Infiltrate the winter whose. Its just a fluke. A congressional rebuke to the gun lobby. The nra is becoming a toothless tiger. Trump is a big guy. Looks like a football player. Becky becky stan stan. All in starts now. Good evening from new york. Im chris hayes. After two years of total silence from Robert Muellers inve investigator investigators, the dam has broken open. Its been about 24 hours since the story broke that attorney general william downplayed the findings in their report and in that time the thrust of the new york timess reporting has been matched in quick succession by other outleads including nba news. There are conflicting accounts of what went on behind the scenes leading to the speedy release of the now infamous fourpage sinomsis. The simple fact that all of these stories and outlets are coming out, after two years without a peep from inside the special counsels office shows that people involved in the investigation are deeply frustrated with barrs characterization of their work. They want the public to know about it. We now know the special counsels team prepared summaries for each section of the more than 300 page report though its not clear if they were ready to be released from the public. According to the Washington Post quoting an unnamed u. S. Official, the report was prepared so that the front matter of each section could have been released immediately or very quickly. It was done in a way that minimum redaction fist any would have been necessary and the work would have spoken for itself. Now, other sources dispute that, claiming the summaries contain Sensitive Information requiring redaction by the justice department. Every page was flagged for material potentially protected by grand juriy is creaty. In a letter, jerry nadler is demanding that the summaries which we now know about be made public and that barr turn over his communications with the special counsels office about the final report. The post and nbc news are unhappy about barrs specific handling of the question of obstruction of justice. After mueller himself declined to reach a conclusion about the president s conduct. Barr found the evidence insufficient to prove that the president obstructed justice saying it was much more acute than barr suggested. According to an official, its least one faction with the special counsels office said their intent was to leave the legal question of obstruction open for congress and the public to examine the evidence. Then the question of whether the Trump Campaign colluded with russia on which mueller found insufficient evidence to teab a experience according to barr. While that part is accurate, some team members say muellers findings paint a picture of a campaign whose members were manipulated by a sophisticated intelejens operation. There is only one way to resolve these discrepancies and get to the truth and that is to release the report as soon as possible and as much as possible without jeopardizing ongoing cases or grand jury secrecy. Protesters are demanding that, hitting the streets to disclose all of muellers findings while much of the public wants that to happen, the same cannot be said for the president s allies in congress. For the fifth time, Senate Republicans blocked a call for unanimous consent, calling for the report to be released. To help understand what all this means, i am joined by two people running federal investigations. Joyce vance, u. S. District of alabama. Chuck rosen berg, former senior fbi official who worked with Robert Mueller and both msnbc contributors. They have been on prosecuting and investigating teams. What is going on in the last 24 hours . I think we have to read the Mueller Report to get the ultimate answer to that. Its not unusual for teams to disagree about what the evidence says and whether or not there should be indictments and if so, what for . Whats irregular is we have a decision maker, Robert Mueller, who was entrusted with resolving the conflicts and making a decision. He chose not to make a decision about obstruction. Whether he believed he shouldnt make one where a sitting president couldnt be indicted which seems very likely or whether there is a different answer, the only way to resore Public Confidence is for all of this to come out now. It was always clear that there was in the full report more derock torrey information about the president than in the synopsis. We know that because barr chose to include the quote from Robert Mueller saying expressley, this is not an exoneration. What do you make of that . Youre right, chris. Its not at all surprising that there would be more in the report. Its 300 or 400 pages. You dont take that much to say nothing happened, move on. Thats interesting to me. What joyce said is really important. Prosecutors disagree with one another and disagree with agents and agents disagree with prosecutors all the time. This is an art, not science. Two well intentioned people can come up with a different answer. That happens all the time. Im not surprised that there is more. Whey think will be interesting will be the arm chair quarterbacking after we see what that is. Inevitably whether bill barr is right or wrong, he will be secondguessed vociferously given the fact that so much of the obstruction stuff is public facing stuff. We have seen it. Recusals or calls for recusals and unrecusals and pashd ones and firings that are ob sfruktive behavior. Whether or not it constitutes a crime remains to be seen. Three government officials said a dispute within the special counsels office on the facts and the law was one factor behind muellers is decision not to make a call on obstruction. A point you made. Then the question of the summaries. In some ways we have a factual dispute in the reporting which is worthy, ready to go and ship out publicly or did they need to be redacted. I want to had the you what jerry nadler has written to the department of justice about those summaries and grand jury material. It is notable in the press