Well, good evening once again from our nbc news headquarters here in new york. Day 860 of the Trump Administration and today was striking at a basic level because we havent heard Robert Muellers voice for over two years, yet weve talked about him every night for the same length of time. We dont know if he was frustrated by how his hard work has been portrayed. We dont know if he was angry at the way the attorney general gok out ahead and summarized his work or how the president spun it over these interveing weeks. Were left only with his words as he spoke them on his last day at work, and perhaps his last day in public life. The Washington Post editorial page spoke for a lot of people tonight when they wrote he hi should have said this weeks ago but make no mistake because of his bearing and rectitude he spoke with Great Authority and said chilling things about the president and on another front his words were designed to be chilling on the attack on this country and election by russia. Here is how we want to begin tonight for those who havent seen it, were going to play it. For those who have, please note here how perhaps Different Things will stand out to you. At the conclusion, well talk with our journalist and experts but here it is, as it happened 11 00 a. M. Eastern time this morning when 74yearold Robert Swann Mueller iii entered the Justice Department briefing room. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for being here. Two years ago, the acting attorney general asked me to serve as special counsel and hes created the special counsels office. The appointment order directed the office to investigate in russian interference in the 2016 president ial election. This included investigating any links or coordination between the russian government and individuals associated with the trump campaign. Al now i have not spoken publicly during our investigation. Im speaking out today because our investigation is complete. The attorney general has made the report on our investigation largely public. We are formally closing the special counsels office and as well im resigning from the department of justice to return to private life. Ill make a few remarks about the results of our work but beyond these few remarks, it is important that the offices written work speak for itself. Let me begin where the appointment order begins and that is interference in the 2016 president ial election. As alleged by the grand jury in an indictment, russian Intelligence Officers who are part of the Russian Military en launched a concerted attack on our political system. The indictment alleges that the use of sophisticated cyber techniques to hack into computers and networks used by the clinton campaign. They stole private information and released that information through fake online and identities and through the organization wikileaks. The releases were designed and timed to interfere with our election and to damage a president ial candidate. And at the same time as the grand jury alleged in a separate indictment, a private russian entity engaged in a social media operation where russian citizens posed as americans in order to influence an election. These indictments contain allegations and we are not commenting on the guilt or innocence of any specific defendant. Every defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. U the indictments allege and the other activities in our report describe efforts to interfere in our political system, they needed to be investigated and understood and that is among the reasons why the department of justice established our office. That is also a reason we investigated efforts to obstruct the investigation. The matters we investigated were of paramount importance. It was critical for us to obtain fullus and Accurate Information from every person we questioned. When a subject of an investigation obstructs that investigation or lies to investigators, it strikes at the core of the governments effort to find the truth and hold wrongdoers accountable. Let me say a word about the report. The report has two parts. Addressing the two main issues we were asked to investigate. The first volume of the report details numerous efforts emanating from russia to influence the election. This volume includes a discussion of the trump campaigns response to this activity as well as our conclusion that there was insufficient evidence to charge a broader conspiracy. And in this second volume, the report describes the results and analysis of our obstruction of justice investigation involving the president. The order appointing the special counsel authorized us to investigate actions that could obstruct the investigation. We conducted that investigation and we kept the office of the acting attorney general a prized of the progress of our work. And as set forth in the report after that investigation, if we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so. We did not, however, make a determination as to whether the president did commit a crime. The introduction to the volume two of our report explains that decision. It explains that under long Standing Department policy, a president cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office. That is unconstitutional. Even if the charge is kept under seal and hidden from public view, that, too, is prohibited. The special counsels office is part of the department of justice and by regulation, it was bound by that department policy. Charging the president with a crime was therefore not an option we could consider. The departments written opinion explaining the policy makes several important points that further informed our handling of the obstruction investigation. Those points are summarized in our report and ill describe two of them for you. First, the opinion explicitly permits the investigation of a sitting president because it is important to preserve evidence while memories are fresh and documents available. Among other things, that evidence could be used if there are coconspirators that could be charged now. And second, the opinion says that therg constitution requirea process other than the criminal Justice System to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing. And beyond department policy, we are regarded by principles of fairness. It would be unfair to potentially, it would be unfair to potentially accuse somebody of a crime when there can be no Court Resolution of the actual charge. So that was Justice Department policy. Those were the principles under which we operated and from them, we concluded that we would, would not reach a determination one way or the other about whether the president committed a crime. That is the offices final position and we will not comment on any other conclusion or hypotheticals about the president. We conducted an independent criminal investigation and reported the results to the attorney general as required by department regulations. The attorney general then concluded that it was appropriate to provide our d report to congress and to the American People. At one point in time, i requested that certain portions of the report be released, the attorney general preferred to make that preferred to make the entire report public all at once and we appreciate that the attorney general made the report largely public and i certainly did not question the attorney generals good faith in that decision. Now i hope and expect this to be the only time i will speak to you in this manner. I am making that decision myself, no one has told me whether i can or should testify or speak further about this matter. There has been discussion about an appearance before congress, any testimony from this office would not go beyond our report. It contains our findings and analysis and the reasons for the decisions we made. We chose those words carefully and the work speaks for itself and the report is my testimony. I would