Page 5 - Obstruction Side News Today

So i think you have democrats on capitol hill who arent just going to be able to dismiss these things just because theres no easy answer to what to do about a presidential pattern and practice of trying to obstruct and shutdown all of the investigations against him, as far as i can tell. at some point congress is likely going to be forced to grapple with whether that rises to the level of something that is impeachable. i just think that although its become a little bit political conventional wis...

>> mimi, i always like to go back when something on the obstruction side, when theres a new development, and see the president in his own words reacting in a way that i dont think weve seen in his entire presidency. the way he reacted, the things he said the day of the cohen raid. and im going to play this because all of his closest allies say it is the cohen raid and the cases that stemmed from cohen flipping and cohen now having nothing to lose. hes on his way to prison. that gives the preside...

Collusion. that is, why would somebody want -- why would the president want to shutdown this investigation designed to protect the national security of the united states unless there were some untoward relationship between him and the russians. so we have this idea that has really permeated a lot of the way we talk about the russia investigation that there is an obstruction side of the investigation and a collusion side. and i think the point i was trying to make in that article and i think that...

Crime, they also look at it and they say the obstruction crime itself may be a form of collusion. that is, why would somebody want -- why would the president want to shutdown this investigation designed to protect the national security of the united states unless there were some untoward relationship between him and the russians. so we have this idea that has really permeated a lot of the way we talk about the russia investigation that there is an obstruction side of the investigation and a coll...

Couple years since the comey firing has been -- has assumed that, you know, theres this underlying counterintelligence investigation that had been going on for a while, the so-called collusion investigation. and then the fbi -- the president fires the fbi director and a few weeks later, we learn that bob mueller is investigationing the firing and whether that obstructed justice. and people had assumed a lot of the debate assumed that those are kind of separate investigations. right? youve got yo...

To do. whether he shared the memo or not, its clear the white house knew what they were getting when they appointed him. in selecting both an acting attorney general and an attorney general nominee, they seem to find two of the only lawyers in the country who have the most hostile views possible to this investigation. >> of robert mueller. >> that didnt happen for no reason. >> frank, let me get you in on mr. barr and ask you a version of the same question. if they knew all along that mr. barrs ...

Conspiracy, it seems to be the case, to hush up the payments to the porn stars or other women "playboy" playmates and other people and he lied about that until it became impossible for him to lie. he said he knew nothing about the trump tower meeting, thats the russia side of things. well see if thats true or not. im doubtful that will turn out to be true. and on the obstruction side of things he said all kinds of things that ill just guess arent correct and he probably did tell james comey to g...

Just some kind of theoretical idea that the president has the power to fire mueller, as laura just said, but the strategy or details in place, that could help the obstruction side of muellers investigation in addition to anything hes providing on the russia front as well. >> what about these dirty deeds? ive had the ac/dc song running through my head. sorry, i had to. cohen says he covered up trumps dirty deeds. we dont know what they are. what could they be? >> i expect the mueller investigatio...

Agreement what the responses were. in normal case you would be putting your best rebuttals together. public charges you expect to come on the collusion side and the obstruction side. you would be ready to have them out publicly. in this white house, i would be very surprised if theres that kind of coordinated, vigorous, well thought out response. we havent seen that previously. its probably more like the president calling it a witch hunt on twitter and maybe rudy giuliani going on hannity or som...

In contrast to the russia stuff where weve had a series of indictments, both on the russian side of the ocean and on the u.s. side with respect to these false statements, we know something about what theyve found on the russian side. we know very little or near nothing object what theyve found on the obstruction side. >> ben wittes, thank you for making some time tonight. dont go anywhere, we are on hot stand by from the michael flynn sentencing memo which can come in at any moment. well be ri...