He would indict Hillary Clinton. Then we put out a statement on saudi arabia. Well see how that all works out. Tonight, global shock waves from the president s decision to side with saudi arabia over american intelligence. Its a shame, but its it is what it is. When all in starts right now. Good evening from new york. Im chris hayes. A Major Development in the Mueller Investigation arrives today, the president completing his written answers to the special counsel. Almost simultaneously with a stunning report from the New York Times which details yet another atented abuse of power by the president. This spring President Trump told his white House Counsel to order the Justice Department to prosecute former fbi director james comey, and Hillary Clinton according to two people familiar with the conversation. According to a times quote, the lawyer donald f. Mcgahn ii rebuffed the president saying he had no authority to order a prosecution. And to underscore his point, mr. Mcgahn had white house lawyers write memos for mr. Trump warning if he asked them to investigate rivals, he could face consequences, including possible impeachment. Its not clear if the president read the memo or pursued the idea, but he continued to privately discuss it, including a special counsel appointment. Hes also repeatedly expressed disappointment in the fbi director Christopher Wray for failing to more aggressively investigate mrs. Clinton, calling him weak one of the people said. Mcgahns own lawyer, in a carefully parsed statement in the times said that to his knowledge the president never ordered those prosecutions. But again, according to the times, the president asked what stopped him from ordering the Justice Department from prosecuting mrs. Clinton mr. Mcgahn explained the president could ask the Justice Department to investigate, that, too, could be seen as abuse of power. The multiple page legal memo prepared for trump outlined a range of possible consequences, Justice Department lawyers could refute to follow mr. Trumps orders. If charges were brought, judges could dismiss them. Congress could investigate the president s role in the prosecution and begin impeachment proceedings. This news, as cnn is reporting that on multiple occasions President Trump raised the issue of investigating Hillary Clinton with Rod Rosenstein and matthew whitaker. Whitaker has since been installed, of course, as the acting attorney general after auditioning for the part on cable news and writing editorials like this one for usa today in the summer ticket, the headline, i would indict Hillary Clinton. All this as the president today answered written questions submitted by the special counsels office, according to his lawyers, Rudy Giuliani said raised serious constitutional issues and was beyond the scope of a legitimate inquiry. The president has nonetheless provided unprecedented cooperation. Lets bring in former Deputy Assistant attorney general in the obama administration, elliott williams, msnbc legal analyst, Jill Winebanks, and msnbc legal analyst, maya wiley. Jill, let me start with you. The obvious parallel here, and theres been a lot of writing about this is nixon, what is the import of a president attempting to order his department of justice to prosecute a political rival . It opens him up to impeachment, no question about it. One of the things that wait, the order itself, youre saying, just even attempting to do it . I think just the attempt first of all, it shows all americans that this is a president not qualified to be president. This is a president who does not understand how an independent department of justice must operate. He does not understand what it means in a democracy to have an independent investigation. And he cannot just pick his political enemies and say investigate. Thats what Richard Nixon did. He had an enemies list. He told the irs to go after them. Right. That is not appropriate in a democracy. Any person in america can say you should investigate something, i saw somebody breaking into someones apartment. Thats a burglary. You should investigate it. But you cant just say i dont like that person, go and prosecute them. And he used the word prosecute, not investigate. So i think its a very serious breach of his authority. And is a clear abuse of power. Elliott, you worked at the department of justice, whats your reaction to this . Well, okay, so we already knew from the stories about around the time don mcgahn was leaving that the president misunderstood what the role of the white House Counsel was. Thats charitable. Right. I mean, maybe intentionally misunderstood, but stipulated. The president believed the white House Counsel was his personal lawyer, right . And now we have more evidence that he believed that the Justice Department were his personal goons that he could send the Justice Department no, im serious here, sent the Justice Department out to prosecute his rival. Jill said, this is not who we are as a free and fair nation that believes in the rule of law. It calls attention to, if you remember talk about what Matt Whitaker might have discussed in private meetings with the president. What was the substance of those conversations . And certainly i would think the special counsel should try to get to the bottom of that because its clear that and it also stretches logic that the president didnt know what whitakers views were before he game into the position. So certainly the special counsel or the American People or the congress . January needs to get to the bottom of this question of what mr. Whitaker knew before he took the