But in either case, he didnt do it. The New York Times dropped that bombshell. Once again, that story winds up stepping on a good headline for the president because he kept his word that he would answer the questions of this special counsel and he did that. Robert mueller right now has the president s responses to certain questions in his hands. A response from the special counsel is expected within a week. We have a lot of new reporting about what was and was not in those responses. And what may come next. And then acting a. G. , matthew whitaker, he finally turned in his Financial Disclosure forms. He got nearly a Million Dollars from this conservative Oversight Group that he created four years ago. He was the only employee. Whered the money come from . Most of it came from dark money including one of the koch brothers. Why does the president put so much on this one man . Why . Were lucky to have a great mind to walk us through the implications of much of this tonight. Former attorney general Michael Mukasey is here. Welcome back to primetime. Great to have you. Great to be with you. Happy thanksgiving in advance. And to you. I dont like that clinton and that comey, find a way to go get them. Is that something a president can say to the doj . Can say, i suppose he can say it. It aint going to happen. Why . It didnt, but why . Didnt because nobody at that department would follow that order. This is an echo of something that happened before. Recall he had a conversation with don mcgahn. Told don mcgahn to call up the doj and get something done. Mcgahn said im not doing it. And you know what . If you order me to do it im leaving. What does that tell you about the president in terms of what he knows about how power is supposed to be used . Is this about misfeasance or potential malfeasance . The difference for the people at home, is this him just not knowing you dont do this or is this him saying i know what my power is and i want to use it this way . I think what it tells you is that donald trump has no unexpressed thoughts, which is too bad because we all have unexpressed thoughts. We have what is that, unexpressed thought a thought you wish you could do that you dont then articulate because you know you cant do it. We all have thoughts like that and unfortunately with him, theres no monitor stopping it. However, he does have, whether its the good sense or the good luck, to voice those thoughts to his lawyers. Can you imagine to don mcgahn, to other people around him. Right. And he, as happened once before, that was reported, and its happened this time, it was reported. Right. He gets told he cant do it. Well, mcgahn was a good counsel for him, ill tell you why. Just one example. Because in his lawyers statement about this, we know from the reporting that mcgahn sent a memo. Did the president look at it . Yes or no . Was it communicated verbally . Yes or no . Probably. And it said dont do this, and heres why. Its going to stink. It may be seen as abuse of power. That could get you impeached. Dont do it. Youre going to have a problem. You could have an outcry from the membership of the doj. Its just got bad written all over it. However, his counsel, mcgahns counsel, then says but the counsel mcgahn has no recollection of the president ever ordering this to be done. What a helpful thing to say to the president. He never ordered it, but i gave him this advice anyway, that youll be impeached if you do this. Frankly, mike, the two things dont go together. If you have to write me a memo like this saying if you do this, clearly im doing more than asking you for an opinion. Not necessarily. Come on. You write a memo like that if you want a record of what you told the president. Yes, but in what context . Thats not a hey mike, do me a favor, if i wanted to go after them, what are my options . You dont write me back a memo, youll get impeached, this is abuse of power, dont do it, settle down. Given the history here where there was a prior incident involving a basically a direction for him to call the doj and he had a threat to resign, im not surprised he wrote him that. Im not, either, and also thats a great point that you make because it sheds light on Something Else that used to be clouded in mystery. Would the president really ever go to mcgahn and say i want comey out, i want to go get rid of somebody . Did mcgahn really have to say to him, calm down, dont do this, i wont do this . Remember, the white house and the surrogates all said that never happened. This story makes that story a lot more likely. This is the kind of memo you wrote, just as you said, youve written them before. There are other stories about him having voiced things hed like to do involving Foreign Relations of the United States. Where hes told by the Defense Department either hes told were not going to do it or, yeah, well get right on it, mr. President and the phone goes click. Understood. But they are very different things. One is i want to go after my enemies. Im president now. I want to use that power. Go get them. He does it with mcgahn. Mcgahn pushes back. He does it again. Hes in a meeting reportedly with rosenstein and whitaker. Matthew whitaker, now the acting a. G. , the man the president alternately says i knew nothing about and i knew everything about. For whatever reason, the chief of staff sessions at that time is in the meeting with rosenstein and the president and the president says where are we on going after clinton and comey . Where are we on those things . Now, what does that tell you about what he must know about whitaker . Tells me nothing about what he must know about whitaker. How so . Tells me what he wishes. Tells me what he would like to see happen. He must know the fact would you ever have that conversation in the presence of somebody you didnt trust and know . I think i would not have that conversation at all. Fair point. Okay. But the president did. Hes no mike mukasey. Theres no doubt that he had seen whitaker before, that whitaker had briefed him in the oval before. And that he was in that sense familiar with his with the way he presented it. Should people be worried that this president thinks about going after his enemies by using the doj