Well, good evening once again from our nbc news headquarters here in new york. Day 861 of the Trump Administration, and on this day after Robert Mueller broke his silence, not surprisingly the president attacked Robert Mueller and all those who have worked for him. The president started his day with this rather surprising quote. Russia, russia, russia, thats all you heard at the beginning of this witch hunt hoax. And now russia has disappeared because i had nothing to do with russia helping me to get elected. Interesting wording there. Lets give him that. Quickly walked back by the president on the south lawn in a predeparture flurry of misinformation. Do you believe that russia helped you get elect kwder. No, russia did not help me get elected. You know who got me elected . You know who got me elected . I got me elected. Russia didnt help me at all. Russia, if anything, i think helped the other side. They used sophisticated cyber techniques to hack into computers and networks used by the clinton campaign. He said essentially youre innocent. Im innocent of all charges, and, you know, the thing that nobody brings up, there was no crime. If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so. There was no charge because he had no information. Under Longstanding Department policy, a president cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office. Charging the president with a crime was therefore not an option we could consider. So not long after trump made his comments, his steadfastly loyal attorney general bill barr held the line again today and was critical of Robert Mueller in an interview taped for cbs news. Specifically he questioned muellers choice, what mueller saw as his obligation not to make a decision on obstruction. I personally felt he could have reached a decision. The opinion says you cant indict a president while hes in office, but he could have reached a decision as to whether it was criminal activity, but he had his reasons for not doing it, which he explained. When he didnt make a decision, the Deputy Attorney general Rod Rosenstein and i felt it was necessary for us as the heads of the department to reach that decision. Trump has also renewed his allegations that the former special counsel was a biased investigator. Describing him as the highly conflicted Robert Mueller. Trump later elaborated on that, retelling the false story that mueller came to the oval office along with other potential candidates seeking to be named the director of the fbi. He had already been in that position for 12 years. I told him no. The next day he was named special counsel. A total conflict of interest. Trump wasnt finished. He later tried to drive that point home as the cameras were rolling. I think he is a total conflicted person. I think mueller is a true never trumper. Hes somebody that dislikes donald trump. Hes somebody that didnt get a job that he requested, that he wanted very badly and then he was appointed. However, theres this, the Mueller Report includes testimony from white house adviser steve bannon saying that he recalled telling the president that the purported conflicts were ridiculous and that none could come close to justifying precluding mueller from serving as special counsel. The report goes on, although the white house thought about beseeming mueller to become director again, he did not come in looking for the job. Mueller made it clear yesterday he wants his report to speak for him and he does not want to testify in the person before congress. A lot of democrats nonetheless are pressing for him to appear. And according to the daily beast, theyre now being joined by some in trumps inner circle, a number of whom have been eager to declare muellers case closed. Sam stein, who joins us in just a moment, reports some of trumps closest advisers want mueller to be subjected to conservative lawmakers questions about the conduct and outcome of his investigation. Meanwhile, according to nbc news, 50 House Democrats and 1 republican are now in favor of starting an impeachment inquiry into the president. Today trump was asked about that. Do you think theyre going to impeach you . I dont see how. They can because theyre possibly allowed, although i cant imagine the courts allowing it. Ive never gotten into it. I never thought that would even be possible to use that word. To me its a dirty word, the word impeach. Its a dirty, filthy, disgusting word and it had nothing to do with me. There you have it. Here with us on our leadoff discussion, joyce vance, who spent 25 years as a federal prosecutor. A. B. Stoddard, associate editor at real clear politics and the aforementioned sam stein, politics editor for the daily beast. Sam, you get to go first because your name was invoked. Thank you. Where do we stand tonight after a day of some epic falsehoods on the south lawn . Its a good question. With respect to mueller testifying, i believe that we are getting to a place where basically a good majority of each side of the political aisle now are pining for him to come to the hill to answer more questions. Mueller, of course, said that he wanted the report to speak for itself and has resisted privately to come to the hill in part because hes worried about it being a political circus. Today when my colleague and i went asking around to some of the members of the legal team for President Trump, they had done a 180. Prior to now President Trump, of course, said he didnt want mueller to testify publicly on the hill. The standing line from the white house was that the case was closed and it was time to move on. But we talked with Rudy Giuliani today, among other people, john dowd, the president s former lawyer, both of them now want mueller to be dragged up to the hill. The possibility of a subpoena was mentioned. And they want it because they believe that conservative lawmakers on the hill can ask him pointed questions about the origins