not provide information beyond that which is already public in any appearance before congress. In addition, access to the underlying work product is being decided in a process that does not involve our office. In so beyond what ive said here today, and what is contained in our written work, i do not believe it is appropriate for me to speak further about the investigation or to comment on the actions of the Justice Department or congress. And for that reason i will not be taking questions today, as well. G now before i step away, i want to thank the attorneys, the fbi agents, the analysts, the professional staff who helped us conduct this investigation in ah fair and independent manner. These individuals who spent nearly two years with the special counsels office were of the highest integrity. I will close by reiterating the central allegation of our indictments that there were multiple systematic efforts to interfere in our election. And that allegation deserves the attention of every american. Thank you, thank you for being here today. Sir no questions. And with that, about nine and a half minutes, he was gone. Lets get to our leadoff discussion on a wednesday night. Frank figliuzzi who worked for Robert Mueller. Jeremy robash, former chief of staff at cia and the pentagon, former chief counsel for the house intel committee. Katie benner, Justice Department reporter for the New York Times, and philip rucker, Pulitzer Prize winning bureau chief for the Washington Post. Thank you all for being on our broadcast tonight. Frank, id like to begin with you. For the long view, what is it we have just witnessed . We saw a man of great integrity, a Public Servant, career Public Servant stand up and take control of a situation that he was losing control of. The talk of public testimony, Congressional Senate hearings, house hearings, he decided enough was enough. He was going to speak. People who know mueller know that this was both typical mueller and atypical, because today he publicly although in a measured fashion rebuked his boss. Thats very atypical for mueller. What was typical today is the measured tone, was the sticking to the facts and not becoming the story himself. The takeaway for me with regard to the attorney general is i have far more questions than answers and i have leadership questions, how did we get to the point today where there was a major dysfunction, disconnect between the attorney general and the special counsel with regard to the rules they were playing by, they were playing by different rules. Mueller was playing by rules and it appears barr may have thrown the rule book out. All right, katy, lets pick up on that very point. Ht what does your reporting tell you as to how this went down and is everybody getting along over there at d. O. J. Tonight do you think . I think the Justice Department has done a lot to try to say that the special counsel and bill barr are doing just fine. They put out a joint statement saying that, you know, mueller and barr are not actually that far apart in terms of what they think the report says. Clearly, bill barr chose to weigh in on something mueller said nobody should weigh in except for a process outside of the system. So that is it makes that statement look odd in that light but certainly the Justice Department is trying to show the two men are still unified. Interestingly, though, it is clear that Robert Mueller wanted to step in and dispel a lot of myths, most importantly, the myth that he was working without a frame work or his decision not to prosecute or to prosecute was somehow mysterious, which is how bill barr portrayed it. When the report was first released. He said he really couldnt figure out why mueller had done this. Mueller made it clear why he did this today for those who didnt read the report, he said he was hemmed in by Justice Departmentd regulations and olc opinion that said you cant indict a sitting president. He made it clear as day he is doing just fine. So jeremy bash, you watched this closely. Did he veer at all from his own assignment which was to hue to what he had written in the report and you used a phrase in our coverage earlier today that this was a constitutional plea. Can you define that for us . Yeah, i think the mere fact that he stepped up to the podium is highly relevant and of historical note for two reasons. Number one is all the content was present in the april 18th report. So here is six weeks later, he felt the need to push back on the narrative that had been advanced by the president , by the attorney general that there was total exoneration, that the only thing left to investigate were the origins of this investigation. I think bob muellers mere presence at the podium was a starkdi repudiation of his attorney general and of the president. And second, in terms of the content, i thought it was interesting, brian, that what did he choose to highlight . He chose to hold up the report and take a highlighter to the fact he could not charge a president under the office of Counsel Legal guidance. Congress is the only branch of government that can now bring charges against a sitting president. He noted that if he was confidence that the president had not committed crimes, he would have clearly said so, which is a very odd phrase. Lawyerly polite way of saying i think there is misconduct and wrongdoing by the president and if i wasnt confident to that, i would have let you know and he opened the door, i think, for congress to do its job holding impeachment hearings. Phil rutger, physically, i think its fairer to say and this is on us, because weve been running this same chain of now antiquated file tape of Robert Mueller who for a public figure has not been a terribly public man. He appeared older today but thats also what people picked up on in the contrast to donalds trump and his bearing and presence and demeanor, how damaging was this as a contrast to what were already seeing tonight all capital letters again with the witch hunt from the white house . Yeah, brian. So the donald trump is all about the show, all about bombast and bragging, mueller is all about the facts. He kept to a script today. You saw him reading from that paper. He did not using aed he did not us a jekttives. Adjectives. He told you word for word the conclusions of that report and very little more. He tried to be sober. He tried to be very careful and measured in his tone and he yo t tried to relay certain pieces of information to the American People that i think he fears people in the country have not fully comprehended including its important to note the fact that russia did have this incredible interference campaign in the election and just how systematic that was for this country and how dangerous he believes it was. Thats exactly where were going. When we come back to our viewer, running just one thing for nine and a half minutes only means we have to sneak away for a quick commercial break. All of our guests are staying with us. When we come back, Robert Mueller began and ended those comments as you saw with an ominous warning about russia and later, dozens in congress now demanding this president be held accountable, but are they all talking about the same remedy . As the 11th hour is just Getting Started on this consequential wednesday night. With moderate to severe ulceratiyour plans. 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Where was the senior official in our government today and this speaks to this section of the Mueller Report, where was the senior official coming off of this warning by mueller asking demanding we redouble our efforts to secure our next election . Well, the commander in chief doesnt think that way, brian, because in some respect, important respects, he welcomed the russian interference, because one thing bob mueller did not note, and i wish he would have stated it, the Intelligence Community definitively concl