divided nation: hyperconflict in the trump era. perfect example of that right here. greg, what do you make of what barr said? for us mere civilians, the right law versus the wrong law? well, good morning, stephanie. i think these comments have confused things even more, if that s possible. you have to remember, the whole point of the special counsel, of any special counsel, is to take the investigative decisions in a politically charged investigation away from the political appointees at the department of justice. and so the idea that despite the independent special counsel s findings and conclusions as to what the law says, that the attorney general and the deputy attorney general, both trump appointees, would weigh in and disagree and make decisions around the special counsel, incomplete undermines the whole point of appointing the special
counsel. as i said, i think things are even more confused now. greg, why wouldn t bill barr have simply told robert mueller, you left out your last chapter, time for a conclusion? well he s his boss. great point. i ve said all along that if i was the ag or his chief of staff, and the special counsel came to me and said, we really just can t decide this obstruction of justice issue, i think my advice would have been, you need to go back and decide it because as the ag, i m the president s appointee, and by the way, i m the guy who wrote that 18-page memo about obstruction, so i m not going to get involved in making this decision, your job is to make the decision, tell me what you think should happen. if it s indict, we ll talk about whether the ofc opinion allows for that. if it s not indict, fine, i ll accept that, but you make the decision. darryl, is bill barr helping the president s case here, in confusing the american people,
this week he made it clear he did not exonerate president trump. do you think think he made it clear? i think it is clear. certainly if you look at volume 2, all of the details that they provide on witness tampering, the way sessions recusal was handled, michael cohen, paul manafort, and so on, there s a lot of evidence there. but mueller did not feel like he could recommend an indictment. but he basically left it to what he called other venues, which is clearly a referral to congress to consider impeachment as a possibility. greg, bill barr also talked about his decision to investigate the investigators. here is what he said. like many other people who are familiar with intelligence activities, i had a lot of questions about what was going on. and i assumed i would get answers when i went in. and i have not gotten answers that are at all satisfactory. and in fact i probably have more questions. and some of the facts that i ve learned don t hang together with
the official explanations of what happened. what do you mean by that? that s all i really will say. things are just not jiving. things aren t jiving. is that enough to justify an investigation, greg? he s talking about your old boss, jim comey. they could do an investigation here and not find anything. well, stephanie, he s actually talking about jim comey, rod rosenstein, dana boente at the fbi, potentially chris wray. everybody who has been involved in this or reviewed it has concluded that the fbi, doj, engaged in no misconduct. so to initiate an investigation essentially echoing presidential tweets based upon no real evidence and the attorney general has said himself on the record that he s not aware of any misconduct but he wants to get to the bottom of it. well, there s an oig investigation pending. it seems to me that the better course, the usual course would be for the ag to simply allow the ig to finish his work and
then take appropriate action as necessary. but this politically charged investigation, again, based upon what apparently the president would like, is unprecedented in my experience. yeah, but what if the president wants this just like he wanted a voter fraud commission and if there s no wrongdoing, like the voter fraud commission, the president will have to take it off the table. well, that s what s so troublesome about the way this seems to be proceeding. it s just not the way fbi and doj operations are generally reviewed. again, there s a process for that. it s the office of inspector general. and so this, unfortunately for the ag and for the department, to do it this way looks political and that s a very bad thing for the department. very bad thing for the department. darryl says from a political standpoint, it s time for congress to act. greg brower, darryl west, thank you both so much. the question of the justice department policy of not