The fbi opened an investigation based on that fact. You point this out on page 1 of the report. July 31st, 2016, they opened the investigation based on that piece of investigation. Diplomat tells Papadopoulos Papadopoulos tells diplomat russian has dirt on clinton. What im wondering is what told papadopoulos. How did he find out . I cant get into the evidence findings. Yes you can. You gave us the answer. You tell us who told him. Joseph nipson. Told padopouloss the guy who the mysterious professor who lives in rome and london. This is the guy who told papadopoulos. Hes the guy who starts it all. When the fbi interviews him, he lies three times and yet you dont charge him with a crime. You charge rick gates for false statements. You charge Paul Manafort for false statements. You charge Michael Cohen with false statements. You charge Michael Flynn but the guy who puts the country, starts it all for three years, he lies, you guys dont charge him. Im curious as to why. Well, i cant get into it. Its obvious i think we cant get into charging decisions. When the fbi interviewed him in february. When the special counsels office interviewed him, did he lie into you too . Tthat. Is h igenc russian intelligence . Cant get it into that. You can charge 13 russians no one has ever heard of, never seen. No one will ever see them. You cant charge all kinds of people but the guy who puts this whole story in motion, you cant charge him. I think thats amazing. Im not certain i agree with your characterizations. Im reading from your report. Nipson told papadopoulos. The diplomat tells the fbi. The fbi opens the investigation july 31st, 2016 and here we are three years later, july of 2019 and the central figure who launches it all, lies to us and you guys dont hunt him down and interview him again and you dont charge him with a crime. Heres the good news. Heres the good news. The president was falsely accused of conspiracy. The fbi does a ten month investigation and james comey told us at that point they had nothing. You do a 22 month investigation. At the end, you find no conspiracy. Whats the democrats want to do, they want to keep investigating. They want to keep going. Maybe a better course of action, maybe a better course of action is to figure out how the false accusation started. Maybe its to go bac news. Thats exactly what bill barr is doing. Thats what the attorney general is doing. They will find out why we went through time of the gentleman is expired. In a moment we will take a very brief fiveminute break. First, i ask every one in the room to please remain seated and quiet while the witness exits the room. I also want to announce to those in the audience that you may not be guaranteed your seat if you leave the hearing room at this time. We have now just witnessed over an hour of members of the House Judiciary Committee ququestioning or shouting sometimes, making their point of views in an team to get Robert Mueller to explain more of what was in this report. Major, your take. There are two central questions at the heart of all this. Did the president conspire to influence an election with a hostile foreign power . Its clear, no. The Mueller Report is clear on that. Did that investigation into that underlying question start on ill legitimate means. Republicans are trying to use this hearing to inject proof of that, at least some doubt in the publics minds. Democrats are spending all their time going through the report on the obstruction of justice charge. Mueller issing b backing them u things they read from the report. That doesnt solve the question which is what are House Democrats going to do with what they say is clear evidence of possible obstruction. Theres only one answer to that question. Yes or no. Do you panel an inpeachment proceeding or not. They may come to more clarity about this but in terms of revelation, we heard is the report read out loud, thats not a revolution. He may prove helpful to democrats but they will have to do more to move them off of their position of structural reluctance to go down the road of impeachment. Jonathan turley joins us as well. We knew Robert Mueller was a reluctant witness. He was subpoenaed to testify. He wanted the report to be his statement. He did not want to take questions on this. The Justice Department weighed be with a letter prescribed with what he could say. What should we may of his short answers, many ways not elaborating at all about what is in this report. I think hes sticking to what we thought would happen. He is a reluctant witness. Some of what he said is confusing. Hes refusing to talk about things that bill barr has already talked about. Things that are not privileged. Things like barr raised this issue of why mueller did not identify rule 16 or grand jury information. Barr said it was mueller that delayed the release of the report. All of that was previously testified to. Mueller said i really cant speak to that. I dont know the legal basis for that. The democrats did get some good stuff out of mueller. Mueller said that when he spoke with the president after the firing of comey, he did not speak to him about the possibility of replacing comey. Thats a direct contradiction to trump. The hearing began with what may be the home run hit for the democrats which is when mueller said its simply not true what the president said he would be exonerated. For all of that, the republicans did score a few point themselves. They ended up getting sort of caught up in their own gears. One point they raised is said your mandate was to explain your prosecutorial decisions or your decision not to indict and they said thats a shell duty. You have to do that. Yet you said i dont have enough information to exonerate him and the republicans scored some point to say where does that duty come from. Where is this policy that you can say we didnt find evidence of a crime but we didnt exonerate him. Thats not the standard of the department of justice. They are right. Prosecutors