job. All this, to elliotts point, heightened import. Absolutely. This is so i completely agree with everything thats been said. I think this is especially when you take it in totality, with all of the incidents of abuse of power that weve seen this president try to assert in many ways, including, by the way, publicly saying that he fired comey with the Mueller Investigation in mind. I mean, we could go down a very long list of this preponderate actually trying to use the department of justice as his own personal tool, including protecting himself and his family potentially from crimes. But at this point what we have is Congress Absolutely needs to get right on top of hearings with mr. Whitaker to say what conversations yes. Did the president have with you . Truthfully he should not be in that job. I want to pause, Michael Schmidt of the New York Times has an update. He joins me by phone. Michael, you have some new information . Caller yeah, trump had repeatedly pressed jus it Department Officials as well about the status of clintonrelated investigations. So you have trump talking, you know, our story from mcgahn about the need for justice to prosecute clinton and prosecute comey. But you have him talking, trying to get updates on the clinton investigation from Justice Department officials. And one of those officials was the acting current acting attorney general whitaker when he was the chief of staff for jeff sessions. Whitaker was sent over by the white house as someone to sort of keep an eye on sessions and someone that whitaker developed a very strong relationship with, built a good rapport with the president during his time as sessions chief of staff. The president became very comfortable with him. You have the president asking whitaker about this. The president did grouse a lot about why the Justice Department was not doing more to prosecute clinton and comey. Its more evidence about this, sort of bigger issue of him really wanting the Justice Department to go after his political enemies. Let me make sure i understand this, and then im going to come back to the panel here. What youre saying is that whitaker is an individual who the president had face to face conversations, asking about the status of department of justice investigations into Hillary Clinton and james comey . Into all we know is it was about Hillary Clinton. Gotcha. He was talking to him about the status of the clinton investigations and, you know, the Justice Department is looking at questions around uranium one. Right. You know, so this is specific to Hillary Clinton. Got you, okay. Michael schmidt broke that story earlier by the New York Times by phone, thank you for that update. So, jill, thats so they i mean, look, the most obvious view, is that all of this is exactly what it looks like which is that croney and stooge, woe fully unqualified, looking into an inquiry. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck. This looks like obstruction to me. And his relationship between trump and whitaker is quite troubling. Back during watergate we had el patrick gray, the head of the fbi, feeding information back to john dean so they could coordinate the coverup. You cannot have the department of justice sharing information with the target of an investigation or the subject or witnesses. That is what destroys an investigation and its credibility. And this just sounds exactly like the kind of thing that led to articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon. Elliott, theres also the issue of the responses, and i want to get your take on this as well, maya. The responses have been submitted, interestingly enough, have nothing to do theyre essentially asserting privilege over everything from the day he wins the election to anything in the presidency. Nothing on the transition, nothing on the presidency, theyre going to answer some questions, very lawyered questions about the campaign. What do you make of that . Elliott . I think his sound might have gone out, maya. Well, quite frankly, i think we saw this coming. Because the trump camp has been asserting really aggressive broad constitutional authority, essentially for the executive branch and the president that doesnt make a whole lot of sense in the democratic order and is bemused in a selfserving way, simply to protect this particular president. But this whole notion even of executive privilege, like i can do things that are obstructing justice, but veil them right. In an argument i have the executive privilege to make these decisions like fire james comey for whatever reason i so choose. Weve even seen actual conservative lawyers making these arguments in the press. And i think its a real problem for our democracy that were arguing that a president is somehow above the law and can assert these privileges where theres really evidence and serious question about his conduct. Theres two questions there, elliott, one is the assertions being made about the breadth of the executive privilege, president ial actions during both the administration and as far as i understand it, somewhat novel, the transition part. The second, the degree to which the department of justice and mueller actually empowered enough to pursue a subpoena, if that were what it takes, which we dont know. Look, this regardless of the question here is the poor judgment that theyre exercising. Even if the law might have allowed the president to have taken some actions in the case, frankly during the transition, or during the early presidency, or even when he was in the presidency with mcgahn, the question is whether it would have