice. he...

>> right. its like a warning. >> he said it once to jared kushner, but jared kushner seems to have survived so far. >> hes married in the family. a little harder to get rid of >> the political pairing of these two, you go into it a lot in the book. theyre from such kind of different backgrounds. >> they are, and yet they have a lot of similarities. bannon was a wall street deal guy. he was a hollywood movie maker. he understood how to talk too big shot moguls. if youre a women studies major at w...

Presidency, particularly someone who sees him as pulling his puppet strings. >> that sort of, oh, youre more famous than me. >> yeah. jar >> jared kushner seems to have survived so far. >> he married into the family. a little harder to get rid of. >> but theyre from such different backgrounds. >> they are, but they have a lot of similarities. bannon was a wall street deal guy, he was a hollywood movie maker. he understood how to talk to big shot moguls. if youre a womens studies major at wellesl...