yeah, they are. and i think captured the sentiment of a lot of folks that, again, have seen this go from a discussion about how russia tried to interfere and meddle into our election into discussions to payments to a porn star. and what that has to do with the original mandate under which bob mueller was appointed. it goes back to the fact that there has to be leadership at the department of justice. bob mueller doesn t run the department of justice. he reports to the deputy attorney general, not the other way around. melissa: do you think that anything is going to happen to curb the investigation, i mean i don t think it matters how much, probably, any judged a monday shes admonishes bob mueller or what the public thinks or the president says. he s focused on the road he s going down, the only recourse you are talking about is who has the oversight over him to stop him if they wanted to, would
now it s in cleanup mode. sometimes when you clean up you don t have a lot of good options. melissa: that would be the best option at this point, do you think, just totally shut up and move on? i think there s two separate things of the congressman before, i think, is con flated. the cohen investigation is separate from the mueller investigation. cohen is southern district of new york, it s run out of that office. the white house approach to that should be, look, we re not indicted, we re not involved, michael cohen was doing things. sure there may have been payments but we did everything according to what our lawyer, michael cohen, told us was appropriate. a legal defense strategy that says i relied on my lawyer may get the president out of trouble. melissa: hmm. and you said he s con flating two things. what was the other thing? they re not connected. mueller isn t driving the cohen investigation, there s different prosecutors, a different investigationive team, four differen
that the courts say what the law is. my point is a narrower one that as a procedural matter president trump s team could come in and say i m sorry we are invoking executive i have were. bob mueller doesn t have the authorize under the regulation to contest that. i don t think if trump does it i don t think mueller is going to fold his tent up and go away. he could argue i have that authority inherently. knowledge it is a legitimate point he could make. right in the case of president clinton. go ahead. in the case of president clinton, ken starr was the independent counsel. there was no question he had the authority to litigate the matter if the president would have challenged it. of course, no court had ever held you can can subpoena the president for his grand jury testimony but i think it s certainly implicit in both the u.s. versus nixon and in the paula jones case. right. that s why we are literally back
and it s a horrible thing going on. marie? he was fired up this morning. i think that bob mueller doesn t want this to go on forever. i get the sense he wants to wrap it up as soon as possible. the question is whether the president will sit down with him or not. i don t think there s a magic formula that rudy guliani can wrap it up. i agree with corey that rudy is good talking about this and where the presidents have had attorneys in the past in the public sphere. at the end of the day, we ll see what is there and bob mueller will write a record. the american people deserve to see it. that s up to the justice department. a lot of news still to come on this. as credible as rudy guliani is, i don t think robert mueller will be working on his timeline.
we re about to find out. a big grateful dead reference there, for another touch of gray, i turn back to michael avenatti by phone. we had lost the connection briefly. michael, the panel was just michael, the panel was just discussing whether donald trump looks rattled and whether he appears nervous given what he knows michael cohen knows. my question for you is while this raises obviously heat and criminal pressure on michael cohen, your adversary in the civil case, it doesn t in and of itself make your victory for stormy daniels more likely. indeed, it would appear to be a separate case? or do you disagree? well, i may disagree because i think the likelihood of michael cohen doing what they call taking five, which is pleading the fifth amendment in the event that we are successful in our efforts to get an order allowing his deposition just went up exponentially. and of course in federal court let s pause on that. let s just pause on that so we can break it out. you are saying