Hello again, everyone. Thanks so much for being with me. At any moment now Attorney General william barr is expected to release the main conclusions from the Mueller Report to congress. We are hearing that it is coming today. Barr is at the u. S. Justice department right now with Deputy Attorney general Rod Rosenstein reviewing the report. The president , well, he just returned to maralago just moments ago after spending the day at his golf club in west palm beach, florida while he, too, awaits the brief. Cnn has a team of reporters and analysts standing by who have covered this story for nearly two years now. Lets go to cakara scannell. The Deputy Attorney general and
the Attorney General about to release the details. In what way will they be released, do you know . We do expect the report to be delivered today, thats bill barrs report from the Principal Conclusions of the mueller investigation. That is expected to happen today, but the Big Questions still loom of what will we learn i
recognized that the evidence does not establish that the president was involved in an underlying crime related to russian election interference and that while not determinative, the absence of such evidence bears upon the president s intent with respect to obstruction. so there you go. that is the key line here right now. you have the collusion and also obstruction of justice, and it says, i have concluded that the evidence developed during the special counsel s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the president committed an obstruction of justice offense. that is key. the president was this was what all the questions surrounded the president. did he obstruct justice? they just cleared him. but it also says, and it quotes the special counsel saying, quote, while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him. and that is going to be what
white house point of view that was very good news. but i think they re just waiting to see what these conclusions are. why was no collusion charge, no conspiracy to defraud the united states government? why was there no obstruction charge against the president? was it because they couldn t or because they shouldn t do it? we don t know the answers to these questions and we shouldn t speculate about it five minutes before we get the report. minutes away. but i do think they re asking themselves the same questions. there could be very embarrassing stuff, for example. shimon, it may not answer why so many lies? if no collusion, if no obstruction, if no further indictments, what was the big worry? if you start addressing lies, you start addressing deliberations by the prosecutors and investigators, then you start violating policy and you start talking about things that the attorney general has said he does not want to do in this case. he doesn t want to bring up
remember that this is intended to protect the operations of the executive branch. it s not intended as something analogous to diplomatic immunity. the president is not immune from scrutiny and particularly not from congress. congress is the body with the primary constitutional responsibility for holding a president accountable. so then what are the conditions of exerting executive privilege in this case when the subject is the president, the executive branch? i personally can t imagine there is a great deal that should legitimately be subject to executive privilege. i think there may be litigation over this if they push the bounds too far. one troubling gain this administration has played is to not expressly exert executive privilege but hint that s what they re relying on when they refuse to answer questions from congress, and it will be interesting to see if they re willing to play some kind of game with this. the fact that bill barr is involved in this leads me to
obviously the special counsel said there was none. but it doesn t explain a lot of the bread crumbs that were spread out throughout the filings. why did paul manafort share polling data with a russian intel agent? why did rod rosenstein say in his memo that was unredacted that mueller account investigation collusion as it pertained to manafort and his meetings with russians? it didn t answer a lot of those questions we ve had on the team, and that, i think, is what democrats are going to be pressing for. also the fact it says there s not evidence to conclude the president committed a crime on obstruction, but it doesn t exonerate him. they re probably going to seize on the fact that, look, the attorney general determined this, not mueller. mueller did not determine it like he did on collusion, saying there was no collusion with russians and the trump campaign. they left it up to the attorney general. as we re reviewing all this, we should note we haven t heard from president trump