President ial field. We will be speaking live with senator bennett later on this hour. This will be his first interview since making his president ial announcement today. Very excited to have him on set. Hell be joining us in just a moment. We have just confirmed that senator Kamala Harris, one of the leading contenders for the nomination has just confirmed with our Office Tonight that she will be our guest on this show here tomorrow. So, i know tomorrows friday. If you were planning on taking friday off, the answer is no. Im not either. Im going to be here with Kamala Harris, so you should be here too. Today show, some of the big news that happened today is that today we got word, i guess, that Robert Mueller, hence forth, shall speak for himself. At least we sort of got that word. Now, this is only a Single Source report thus far and you should consider that. But nbc news is reporting according to one source familiar with the matter that the Judiciary Committee in the house led by kongman jerry nadler, that committee has begun discussions directly with Robert Muellers team about mueller himself coming to testify to congress. According to nbcs reporting previously, the committee had been trying to arrange muellers testimony and they had been discussing that matter with the Justice Department assuming that the Justice Department could speak for Robert Mueller and would facilitate his testimony. There have been multiple reports and some scathing allegations from democratic members of congress recently that the Justice Department has been blocking that, that theyve been refusing to set a date for muellers testimony, theyve been slow walking the requests for muellers testimony from multiple congressal committees. Theres been allegations from democratic members that the Justice Department hasnt been acting in good faith despite attorney general barrs public assertions that he has no objections to mueller coming before congress. This new nbc reporting tonight as yet just a Single Source, not yet confirmed by other news organization, but this reporting from nbc tonight is that muellers team is now communicating directly with the house Judiciary Committee about mueller coming up to testify. Now, we got word of that tonight right after we got word of this from senator Amy Klobuchar. And ill tell you what this is. I will give you heres the spoiler. This starts off kind of normal. Its really interesting. I think its really important. It starts off kind of normal. It gets very funny right at the end which is why you should hear it. Okay. Here it is. Heres the date. Yowl see there, may 2nd, 2019. Thats today. Its addressed to robert s. Mueller iii office of special counsel. Dear special counsel mueller right off the bat this is interesting. This is not something you see every day. This is on the letter head of a u. S. Senator, Amy Klobuchar, who is also running for president. Shes writing one on one as a senator to the special counsel directly. Hey bob. Hey bob, ive got a thing i need from you. Dear special counsel mueller, i write to request information related to the report on the investigation into russian interference in the 2016 president ial election which was recently completed by your office. On may 1st, attorney general barr appeared before the Senate Committee to testify about the evidence collected during your investigation and the findings described in your or the are. On numerous occasions, attorney general barr was unable to speak to certain sections of the report or to the underlying evidence evaluated by your office. The shade there is that a lot of people notice that attorney general barr didnt seem to know how to answer basic factual answers about the report which gave rise to suspicions that maybe he never bothered to read it. Back to the letter. I asked attorney general barr whether your office requested ask approximate reviewed any of President Trumps personal tax documents or the Trump Organizations financial documents. Attorney general barr stated he did not know and suggested i ask you directly. Unfortunately chairman Lindsey Graham has made clear he does not intend to call you, special counsel mueller. He does not intend to call you to testify before the committee. Accordingly i respectfully request you provide answers to the follow. Number one, did your Office ReviewPresident Trumps tax returns . If not, did you attempt to obtain the documents . If so, what years did you retain . Number two, did your Office ReviewFinancial Statements from the Trump Organization . The if not, did you attempt to obtain them . If you did obtain them, what years of statements did you retain and were the documents complete. Were redactions made to the documents. This is how it ends. In addition, i respectfully request you provide the committee with any of President Trumps tax returns and Financial Statements that were obtained by your office to aide in our evaluation of the report and its conclusions. Sincerely, Amy Klobuchar, United States senator. So, thats obviously the funny part at the end. Oh, and by the way, in addition if by any chance you did get trumps tax returns and Financial Statements, i would like those. Thank you. Sincerely, senator klobuchar. I enclosed a self addressed stamped c130 cargo plane. Just send those my way. Where this comes from is a little notice but a sharp and potentially important Little Exchange that happened at yesterdays