statement does not deny the existence of the summaries and merely indicated that every part was marked may contain material protected under section 6 e. If they were produced for public consumption by experienced prosecutors, it should not be an impediment in a short period of time. Now they are zeroing in on the lawyerly push back saying something was stamped on every page. Yeah. Thats not particularly unusual. Im focused on this in a very short time language. What that seems to mean is that prosecutors out of an abundance of caution should go to a District Court judge and get an order permitting them to release grand jury and make it available to congress and perhaps even to the public, depending on whats contained in it. This seems like an excuse put forth by doj where one doesnt exist. If they said there was National Security information, they need to screen. That would have been one thing. The push back was grand jury material. Thats easy to take care of. There is also the Counter Intelligence part of this. Nbc news is the only ones with the reporting on that part of it. I always thought, look, the whole point of this is we know that there was a criminal sabotage and enterprise undertaken for intelligence apparatus to tip the election in one direction. Thats pretty well established. Unanimity. We have seen the facts backing that up at least asserted by prosecutors. There has always been a question of lets say they were clean as daisies and didnt realize what they were doing. What was going on with the contacts . That . N and of itself is something the president doesnt like to talk about and is contained within the report. To your point, not every Counter Intelligence investigation yields a criminal indictment. Criminal charges. Many, many if not most Counter Intelligence investigations are designed so we understand what our adversaries are trying to do. Russia is an adversary. Make no mistake. We saw what they were trying to. I imagine that mueller is done and the Counter Intelligence piece will be carried on by the fbi for years. What are do you mean by that . Russia has not gone away. They have not closed up shop. Their work is not done. Whether its interference in the 2016 election or the 2020 election or economic espionage or attempts to eavesdrop on our public officials. The Counter Intelligence work will continue because russia is an adversary. Joyce vance and chuck rosen berg, great to have both of your perspectives. A member of the Senate Judiciary committee who has been a vocal critic. Mazie hirono of hawaii. Your reaction to 24 hours worth of reporting across multiple outlets that there is unease on the part of muellers team about the characterization of the report from barr. I think these concerns being expressed that the barr fourpage letter did not accurately characterize the 400 page report makes it even more important and more critical that report is made public. There conversations we know its having on the house which is under democratic control and jerry nadler with control. Lindsey graeme is taking a laissezfaire approach this things. Is there talk about thou deal with all of this . Of course the democrats on that committee as well as other democrats are very much focussed on the need for the Mueller Report and the underlying materials to be made public. You have a president who started off by saying sure, lets make it public. The house that voted unanimously to make it all public and suddenly there is all this the fourpage letter is good enough. What are they trying to hide . If i were the president and thought i was exonerated, i would want everything to be laid out for the public. Thats what he said. Now they are backing off that. They are hiding the ball. Whats going on . Thats why the report has to be made public. You voted against barr to be attorney general. He passed none the less. How do you feel about that vote in the light of his actions in the past week and a half . Well, we all know that he auditioned for the attorney generals position with a 19page unsolicited memo about how the president cannot be accused of obstruction of justice and when the Mueller Investigation did not draw a conclusion on that very issue, lo and behold, barr steps in and said there is no obstruction of justice. We know what we saw and heard. We heard the president fire and saw him firing comey and wanting to fire mueller. Continuously calling this a witch hunt which he still calls. I think the president is now calling for an investigation into how this investigation began. It began because the russians tried to interfere with our elections and dont you think its the least we can expect from the president that he did not collude or conspire with a foreign country out to interfere with our elections . Thats the least we can expect. My goodness, what does he have to hide . Why doesnt he go with what he originally said, which is let it all come out . Is there anything that william barr can do now to demonstrate to you that he does have integrity and is acting properly . By releasing the report. By releasing the report and when you start hearing from the people who worked for two years on this investigation expressing the concerns that his fourpager did not accurately reflect this investigation, thats cause for concern and the way he can remedy that is to make the report available and open. Do you imagine a universe in which i think in the house will issue subpoenas for it and there will be back and forth and jerry nadler asking for the summaries. Do you envision a university in which the Senate Judiciary hears from people about this and talks to barr about all of this . Well, barr has offered to testify before the Senate Judiciary committee and me, so thats good. We will be able to question him, although i hope we will have time to review the i hope as un redacted a version of the Mueller Report as possible. Its not as though lindsey graham, the chair of the Judiciary Committee is jumping up and down and wanting to go down the