been the exercise of sound judgment to have done so. And what weve seen time and again is the president is stretching the bounds and the limits of whats permissible and whats lawful. This is if i were advising a client i would tell them this is ultimately how you end up getting into jail. How you end up getting yourself into trouble when you push the limits this far. Weve seen it time and time again. Certainly, ideally the special counsel will uncover and get to the bottom of all of this. Were seeing a recklessness with respect to the boundaries of the law that should trouble all americans. I think thats right in terms of the boundaries of the law. But i think what were also seeing is, donald trump is going to have a very hard time answering these questions without asserting privilege. If he didnt want to say some things, i think, that could potentially get him in trouble. We have to acknowledge that this president wasnt going to have an easy time with these questions. Jill, i mean, the question hes been shaking the cage. Whats sort of what we have learned when you put all the pieces together is this president who was attempted to obstruct justice, hes attempted to manipulate the department of justice for his own ends, various entities and interests have blocked him in various ways, but we dont know when he has been successful or if hes been successful or if hes on the threshold of being successful, jill. First of all, even if he is not successful, the attempt is a crime. Good point. Attempting to do a crime is a crime. And the executive privilege does not allow him to have a criminal conversation. Even if he was president. So the question of whether he can assert kind of privilege while he is in the transition phase is a separate question. I dont know whether privilege applies to the transition period. But it certainly doesnt apply to the transition period if those conversations were criminal in nature because if he was president it wouldnt apply. Right. The other thing is, every day that whitakers in this role is remarkable. I mean, there is essentially the olc itself, the only precedent they could come up with is 186 of and exigent circumstances for six days, if im quoting that correctly, whitaker is involved in sort of a scam operation shut down by the fcc that returned 27 million in money and is criminally being investigated by the fbi. Today we got his ethics disclosures of his Financial Disclosure which crew is now saying were edited five times in the last two weeks after they withheld it. I want to separate out the constitutionality of a president making an interim appointment that is a rational judgment versus this particular president making this particular interim appointment under all the circumstances we have with mr. Whitaker, including the fact that he clearly was told by someone who is a witness in the Mueller Investigation, hey, become a pundit to get the president s attention in order to get a job in the administration who then becomes one of the people who is the endorser of this is a great person for the job, even publicly he becomes a validater, which is bizarre. Chris, an Important Note about the olc opinion, it is an opinion, it is not law. Right. Now, attorneys at the Justice Department, you know, cant go to jail if they rely on that, but its certainly not binding in a court or anything like that. Now, courts will be the arbiter of whether whitaker should have been appointed or whether the appointment was lawful. We shouldnt give too much stock to sort of the significance of that olc opinion, the office of Legal Counsel opinion that said, you know, that it was the Justice Departments opinion that he was properly appointed. And maya . I think the thing that concerns me so much about this is i think there is an argument that is a credible legal argument that the appointment power itself, and not going in succession, was not contrary to the constitution. I think the problem here is were conflating a problem of congress not doing its job of oversight. Right. And particular ly now in this case its going to be the senate and that thats our constitutional problem and that the president does not feel any accountability to the normal checks and balances, including his own party saying we think you maybe should make a better choice. Were going to see i remain astonished in some ways that Matt Whitaker is the acting attorney general in the United States and continues to be. But i also think that is not a tenable situation for that long. Elliott williams, Jill Winebanks and maya wiley, thank you all. The president stating that he sides with saudi arabia, the stunning statement from the president , reaction from khashoggis friend and Washington Post editor next of. She said, get the one inspired by dentists, with a round brush head. Go pro with oralb. Oralbs gentle rounded brush head removes more plaque along the gum line. For cleaner teeth and healthier gums. And unlike sonicare, oralb is the First Electric toothbrush brand accepted by the ada for its effectiveness and safety. What an amazing clean ill only use an oralb oralb. Brush like a pro. Get stronger. Get closer. Start listening today to the Worlds Largest selection of audiobooks on audible. And now, get more. For just 14. 95 a month, youll get a credit a month good for any audiobook, plus two Audible Originals exclusive titles you cant find anywhere else. If you dont like a book, you can exchange it any time, no questions asked. Automatically roll your credits over to the next month if you dont use them. 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