as if they were his tough worried, i wouldnt say worried. I think people should be dejected by it. Worried thats a fancy word, mike, help me understand it. No, its not. Depressed. I think worried means that you think theres an actual likelihood that the tanks are going to roll. I dont think there is. I dont think the doj today or tomorrow. Why would he put somebody like whitaker as the acting doj, acting a. G. . Somebody like whitaker in what respect . A loyalist, somebody with very heavyhanded views about this. Certainly someone that you didnt vet that carefully to see whether or not he was going to reflect well on you, undervetting. I think he had gotten along with him at the briefings. He says he doesnt even know him. He says he was just told about him, counselor. He said initially he knew him well. Which do we believe . I think something in the middle. He knew him enough to know that he liked his reactions to things. He knew that he had been he served in a senior position. And he knew that other people who might very well be in line for succession, like Rod Rosenstein, for example, has enormous conflicts and theres no way that he could have or should have made Rod Rosenstein the acting a. G. So he picked the a. G. s chief of staff who was lawful could you imagine george w. Bush ever picking up the phone and saying, mike, this guys really been bothering me, i need to get after him, how can we investigate this guy . No. Whats the difference . The difference is that george w. Bush was a different kind of person. Meaning what . Meaning he was a person with a very substantial consciousness of what the limits were not only of his office but of the way he expressed himself. Very different kind of person. The question is what the consequences are of what somebody does. And the consequences were zero in the case of Donald Trumps conversation. The consequences were zero because it never happened . But doesnt just the desire for it to want to happen matter . And something that we should process, analyze, and scrutinize . We should analyze and scrutinize it and make decisions about whether were going to support this man or not support this man. Some people have one view. Some people have another. I mean, thats why i ask you about whitaker. I mean, you know, if they called you up and said, hey, stop talking to cuomo all the time, help us out here, i think whitaker is the right way to put in. If you took 15 minutes looking into the mans background, what hes said, what hes put out there in public, you know, forget about all the financial dealings and all these other things that are coming up now. Why put him in charge except to say i have a guy who will pull the string on this special counsel in fairness, the stuff that he put out, assuming youre alluding to his having said that the attorney general would be in power to cut the budget among other statements. My favorite is he said he really just wants judges who have a biblical view of justice. That is that your opinion also . My opinion . No. I need to know where you are on the bible to make a theres a flatout prohibition on that in the constitution, says there shall be no religious test for holding any Public Office in the United States, period. Rick santorum said the other day, if you dont understand the bible, how do you understand what the law is . How about that . How about that, mike . Rick santorum is not the president. Hes not a. G. True. True. Well said. So you have this situation where there becomes concern of how the president processes good and bad. Right and wrong. Right . And this is is not necessarily your bailiwick, but its an extension of the same intellectual construct. Khashoggi happens. Okay . His cia, his people, they look at it, they say the way this went down, the prince knew. He looks at it and says, maybe he did, maybe he did not. Lets stop right there. The cia gives you a report and says this man, this high confidence. High confidence. Right. Is that maybe he did, maybe he didnt . Usually they back it up with the evidence that they have. Thats not maybe he did, maybe he didnt. What does it mean the president looks at it and says maybe . I think what the president is doing is hedging and saying, well, they dont have a confession. They dont have a photograph of him doing it. They dont have a recording of him giving the order and, therefore, its equivocal. Thats ridiculous. Sure. Its certainly not the basis of proof he requires when he wants to go after somebody. But two important points here. Number one, were not going to break our relationship with the saudis. That i think is correct. But number two, this is not a guy in whom we can have confidence. This is not a guy we can trust. Who are you talking about, the president or mbs . No, mbs. This is a guy with whom the president thinks we can have a close relationship. So what do you think about that . Look at the record. Look, i hear you. He holds he holds the Prime Minister of lebanon hostage. He starts a blockade of qatar. I should add that im involved in representing qatar. So maybe i have a bias in that respect. Then he pulls off, according to the cia, he pulls off a clumsy, horrible act. They had to believe nobody would care. And this was s. O. P. For them. This is the kind of things they do. They didnt think anybody would care. They didnt factor in that khashoggi wasnt just another saudi guy with a big mouth in their reckoning. He was a journalist. But this is the part hes also associated with the muslim brotherhood. We dont know that. I know the president s relying on it and ive got to tell you when i look at the reporting of it, theres nothing hard on that. For many he wasnt carrying a membership card . No, listen, mike, if youre going to start judging the character of somebody who was brutally murdered im not it seems to be convenient for the president to say, you know, he may have been a bad guy. The murder is what it is. What does that mean . I grew up in queens, too. It is what it is is what you say, what we used to call thing res ipsa loquitur. The thing speaks for itself. If you khashoggis dead. It doesnt tell you anything. It tells you that its exactly what it is on its face, it was a coldhearted murder