path of full disclosure. Im disappointed in that, but the American People can thank goodness that the house at least in terms of a number of the chairs are investigating various aspects of the trump organization. Thank goodness. Thats good for the country that we have some level of checks and balances at least on the house side in particular. Final question, do you view these three or four stories coming out about the unease of the mueller folks as effectively a warning and them saying that there will be further disclosures unless in fact the report comes out . I think that that kind of question will always hang in the air until this report is made public. For the good of the Public Interest, that report needs to be totally transparent. Otherwise these kinds of questions will always linger. For the president to run around saying that he has been totally exonerated, we know that is not true. When you think about a foreign country interfering with the elections and still doing it, by the way. I think we need to know whats in that report so that we can draw our own conclusions. Mazie hirono, thank you for your time. Thank you. Next, the barrshaped cloud hanging over the department of justice and why a former doj official said the attorney general an open warfare with the special counsels office. Thats in two minutes. Special counsels office thats in two minutes. Last longr with fewer pills. So why am i still thinking about this . Ill take aleve. Aleve. Proven better on pain. Attorney general william barr came into the job with a fairly decent reputation in washington from the first time around as ag despite during that time he recommended pardons for six Reagan Administration officials involved in the iran contra scandal of 1992, later saying he thought they had been unjustly treated by the special counsel including lying to congress. It has been nearly two weeks since mueller completed his 300 plus page report and all we have to show for it is a fourpage summary characterizing it. It looks like barr is either white washing here or worse Case Scenario engaged in covering something up. As spokesperson matt miller wrote in politico, the actions raised suspicions about whether he is acting primarily to benefit the president because they dont make any other sense. Along with the watergate prosecutor jill wine banks. How is barrs behavior impacting the integrity of the department as a bhoel . If you look at his actions, every time he had a decision to make about how to handle the conclusion of this investigation, he has chosen an option that benefits the president. Instead of other options like say releasing the summaries we know that muellers team wrote or not releasing anything until he had a chance to go through and make full redactions or going to the district judge and asking for grand jury material to be released, things in the typical practices of the department, he instead inserted himself and chosen the path that would not only favor the president , but bring controversy upon himself. Thats something that attorneys general dont try to do. You dont try to choose controversy. If you put yourself in his shoes and ask why are you choosing the path of most resistance when it goes against the best practices or previous precedents of the department and say the only reason he is doing it is because its an option that benefits the president. It means it puts a taint on his actions and i think a cloud over him and the department at a time the department has been suffering under politization and accusations they cant afford for going on three years now. Do you agree . I completely agree with everything matt said. I would go even further. Because nothing that has happened makes me trust barr. He wrote a memo to audition for the job in which he made an argument that made no legal or factual sense. He basically made up facts to support an argument that didnt seem to be legally supportable. He also in his fourpage letter refers to the fact that there needs to be an underlying crime in order to have obstruction and we know from the watergate case that that is simply not true. There is no evidence that Richard Nixon knew about the break in until after it happened, but he certainly immediately got into the obstruction and was impeached for that. He would have been indict and was named an unindicted coconspirator for his and no doubt in my mind that was completely legal. It just doesnt make sense and also doesnt make sense to me from the moment i read his summary that that could be true. I cannot believe that mueller would have given to him the power to make a decision where mueller knew what the decision would be based on his original memo. It just doesnt make sense and its really fishy that we allowed this to happen and that hes gotten away with it. Hes definitely helping the president because its hard to overcome a First Impression. The First Impression was him saying that he was exonerated for one and while he was not exonerated, he was not convicted or indicted for the other either. Thats the impression that people have and it may not be true. We need to see the full report. Matt, there is another theory. One is that he is acting in bad faith as an agent of the president as opposed to independent. One thing you tacked about during Jeff Sessionss tenure is the president s ha ranging and belittling and public bullying of his own ag was ineffective in the sense that he didnt unrecuse himself. It created a context in which barr knows if he crosses the president , he will be subject to haa ranges and bullying and trump base being mad at him. You wonder how much that effects him if he tells himself he is acting in good faith. Thats right and thats the word you have to have with them. Barr made the opposite case about himself at his confirmation hearing. He said i have been in a place where i dont need to be bullied by anybody. I can be independent. Thats the case he made to convince senators he wouldnt be pushed around by the president. When you lo