Page 13 - Obstruction Issue News Today

Terms of people like paul manafort and his conversations with russians, people working for the russian government. the big question is, what did the president know? when did he know it? will that be answered in this report? the other big thing is the entire obstruction issue. we have heard almost nothing from the special counsels office in terms of that. what did they find? did they find that the president tried to obstruct justice by firing james comey? did they find that he perhaps was trying ...

That deal? there are so many questions we just dont know the answers to. thats an issue i think we are going to learn more about. it is the investigation of the president and his businesses. we just dont know where it will go or when. i will add a third one i think is really a ticking time bomb. thats the obstruction issue. there is a lot that we dont know about. we know the special counsel has done a lot of investigating, interviewed a lot of white house staff including the white house counsel....

That, you know, obstruction in this way, firing comey, the president is allowed to fire whomever he wants, whenever he wants, but there are other ways to obstruct justice. and as you were just talking about with pardons, et cetera, et cetera, it seems to me that the democrats are going to come down and focus more on the obstruction issue and maybe try and get him to say, well, what would constitute obstruction from a president? setting aside where you think the president cannot obstruct justice,...

Lot about russia, he knows a lot about payments, other payments perhaps. the key thing here is the coverup in terms of the coverup of the payments, the coverup of the contacts with russia, the coverup of the moscow project. that is central to this entire investigation and what members of congress are going to want to know about it. that goes to the obstruction issue. that is where members of congress can be key in perhaps impeachment. >> you have new reporting on the white house legal team geari...

His associate jerome coresy or inconsistent with his statements to congress. they explored when the man had advance knowledge to post hacked emails to the clinton campaign. they denied it. another outstanding question is whether mueller is -- on sunday the incoming chairman of the powerful senate judiciary committee was pressed on the obstruction issue and the presidents choice to lead the justice department, william barr. >> when you fire an attorney general its hard to obstruct justice if you ...

He led chants of "lock her up." he was called the donald trump whisperer. those two men had a very close relationship, and had a lot of influence over donald trumps policies and what he would say about foreign relations while they were on the campaign trail. he was not one of those who was telling donald trump to back off bear hugging russia, back off bear hugging vladimir putin. he was not doing that. so yeah, well see what he had to offer the special counsel. you have one more? >> one quick on...

Lawyers mean that they are far down the road. it makes sense that they would not want comey to be answering in the transcript that would go public. he will be a witness then and has been a witness. they are looking at it and there is a lot of danger for the president on obstruction issue. particularly he has a situation where he submitted answers in writing. they are likely to be contradicted by what cohens evidence is and worse for him under that unusual joint defense agreement. its possible th...

Which could be involved in the de-escalation proceed inings ate hill or he is not going to proceed with the obstruction issue -- any way to the know? >> well, it is hard to know what to know what is sgis going on, t some things that we can infer. as ken pointed out the flynn sentencing is going forward and the gates sentencing is not. that tells us that robert mueller feels he is done with mike flynn. so whatever information they need, they would have delayed the sentence after he has co complet...

Assurance that paul manafort would be pardoned. im not sure you couldnt surmise that from the presidents tweet that we met, he questions the case, the tax case. justice took a 12-year-old tax case. he questions the underlying case. applied tremendous pressure on him and unlike cohen, he refused to break. such respect for a brave man. he never said anything that nice about the commander who captured bin laden, but thats for another show. but dont we have public-facing evidence of both the preside...

Did know. >> on the flip side, though, these are all incidents that weve already reported on, knew about. its not like something outside the realm of anybodys mind. certainly his lawyers would have seen them coming. >> i think they should have. in his lawyers minds and they are right, mueller already knows the answers to these questions. usually you wouldnt ask these kind of questions hoping to get information. company be in a tough spot. remember hes still got -- that was the collusion question...