Presidency if allowed to continue unabated indefinitely. If he is concerned the investigation is moving to the west l wing, he has cause to worry. Mueller has focused on events since the election, not during the campaign, in his conversations with trumps lawyer, suggesting that mueller is zeroing in on the president s potential efforts to obstruct justice. All this just days after we learned that mueller has crossed what the president has said was his red line, subpoenaing his private business. The Trump Organization. Now nbc news confirming the New York Times reporting that the president has added an attorney known to pushing the Conspiracy Theory the fbi and Justice Department are out to frame the president. Thats where we begin this afternoon and joining us now from the Washington Post, White House Reporter ashley parker. With me here on set, Betsy Woodruff daily beast reporter. Chuck rosenberg, former u. S. Attorney and former senior official at the fbi now fortunately for our benefit an msnbc contributor. Joining us as well former u. S. Attorney barbara mcquade, also an msnbc contributor. Ashley, let me start with you if i can quickly. The one real triumph seems all he has done in the course of lashing out the last several weeks and months frankly most of the last year, the president s attorneys for most of that time convinced him to back off Robert Mueller, not go directly at Robert Mueller himself. Obviously that changed. What led to it . Well, they sure had. And a lot of that was to his credit, at least until recently, was ty cobb, reassuring the president saying, i agree with you, this probe is a witch hunt, but it will be over soon. It will be over. We all remember he said by thanksgiving. Then by the holidays. Then by the first of the year. And then when it wasnt over, the president grew increasingly frustrated, increasingly enraged and you have a legal team that is often at times sort of at war with itself in feuding. And you have a lawyer, the president s personal attorney john dowd, who it was explained to me recently, feeds the president s worst impulses. While you have ty cobb saying dont train your fire on mueller, hold steady, let it g it wont help you, you have john dowd sort of doing exactly what the president did on a different tract this weekend, going out and attacking the investigation, calling for its conclusion and in some ways people told me encouraging the president or certainly not urging him to hold back from doing the same. Yeah, were going to break down the sort of divide among the president s lawyers in a moment. Betsy, i want to get you into the conversation you have a little more information inside the president s thinking now. Thats right. One thing i can tell you based on a conversation this morning with a source familiar with the situation is that mueller appears to be building a case against the president , specifically focused on comey and michael flynn. You will recall that famous meeting in the oval office weve now heard so much about when President Trump reportedly told comey, i wish you could layoff flynn. Nothing happened there. That was the central part of comeys testimony. I can now tell you that that seems to be a central focus for the mueller investigation. That is part of the reason that is important is because that is after the president took office. Those conversations took place, which gets to, chuck, this conversation i want to have with you is the obstruction of justice interesting to see the reporting that suggests a lot of the focus has been, questions addressed to the lawyers privately so far. Does this effort undermine, does this only add to this obstruction of justice effort by Robert Mueller . Potentially, peter. Right. So, everything the president does is weighs and evaluated by prosecutors and agents. Each time he says or does something that looks like hes trying to interfere, its another brick in the wall. So, no one of these things is conclusive. No one tweet is going to lead to an impeachment or put him in jail. More likely sthan nthan not, bu accumulation of all these things becomes important and telling. Whats hard to prove in an obstruction case . Intent. How do you prove intent . With little bits and pieces of information. So that creates a pattern, right. One alone is not sufficient, but if you can demonstrate a pattern, you might have that that is exactly right. Betsy, let me ask you if i can, the facts of the president s tweets have been all over the map. We dont have time to fact check every sentence there. Let me start for a little bit. Among some of the tweets over the weekend he talks about the fact there are all these 13 hardened democrats to say nothing of the fact that bob mueller himself is a republican, right . The socalled witch hunt as he describes it now has 19 witches, as it were, right, 13 russian nationals have been charged so far. Paul manafort, his former chairman has been charged. Three individuals have pleaded guilty. Michael flynn, george papadopoulos, rick gates so far. But clearly that is not enough to sort of convince, you know, the president and it certainly may not be enough to convince the people in the president s orbit. The base still stick with him on this. Its a really interesting question. We are seeing an increased and heightened attack on the Mueller Probe those affiliated with the Mueller Probe. Over the weekend there was a story that ive heard, people in sort of trumps orbit bringing up a relationship between the judge who oversaw flynns plea deal and i believe a member of muellers