Page 5 - Obstruction Cases News Today

Pompeo had to walk that back. watch this. >> i took him as being in a small room and didnt take the comments seriously. he said it in jest. were moving forward, to us canned on the important things. i know rudy. rudy doesnt speak for the administration when it comes to this negotiation and this set of issues. >> how much of a problem is giuliani creating here, rick? >> look, the fact of the matter is trump believes if he creates this public of illusion around him, he creates this tornado of bs a...

Administration when it comes to this negotiation and this set of issues. >> how much of a problem is giuliani creating here, rick? >> look, the fact of the matter is trump believes if he creates this public of illusion around him, he creates this tornado of bs all the time, that robert mueller will go away or the case will go away or magically something will happen one day and jeff sessions will wake up on the wrong side of the bed and say im done with this. thats not how the law works. thats no...

Disgraceful. and lets bring in our correspondents and analysts. laura what, stands out in your mind from these 49 questions? >> self inflicted wounds, wolf. all of these questions -- circle around what the president has tweeted, has spoken about, has alluded to, has insulted people of a variety of ways and now it is coming back to haunt him. i find it ironic to call it disgraceful but it is a composition of the things youve said and in the public record and mueller would be inquisitive about the...

Looking for. he hasnt been providing them, at least so far in the interviews hes given. essaying this is because its classified stuff. >> paul: what about that, dan? i have a similar reaction to jason, that it didnt advance the ball all that much beyond what we knew. what do you think? >> i think thats right. one thing we can say that is if the idea at the center of this is that the president committed obstruction of justice, this will be one of the weakest obstruction cases ever brought if the ...

Knowledge that the special counsel has been sniffing around? >> what we have seen time and time again as special counsel is interested in, you know, obstruction cases, whether air force one issue, where they wrote a statement that appear fod mislead the press, the firing of james comey what folks knew about michael flynn, to the attempts to oust jeff sessions, a number of incidents where we have seen subpoenas, questions, about potential obstruction. and from what the folks we talked to yesterda...

President can pardon flynn. >> right. >> we saw in george bush sr. he pardoned people in the iran contraaffair that could have potentially incriminated him but they did not ultimately in that scandal but in terms of obstruction i think we have to keep in mind that the president asking for the scope -- description of the scope of his authority is not going to be any type of obstruction. the issue of an attorney for the president going to a potential witness and offering a pardon obviously gets cl...

And yes, there are circumstances where the removal of a special counsel would itself constitute obstruction. the way the law works is you love at the intent. if there is a corrupt intent to block or cut off or interfere with a government investigation, even if youre exercising otherwise lawful power, if youre doing it think about it to protect yourself, to protect the family member, if he wanted to fire mueller for the corrupt intent of having taken a bribe from somebody. those wrong purposes ar...

It to protect yourself, to protect the family member. if he wanted to fire mueller for the corrupt intent of having taken a bribe for somebody. those kind of wrong purposes is why we obstruct juries in obstruction cases. if its a wrong, improper or evil purpose its corrupt. thats why this news is so important. nixon didnt want to turn over those tapes because he knew they would implicate him. >> what do you have here that would be similar to that? theres no suggestion that the president is being...

He admitted it the next day in the oval office when he said he had to fire comey to get this russia thing off his back. ive had lots of obstruction cases. i have never had one where the defendant admitted on national tv that his intent, it all comes down to whether or not he had corrupt intent, which simply means, was he trying to stop the investigation? i just never had such good evidence before. >> okay. well, corrupt intent, and i want to tie that in to just arrogance or ego maybe. frank, thi...

Impede in an investigation. >> then my point, jeffrey, is that im trying to highlight, i think, the discretion that robert mueller, if these are the only known facts to him, will ultimately have in determining whether he can assemble an obstruction case. >> obstruction cases are very difficult to assemble, because they turn on this question of what is in the persons mind. there are a lot of dots to connect. you mentioned some of them. did he know that flynn lied to the fbi when he fired comey, w...