of a guy they didnt like. Correct. If you say done in a stupid, clumsy way. My relationship with the prince matters too much, were not going to leverage everything for one person. What message does that send to heavies all over the world . I dont know that it sends any message to heavies all over the world. Because we deal with different just killed a guy whos a journalist, were not going to do anything about it. We sanctioned people who are already in jail. Depends on the heavy, depends on the situation. I think the message it sends to this particular heavy is bad enough. And this is not a guy im with Lindsey Graham on this. This is not a guy we should be associating with. I should also mention that as a former a. G. , this is kind of outside my lane. Its Foreign Relations. So your viewers can discount my views for that. Why do i ask you . Because you understand leadership at its highest levels. You served a president. Youve been an observer of this dynamic in power for decades and decades. This is not the way the United States usually deals with the brutal murder of somebody, let alone a journalist. For sure. It doesnt have to be existential, zero sum. We must go to war with saudi arabia. You know, exaggerating the price of the disconnect, i believe, does a disservice to not wanting to handle the question. You dont want to handle the question of what youre going to about it, so you say we cant blow up our whole relationship. Nobodys asking you to do that. Correct. Were asking you to keep america america. You know . What does america do when somebody brutally butchers somebody out of convenience, let alone out of political convenience . A sad part of this is this was not a good day for American Values and it was not a good day because of what the president said. And thats a bad thing. To use a term that he uses. But where does it leave us . It is what it is. You know, theyre buying these weapons for us. You know, the experts that i speak to, mike, many im our you know, say theyre not going to buy russian equipment, theyre not going to buy chinese equipment. They need our equipment. Their equipment is not as good and wont match up with the systems they already have. Thats not a real threat. We have lots of who want our equipment. Were selective in selling it. They need us. Yes, theyre our proxy right now in yemen, but they need us. The saudis arent known for fighting their own battles. Not for fighting them well. You know, all the oil prices. The pressure thats on their oil prices is mostly driven by our domestic market, what were doing with our supply and output right now. I dont get why you have to be so afraid of jeopardizing this relationship theyll overlook something as heinous as this murder. This is more than a policy dispute. Think this a question of values, as you put it. And, again, im with Lindsey Graham on this. This is not a guy we can deal with on a longterm basis. Well, well see where it takes us. I disagree with you that its outside your lane. You have never failed in giving me perspective on the rational way that leaders would examine questions that are matters of big importance. I want to make sure your viewers understand that i was not in foreign policy. I was in law. I understand. Sometimes they wind up being the same thing. This is a matter of law also, what happened with khashoggi. Thanks a lot. I am thankful for you for being on the show. You make us better every time. Youre terrific. Thanks very much. Happy thanksgiving. To you as well. Months of jockeying between trump and mueller are now over. Better to say for now over. Why . Trump turned in his questions as promised. I have talked to people close to the investigation. I have new reporting on what was in those questions. What wasnt. And what they might mean going forward. I have it all laid out for you very nicely next. Oh yeah. Its back. Applebees bigger bolder grill combos. Now thats eatin good in the neighborhood. On your wild west vacation. Guarantee youll find gold but we can guarantee the best price on that thar rental cabin or any hotel, home, boat, yurt, whatever. Just dont get carried away with the wild west thing. Hey guys. Get the best price on homes, hotels and so much more. Booking. Com, booking. Yeah all right. We have news. The president s lawyers submitted his written answers to questions from the special counsel. And were told they are open to answering more. Okay . So well see what happens. Thats what that means. First, what this was and what it was not. There was nothing asked or answered about obstruction. Now, thats a key thing. Heres the biggest question. Hold the prompter for one second. We dont know whether or not the Mueller Probe involves obstruction. I know that you keep hearing that it does. I understand that. So have i heard that. However, what they were looking at and what they may finally act on and write up could be very different things. And if so, i want you to remember this conversation because the fact that there was nothing presented to the president of the United States about obstruction in these questions that he just answered is a big clue. Because i dont know how you do an obstruction investigation without understanding the president s answers on it just the same way that they couldnt do it about collusion. So, what else do we know . This was all about russia. All right . And what went down before the inauguration. Why do i slow down . Not before the election, before the inauguration. That is going to catch events that i didnt know it was going to catch before. I thought it was always before the election. Like what . Well, youre going to have to look at general flynn and there could be some other things that are indicative there. Now, were also told that there were fewer questions, but still like dozens. They had different parts and one link to a different kind this is complicated stuff. And frankly, nobodys allowed to really talk about it and the integrity of this process has been very good so far on both sides. Even trumps lawyers, we havent heard anything. We saw their statements. They didnt criticize. They didnt use perjury trap and a lot of the other rabble thats come out of the president about what he was worried