team if thats right. Not something that would have had any bearing on flynns decision to plead guilty but a story now being tout the as evidence here is troubling. What is an interesting Counter Point is john dowd, the president s lawyer actually pointed out importantly, someone in some ways has fueled his impulses on this. Dowd himself told me the day that the 13 russians were indicted that he thought it was fantastic. Tlae thought it was great news and mueller had a huge success. To say nothing of the fact the president , this Administration Just within the last several days, imposed sanctions on the russians based on the information that came out of the mueller investigation. So, if its a witch hunt, it certainly found one of the sources of the problem right there. Exactly. The president s own treasury secretary is essentially cosigning the findings of muellers investigation. Let me ask you specifically about your conversation with john dowd. I want to drill down on that. Lets put up on the screen part of what he said to you initially. Theres been a back and forth in the lawyers role. I pray acting attorney general rosenstein will follow the brilliant and courageous example of the fbi office of professional responsibility and attorney general Jeff Sessions and bring an end to alleged Russia Collusion Investigation manufactured by mccabes boss james comey based upon a fraudulent and corrupt dossier. For one we know it wasnt based upon the dossier. It was based on information that started with george papadopoulos. Well start there in terms of the facts that are wrong with the assessment thats been made by the president and his attorney here. Dowd would later say this was him speaking, he wasnt speaking on behalf of the president. It is important because it does sort of demonstrate the thinking that he shares, as you indicate, with the president on this issue. And to be clear, when i was first communicating with dowd on saturday morning shortly after mccabe was fired by attorney general Jeff Sessions, he emailed me that statement. I emailed back and said is this on behalf of the president . Dowd replied to me yes, speaking as his counsel. I wrote my story, after it came out, he called and said he was walking it back, not on behalf of the president. When i reported on that information, he was scleclear a straightforward it reflected the president s view. Barbara, can i bring you in . Ty cobb, as we divvy it up, attorneys representing the president now, said the following after that statement came out, the tweets from the president , the statement from john dowd. Heres what he wrote. In response to media speculation and related questions being posed the administration, the white house yet again confirms that the president is not considering or discussing the firing of the special counsel Robert Mueller. But to be clear, barbara, the president cant fire mueller himself. He would require Rod Rosenstein to do that or a new attorney general if he would replace Jeff Sessions right now. So, what do you make of these comments . Because the fact of the matter is the president at any time could begin the dominos that help go toward that conclusion. Yeah, i think the president has the authority to issue the order to Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney general, to fire Robert Mueller. He could certainly effectuate his firing. Hes using these two lawyers pretty strategically as yin and yang on the one hand saying were going to cooperate fully, were not going to fire mueller. John dowd on the other hand is throwing out these bombs to discredit Robert Mueller and james comey and andy mccabe. You see this a lot with defendants on trial, especially when they start getting worried that the evidence is mounting against them, a common strategy is to put the police on trial, put the prosecutors on trial, try to undermine confidence in the very people who are presenting the case against you in an effort to undermine the credibility of the case. It seems like hes using these two lawyers juxtaposing on one hand, im fully cooperating, on the other the message you shouldnt trust this process. Chuck, let me ask you specifically. Would Rod Rosenstein follow the messages hes getting from the boss in the west wing, from the president himself and perhaps from his attorneys and fire Robert Mueller . This is a guy i know and worked with over the years. I take him at his word, peter, when when he says only for cause and that he, Rod Rosenstein has seen no cause whatsoever. By the way, that shouldnt surprise us because i also had the privilege of working with with and for bob mueller. This is a man that does stuff by the book. So, the notion that hes going to trip or stumble or do something that gives Rod Rosenstein cause is crazy. So is it possible shall we know Jeff Sessions recuse himself, his original sin in the relationship with the president right now. Thats why the president calls his beleaguered and whatever else the last several months. Is it possible Rod Rosenstein has privately recused himself not so much to the russia portion but the obstruction of justice portion in this case . And we wouldnt even know it, is that a possibility . I guess its a possibility. But we would see some sign of someone else making decisions. How would we see is that . What should we be looking for . Its not clear too me he has recused himself. Let me start with that premise, peter. Theres been some concern rod might be a witness to certain events because, of course, he wrote the memo that originally justified