hearing between senator klobuchar and attorney general bill barr. It was at the very, very end of his testimony, been there for hours. Klobuchar had had a long first round of questions with him. Theyve gone through the roster of senators on the committee and just came back for one quick final round where people just had a couple minutes to ask final answers. And klobuchar just Bing Bing Bing bing, peppered him with a bunch of quick questions. And im not sure this is how he wishes he would have responded. Thank you. Mr. Attorney general, on april 27th, President Trump stated mueller, i assume, for 35 million, he checked my taxes and he checked my financials. Is that accurate . Did the special counsel review the president s taxes and the Trump Organizations Financial Statements . I dont know. Can you find out if i ask later in a written question . I yes, or you could ask bob mueller when he comes here. Okay. Ill do that too. But i think ill also ask you and then obviously we would want to see them as underlying information. During my earlier questions, we went through a number of actions by the president that the special counsel looked into. So, she just moves on. She just moves on. Great. Im going to ask you and yeah, at your suggestion, i will ask Robert Mueller directly. I will absolutely do that. If the answer is yes, he got tax returns and Financial Statements well expect to see those as underlying information. Right . Lets move on. Next question. Barrs just like say what . Hm . So, i think it was a good use of the second round of questions. So, get him on the record suggesting that the senator should go directly to Robert Mueller on this question and get him on the record. I mean, get mueller on the record. She should go to mueller directly on this matter to find out what the underlying evidence was that mueller looked at, and she should be asked him to obtain it. Okay. And to the extent it matters, she gets him on the record. She gets barr on the record not objecting when she notifies him that if mueller did look at trumps taxes she and the committee would be furnished with those since that is underlying investigation. William barr stug areals to keep up and swallows his tongue and says nothing. Thats a quick exchange. Thats kind of what you need to move these things forward sometimes and in this case, that moved it forward. That gave senator klobuchar an opening, in fact an invitation, by the attorney general for her to start communicating directly with Robert Mueller rather than going through him or going through the Justice Department. Amy klobuchar has written to mueller and opened up that line of communication with the office. We shall see. I think now that we know a little bit more about what has been going on in Robert Muellers life recently, now that we have seen his letter which was made public yesterday which is him me mothmorializing print and laying out the battle hes been in with william barr or barr ris representing his findings to the public. One of the things that does is puts mueller himself back at the center of this drama. After what we have now seen and heard about the behavior of attorney general william barr when it comes to mueller and muellers report, it should be no surprise that Committee Chairman and members of the Judiciary Committees aring go to open up communication with mueller directly rather than routing anything through will yar barr. Its clear that attorney general william barr is the last person you should talking to. Weve got mueller on the record saying barr has been mischaracterizing his work and mishandling hiss work, right . So, the whole idea that barr is the one you go to if you want to know anything about this investigation or about mueller himself, thats over now. Barr himself elected not to turn up in front of the house Judiciary Committee. That will take some time to resolve as a conflict. Barr had volunteered today. He backed out. Now they will likely subpoena him to testify. If he refuses to testify in response to the subpoena, theyll have to fight that. Ultimately they may decide to hold him in contempt of congress. That will be a lengthy process. By the time barr agrees to sit down in front of the house Judiciary Committee, we will be some distance further down the road in this ongoing scandal. One side benefit of that delay is that by that point, william barr will hopefully no longer be seen as the guy youre supposed to ask questions of about Robert Mueller. By that point whenever he does sit down with house judiciary and decides hes ready to face democrat question, hell no longer be thought of as the guy who is supposed to explain Robert Mueller. At this point, by the time thats going to happen by the time he sits down and does that, the reason theyre going to want to talk to him is no longer going to be that barr isnt the one whos explaining mueller. At that point, the reason theyll want to talk to william barr is because of barrs own behavior, is because of what mueller himself says is barrs mishandling of his investigation, his misrepresentation of muellers finding, his creation about what mueller did and mueller found. And to that point, to that point of William Barrs behavior and what he has done here and how it may be affecting what we know about the investigation and what impact its having on the presidency, to that point after his testimony yesterday, we are still trying to get