of his probe, about the composition of his team and that they can do effectively to muddy the waters after what was seen pretty universally as a very difficult Critical Press statement that mueller gave on wednesday. So its a dynamic situation, but i wouldnt be surprised if we saw a groundswell of more support for mueller coming to the hill to testify eventually. A couple of things here just to back up sams point. Here is a bit of mr. Hannity from tonight. Robert mueller, i am telling you, is scared to death to testify. Why . Because hed have to answer real tough questions from people like congressman jim jordan, congressman mark meadows, congressman devin nunes. So, a. B. Stoddard, that is the state of play tonight as we come on the air and then there is the matter of mr. Barr. Im going to play another bit of the interview in alaska with cbs news. This is about how barr responds to the current criticism. We live in a hyperpartisan age where people no longer really Pay Attention to the substance of what was said but to who says it and what side theyre on and what its political ramifications are. Im going to make the decision based on the law and the facts. I just think it goes with being the attorney general in a hyperpartisan period of time. So, a. B. , you heard the man, it goes with the territory. Nothing to see her would be another takeaway from that. Yet, we had a former fed on this broadcast last night who was appointed by barr to her seat who called him straight up a liar. This whole tour that bill barr has done from as soon as he was confirmed as attorney general from the presentation of the summary of the Mueller Report to the press conference of the release of the Mueller Report, to his fox news interview to his cbs interview has revealed that he is intentionally i thought it was interesting the words he chose. He said people are looking at political ramifications and not substance. Hes intentionally not giving us substance on why he believes that the investigators have to be investigated. But hes intentionally using provocative language to produce a political ramification that pleases the president and casts aspersions on the investigators, including mr. Mueller, with whom he went on the air with cbs precisely to contradict the day following muellers public statement. He is talking about spying. He is talking about people may have not committed treason in the legal sense. Maybe they thought they were doing the right thing. He has before hes collected a set of facts cast doubt on this process that mueller said yesterday was done in a fair way with integrity. He is absolutely playing a political game. He is not protecting the department of justice. Hes not protecting bob mueller. Hes not backing him up. And i think its astounding to see him on a press tour that continued from alaska because of bob muellers surprise statement. He wanted to get on top of it the day after and contradict him and say i think he could have made a call on obstruction when he knows what the special counsel said yesterday was the entire frame of the olc guidelines, is you dont taint a president with a charge or even there is no fairness when he cant defend himself. The entire criminal Justice System is separate. Its only remedied in the congress and cant even begin. Mueller basically could have never said i do think hes guilty of obstruction but maybe we wont charge him. What barr said today, he knows better and he absolutely intentionally just contradicting bob mueller. I thought was staggering. Joyce vance, as someone who has devoted your adult life to the law, as someone who teaches law to law students currently, can you remind our viewers as ever you wish how far out of plum for the job of attorney general this looks . Its, i think, very difficult to convey how far out of whack this is just because weve walked down this path one step at a time and the norms have receded to such a great distance that i think its difficult for us to remember what it looked like when an attorney general was loyal to the people who worked for them and backed them up. Instead, this attorney general has accused his people of spying and refused to back them up. When an attorney general would have never violated the clear notion that an attorney general doesnt stand up at the podium in the Justice Department and lie about the content of a special counsels report, which is what this attorney general did, giving the president his headline no collusion, no obstruction, when, in fact, that is not what the Mueller Report found. So i fear that the damage thats being done to the Justice Department, which, of course, can operate to keep our communities safe only because people believe in its integrity, that that damage will be long term, it will be sustained and there will be a long road back for the Justice Department when this is over because in large part of what this attorney general has done. Sam, youve hard it in the last two answers. And say nothing of people who knew barr back when. Right. And were excited about his appointment and are rather amazed today at how pliant and loyal he has proved to be to one client. I imagine the folks on the trump team are very happy at his selection. Well, its difficult to remember it wasnt that long ago, but its difficult to remember when barr was nominated there was a massive sense of relief among the legal establishment and even among some democrats on capitol hill. Yep. At the time matt whitaker, who had been sessions chief of staff, was in that acting role and there was an assumption that he was going to be a sycophant for trump and do his bidding, and it turns out that every appear applied to Matt Whitakers tenure has been actually realized by bill barr, who was considered an institutionalist who has become perhaps trumps best defender in the administration. And i remember shortly after barr went out and summarized the Mueller Report we