the firing of jim comey. Right. Some people have wondered and im one of them why he hasnt recused him seflt. But i do trust his judgment. I imagine he has a pretty good reason for staying in the case. Ashley, let me ask you if i can. There are some of the president s tweets reported in the New York Times. The tweets came as mr. Mueller is said to have sent questions to mr. Trumps legal team as part of negotiations over an interview with the president. How much of the president s recent spiral do we think is associated with the potential, now it appears to be closer and closer for some form of an interview between Robert Muellers team and the president . Could end up just being questions sent to him and he answers them on paper . That would seem likely from bob muellers interest. There is not potential for a followup here. What do you sort of attribute this recent outburst to . Sure. Well, another thing the president was frustrated over was that youll remember the times also reported that mueller had issued a subpoena to the Trump Organization and the president had said previously that he had a red line, if the investigation ever got into his businesses, his financial dealings, really his family in that same way, that would be a red line. And it is unclear exactly if hes drawing the line here. That was one thing i was told agitated him. And the other thing that has agitated him just generally again is the sense that he did believe at the beginning that he thought it was an unfair witch hunt, but he thought it was going to wrap up and it has just become very clear to everyone involved, including now finally the president himself and his lawyers, that this is not wrapping up. And so as it got closer, as this gets closer to him, to the oval office, to his family, to potentially sitting down with mueller, everything that makes this feel more real basically, he is incredibly frustrated because he correctly understands this is a shadow over his presidency. It is preventing him from governing and leading the way he would want to. And to be certain, some of that is his fault. Hes allowing it to become a distraction. But all of these things sort of created the perfect storm that when he went into this weekend with a lot of down time, he let his private thoughts and the things hes mused to friends go public on twitter. Let me ask, barbara, the news breaking this afternoon on this deal is the fact joe de jen ova is another attorney on the president s legal team. Another arsenal to back him up. He is someone who has spouted conspiracy theories about how the d. O. J. , department of justice and the fbi are trying to frame the president. Heres part of what he has said in the not too distant past. Take a listen. The attorney general needs to appoint a special counsel and if he doesnt want to do that he needs to make sure the Criminal Division of the Justice Department impanels a grand jury immediately and starts putting in that grand jury under oath comey, strzok, page, baker, mccabe, everybody. We have long since passed the time when we need to have just congressional investigations for this. Make no mistake about it. A group of fbi and d. O. J. People were trying to frame donald trump of a falsely created crime. So, earlier, barbara, you were talking about the yin and yang that exists between some of the president s attorneys now. Seems like one scale is getting heaven ire than the other in te terms of what the president is looking for. Does he have the idea he needs to double down in terms of the firing . A defense attorney may act as an attack dog for you in the media. In his prior statements maybe that is the strategy here. It also could be the strategy to negotiate with Robert Mueller for the terms of grand jury testimony as well. He is a former u. S. Attorney and so he also would be very savvy in the ways of grand jury testimony. So, it may be for strategic reasons like that, but based on his statements, it could be that he does want to use him in that attack dog mode. Can i pin you down, it would be in terms of strategy. What is the added value this attorney will bring in to give us a look ahead in terms of strategy we can anticipate . Thats for me . Yes, please, yes, barbara. I think it could relate to the grand jury testimony. Does he want to put up roadblocks in terms of having donald trump appear before the grand jury, does he want to negotiate a more favorable situation with an informal interview, in an office where he can sit right next to donald trump. I think those are the kind of things i think its clear at the end of the day Robert Mueller is going to get his shot at donald trump. But how aggressive does trump want to be in trying to resist that or dictate the terms. So, that might be some of the strategic role that he will play here. Betsy, just to punctuate this thought, on march 11 we heard from the president , he was dying in a north county times report im happy with my attorney, i have everybody i want. Eight days later they make the announcement hes hiring a new attorney. Is it possible to be surprised by the Trump Administration . This is just a pattern as chuck would say. Thank you very much for that. Betsy, ashley, parker, thank you very much. Coming up Andrew Mccabe kept memos of his interactions with the president just like james comey did. So, how useful will they be to Robert Mueller . Also, as the president tries to discredit the special counsel, the question for republicans, how far are they willing to let him go . 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