to the bottom of this. Was it special counsel muellers responsibility to make a charging recommendation . I think the Deputy Attorney general and i thought it was. But but not just charging, but to determine whether or not conduct was criminal. The president would be charged could not be charged as long as he was in office. Do you agree with the reasons that he offered for not making a decision in volume two of his report . And why or why not . Im not really sure of his reasoning. I think that if he felt that he shouldnt go down the path of making a traditional prosecution decision then he shouldnt have investigated. That was the time to pull up. That was the time to pull up. Im going to land this plane. I guess theyre saying pull it up. I mean, the Justice Department and attorney general william barr has confirmed that Robert Mueller told barr that he didnt believe he was allowed to make a declaration as to whether or not President Trump committed crimes because of the Justice Department policy that says you cannot charge a sitting president. If you cant charge someone, its not fair to accuse them of a crime. And the whole point of charging someone is that you then give them their day in court so they can defeat the charges, they can beat the charges if they didnt acomplete the crime, so they can clear their name. You dont give an accused criminal that right if you never give them a day in court if you dont put them on trial and let them prove they didnt do it. That was muellers reasoning whether or not you agree with reasoning. That is what mueller explained in his report about why he felt constrained by Justice Department policy that he couldnt say one way or the other. William barr and the Justice Department say that they learned that that was muellers position at a meeting between barr and mueller on march 5th. March 5th of this year. Thats the first time the two of these guys met after william barr was sworn in as attorney general, after he was cleared by the Ethics Office to take over oversight of muellers work. How did william barr respond to that news flash when mueller told barr he believed he couldnt make a traditional prosecution decision about the president. How did he take that . How did he respond . Now we know in his own words. I think that if he felt that he shouldnt go down the path of making a traditional prosecutive decision, they shouldnt have investigated. That was the time to pull up. So, that was the time to pull up. If youre not making a charging decision and you say youre not, then the way william barr thinks about it means you cant be investigating. You cant be using grand juries. You cant be using subpoenas. You cant be using all the tools that prosecutors use to investigate toward the ultimate aim of assembling a criminal case. You cant do that. You cant use any of those tools not if youre not going to assemble a criminal case. Not if youre not going to file charges you cant be investigating if youre not going to charge says the brandnew attorney general, newly installed to oversee Robert Muellers work. And less than three weeks after that first meeting, we get word that Robert Muellers investigation is over and his report is in. Two and a half weeks after barr was allowed to take over oversight of the Mueller Investigation, the Mueller Investigation was ended. Did barr end it basically as soon as he got into the Justice Department. What he has explained since then is his own belief that mueller had no right to look at potential obstruction of justice, to investigate the president s conduct at all not if mueller at the end of the day wasnt going to declare the president could be charged with a crime. So, were still trying to figure that out. I will note for the record just as an aside that there are two volumes of the mueller report, right . Volume one is about russia. Volume two is about obstruction. The obstruction starts and ends with Robert Mueller justifying and defending the fact that his office had been conducting this investigation about the president s behavior in the first place, justifying and defending that they were investigating the president for obstruction of justice even though they werent considering charging him. The way he described it at the very end, very final section of volume two of the report, that was muellers defense of the fact that his office was working to, quote, ascertain whether the president violated obstruction statutes. The defense of the fact they were even trying to ascertain that by the president s behavior is the end, is the Closing Argument of the obstruction section. Thats page 178. Its the last thing they argue. That same defense, the fact they were investigating the president at all is literally on page one of the obstruction section as well. Page one of the obstruction says, while the ooc concluding a sitting president cannot be prosecuted it recognizes that a criminal investigation during the president s term is permissible. So, why is it that mueller and the special counsel aels office thought it was necessary to open and close the whole obstruction section of their report with a defense of the fact that they had been investigating the president at all . Who was asking them to justify that . I mean, is that at all related to the fact that the attorney general has now articulated multiple times in public that he believes that mueller wasnt going to say at the end of the