dont say that as a general. I thought mueller looked a little befuddled on those issues. I dont think he did as well. This last exchange with jim jordan about this person who told George Papadopoulos about this information which he conveyed to a foreign diplomat. Claiming he had the dirt on the Clinton Campaign. Robert mueller would not describe any part of their decisions about that underlying set of facts. His reluctance to engage on that which may fit within the requirements of his Office Creates an opening for republicans because for this process, for republicans and those who support President Trump, any set of questions or lack of answers they get from Robert Mueller on these underlying questions of fairness or any potential bias in this investigation give them politically. Hold onto thai are those attram t major fins findings is the russians attempt to influence our election and attempts to obstruct justice by the president. They would not call them distractions. They would call them part of this record. They do create this other space for people who are sympathetic to the president can land on. In any encounter where law and politics are involved or in straight law, juries need a place to land. Where do you help land the jury . Republicans are trying to land republicans, sympathizers of the president. Every one is trying to out rage every one else to get on the evening news. This is the theater of the macabre. I noticed that too. Mueller said tas doing these things because you were investigating him for obstruction of justice. Mueller answered that question and said yes. That is a very general barr said is a lot of the actions is because the heart is frustrated. That went to the heart theresinal motivations here. You do have this sort of two separate hearings going on. If you listen only to the democrats and the republicans youd be surprised they are talking about the same person, same report. The democrat, this is powerful evidence of obstruction and its okay, youre the judiciary committee. You have the ability to impeach him. What are you going to do . I want to bring in paula reed who is standing by at the white house. Describe the nuance in those questions about obstruction. Reporter its all about the questions. If you only expect to get a yes, no, i refer you to page 106, you can see these lawmakers have carefully crafted the questions to try to get in any facts they can highlight. Mueller didnt say he didnt have sufficient evidence. He said he could not exonerate the president. Under the Justice Departments guidelines he did not feel he could charge the president with a crime because he couldnt be put on trial. He couldnt accuse someone of something and not give him the opportunity in any way to clear his name if he was innocent. He suggested that the proper channel for that would be congress. Thats something the democrats are hammering him on. They got mueller to confirm the president could be charged with obstruction crimes after he leaves office. Republicans are likely disappointed that mueller does not want to delve into any questions about the origins of the investigation. As you saw right there with representative jordan he was able to pack a lot in his question. Every accusation about George Papadopoulos, he put it into question. He was able to communicate his concerns about any political motivations in his questions alone. We noticed, paula, that Robert Mueller gave 41 one word answers either a yes or a no. He knew he was not going to be verbose during these particular hearings that would refer to what is already in that report. Did you find anything else unusual about his answers . Reporter id say the yes, no, answers thats just good lawyering. I would advise him to do the same. This appearance is a contrast to his previous appearances before congress. He does seem a bit different. A little unsure of himself. He frequently asked him to repeat questions and he did have trouble properly recalling names or terms or aspects of his report that we would have expected to come to him a little bit sooner. All right. Paula reed there outside the white house. Paula mentioned this key point which i think is worth drilling down on. It was talked about in the hearing. Its also right here what mueller said about the olc opinion, the office of Legal Counsel about whether you can charge a president of the United States with obstruction of justice. What mueller tries to make clur and he said this on his may 29th statement is the olc opinion says the constitution requires a process other than the criminal Justice System to formally accuse a sitting president of wrong doing. Why he says, because it would be unfair to potentially accuse someone of a crime when there can be no Court Resolution of the actual charge. Do you understand . What he said is it would have been completely unfair to say he could have done this because theres no other remedy other than congress. That is their job according to the constitution. Fair . Do you agree with it . I dont agree with it. A lot of people dont with the olc opinions. Those opinions are well known. I testified on that in the clinton impeachment when one of those opinions were just coming out. Nothing in the olcem s anything about accusing a president. They say you cant indict a president. I think this will be coming up in next round of questions because the big question for mueller, this is weak point for him. A lot of people disagree with you on the olc memos. Theres nothing that says you cant allege a crime. It says you cant indict a sitting president. The big question is, if you werent going to reach this conclusion, why didnt you tell someone . Why didnt you go to olc . They whats they do. When you have a question about policy, you say is this what you meant. Right. This investigation, the special counsel was about in the russian interference. It wasnt initially about the president s behavior. The president s behavior came about because of this investigation. Looks