began asking people in and around the president how they felt about the job he was doing and they were ectatic, ectatic at the interference he was running on the president s behalf. They had assumed this was going to be the role that Jeff Sessions had played, but Jeff Sessions actually took a far more different approach, a far more hands off approach than bill barr has. And the question i guess Going Forward is, is there any remedy to this . Remember, barr was supposed to be called, was supposed to go in front of the house judiciary committee, but he declined to do so on the basis that they were going to have lawyers on the committee ask the question. At the time that was a big deal but because we live in this sort of hyper news cycle, that story seems like it was eons ago. So i dont know if there is a house remedy that democrats can summon to push back against what barr is actually doing now. Joyce, back over to you for a question i saw you ask, at least rhetorically on social media yesterday that people will be left with for a good long time, what if mueller had spoken first . There is no reason that the comments we heard from special counsel mueller yesterday could not have been the American Peoples first introduction to what was after all the special counsels report. So i think were left with this really plaguing question of why we heard bill barrs inaccurate comments. I think at this point we have all decided what the answer to that question is and we should all be troubled by the fact that muellers comment, which we heard yesterday, they were fair, they were accurate and we were kept from hearing them for two months. A. B. , this is an outgrowth of a discussion we had on the broadcast last night, that the Mueller Report was perhaps written and produced for an Attention Span that no longer exists in this country. This is a hell of a piece of writing in the current atlantic. This is by ken white. Mueller is a man out of time. This is the age of alternatively factual tweets and sound bites. Hes a by the book throwback who expects americans to read and absorb carefully worded 400page report. Has he met us . His high standards sometimes manifest as touching naivete. Fair . Hes an honest man of integrity who might be from another time but might have been expecting us sort of in a moment of National Emergency to invest time in the 448 pages. Imagine that, yeah. So what i saw in his Public Comments yesterday was the realization, and i think he was driven there by several reasons, i think he wanted to contradict barr, which follows his initial two letters, saying that the attorney general created confusion about the context of his report the contents. I think he wanted to say to the American People you havent read this report and this concerted attack by the russians is really, really dangerous and it will happen again. Thats why he started his comments with that and finished repeating the same line about how it deserves the attention of every american. I hope more americans will read this, but perhaps his expectations were too high, that many people would read it. I think they took bill barrs word and his assessment and thought they could go on with their lives. Sam, last word. Yeah, i mean, i almost feel like its understating it. You know, bob mueller could have summarized his point in a 280character tweet, and even if he did that trump would have just contradicted it. I mean, look what happened this morning. Donald trump admitted that russia helped him get elected. In a tweet. He did it twice because he wanted to correct a separate part of the tweet, but he repeated it, and then minutes later he was in front of cameras denying he ever said such a thing. We live in this weird dystopian reality that cant accommodate a Mueller Report, regardless of the length its in. Just to a. B. s point, its true that mueller emphasized the russian interference part first, and i think for good reason, perhaps thats because it is the most existential threat in the coming election. Im struck by the notion that what seems so out of the realm of possibility, that a president ial candidate would willingly accept a foreign powers interference has now become for a swath of the country basically accepted. Its not just trumps tweet this week, but over the last week Rudy Giuliani has been openly courting help from ukraine to take down joe biden, so we are living in a postmueller world in more ways than one, i guess. Lets leave, shall we, detailed accounts for our grandchildren of this era where everything mattered and yet nothing mattered at the same time. On that philosophical note, our thanks to three very smart people for starting us off tonight. To joyce vance, to a. B. Stoddard, to sam stein. Thanks, brian. Thanks to you all. Coming up for us, following the special counsel swan song, the democratic drumbeat towards impeachment proceedings growing stronger. Some believe its the path to salvation. Others believe its the path to ruin for the party. And later, that warning from mueller. Weve been talking about multiple systematic efforts by the russians to attack us. Did anyone act on that today . Two experts are standing by in the field for us as the 11th hour is just Getting Started on this thursday night. Did you know comcast business goes beyond fast with a gigspeed network. Complete internet reliability. Advanced voice solutions. Wifi to keep everyone connected. Video monitoring. Thats huge. Did you guys know we did all this stuff . No. Im not even done yet. Wow. Business tv. Cloud apps and support. Comcast business goes beyond at t. Start with internet and voice for just 59. 90 a month. Its everything a Small Business owner needs. Comcast business. Beyond fast. There was no crime. You know, high crimes and not with or or, its high crimes and misdemeanors. There was no high crime and there was no misdemeanor, so how do you impeach based on that . So were good. Th