like were getting ready to reconvene. Well continue to conversation until chairman nadler reconvenes formally. He has to come around to answer, why did you investigate. He said you should investigate but republicans are saying that doesnt fit within the parameters of your mandate. If you werent going to allege or indict then why all this time to look into the president s behavior. Theres an argument for that because the president s behavior is a legitimate place of e inquiry. I think he ought to be able can i make one other point . The president repeatedly on news organizations reported instances that he directed don mcgahn, his white House Counsel, to fire the special counsel. Those were press reports at the time. The president derided those as fake news and not true. It turns out the president was lying. Yes. Theyve said today and the president said i never used the word fire. He ultimately wasnt fired. Phraseology matters but intent is clear. The intent of the president was to try to end this and to get his white House Counsel to lean on the Deputy Attorney general. Why . All right. Questioning resumes. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Mr. Mueller, congressman dutch addressed trumps request to mcgahn to fire you. Represent bass talked about the president s request to deny the fact that the president made that request. I want to pick up where they left off and i want to pick up with president s personal lawyer. There was evidence that the president s personal lawyer was alarmed at the prospect of the president meeting with mr. Mcgahn to discuss mr. Mcgahns refusal to deny the New York Times report about the president trying to fire you, correct . Correct. In fact, the presid counsel was so alarmed by the prospect of the president meeting with mcgahn that he called mr. Mcgahns counsel and said that mcgahn could not resign no matter what happened in the oval office that day, correct . Correct. Its accurate the president knew he was asking mcgahn to deny facts that mcgahn said were accurate, unquote, isnt that right in. Correct. Your investigation fountd, quote by the time of the Oval Office Meeting with the president , the president was aware that mcgahn did not think the story was false. Two, did not want to issue a statement or create a written record denying facts that mcgahn believed to be true. Be president nevertheless persisted and asked mcgahn to repudiate facts that mcgahn repeatedly said were accurate, isnt that accurate . Generally true. I believe thats on page 119. Thank you. The president was trying to force mcgahn to Say Something that mcgahn did not believe to be true. Thats accurate. I want to reference you to a slide. Its on page 120. It says substantial evidence indicates that in repeatedly urging mcgahn to dispute he was ordered to have the special counsel terminated, the president acted for the purpose of influencing mcgahns account in order to deflect or prevent further scrutiny of the president s conduct towards the investigation. Thats accurate. Can you explain what you meant there . I believe as it appears in the report. Its fair to say the president tried to protect himself by asking staff falsify records relevant to an Ongoing Investigation. I would say thats general in summary. Would you say that action, the president tried to hamper the investigation by asking staff to falsify records relevant to your investigation . Ill have to refer you to the report for review of that episode. Thank you. Also the president s attempt to get mcgahn to create a false written record were related to mr. Trumps concern about your obstruction of justice inquiry, correct . I believe that to be true. In fact, that same Oval Office Meeting did the president ask mcgahn why he told quote, why he had told special counsels Office Investigators that the president told him to have you removed, unquote. What was the question, sir . Let me go to the next one. The president quote, criticized mcgahn for telling your office about the june 17th, 2017 events when he told mcgahn to have you removed, correct . Correct. In other words, the president was criticizing his white House Counsel for telling Law Enforcement officials what he believed to be the truth. Again, go back to the text of the report. Well, let me go a bit further. Would it have been a crime if mr. Mcgahn lied to you president ordering him to fire you. I dont want to speculate. You charge the investigation . That is accurate. The president complained his staff were taking notes during the meeting about firing mcgahn, is that correct . Thats what the report says. In fact, its completely appropriate for the president s staff especially counsel to take notes during a meeting, correct . I rely on the wording of the report. Well, thank you director mueller for your investigation into whether the president attempted to obstruct justice by ordering his white House Counsel don mcgahn to lie to protect the president and then to create a false record. Its clear that any other person who engaged in such conduct would be charged with a crime. We will continue our investigation and we will hold the president accountable because no one is above the law. The gentleman from florida. Director mueller can you state with confidence that the steel dossier was not part of russias disinformation in no. As i said in of the building of the case was predated me by ten months. Paul manaforts crimes predated you. You had no problem charging him. This predated the attorney general and he didnt have any problem answering the question when senator cornyn asked the exact question. The attorney general said i cant state that with confidence. Thats one of the areas im reviewing. Im concerned about it and i dont think its entirely speculative. It must have some factual basis but you identify no factual basis regarding the dossier or the possibility that it was part of the russia disinformation campaign. Christopher steel reporting has referenced in your report