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Say he thinks mueller was trying to catch him in a lie. but the best way to avoid that is obviously to tell the truth. then there's all the obfuscation about 1.5 million pages of documents, 400 or 500 witnesses when the point is why the president refused to answer questions on obstruction. why did he refuse to answer questions on obstruction? that's when this president resorts to a petty insult and then insists there was no crime and no collusion, even though we all heard robert mueller say this. >> if we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime we would have said s...

Lay says something is optional, they could say may furnish. in their discretion. >> it says shall. >> it says shall furnish. doj is twisting itself into a legal and logical pretzel, and they come out exactly where donald trump wants them to come out, william barr in action. >> he hasn't gone as far as similar fights. in this case he hasn't held steve mnuchin in contempt of congress. we don't know whether he's going to go that route. but, you know, obviously there's a court fight ahead but as elie was pointing out the word shall there is pretty plain and so the only argument that the justice de...

The justice department releasing a legal opinion today supporting the treasury secretary's refusal to turn over six years of president trump's tax returns to the house ways and means committee. let's talk about this now with evan perez and elie honig. so good to have both of you on. evan, i'm going to start with you. so we had this legal opinion. what is the doj arguing here? >> well, don, the justice department is arguing that richard neal, the chairman of the house and ways and means committee and the democrats are essentially lying when they say that they need access to the president's six ...

It's not for doj to say we don't believe you. if that's the case doj will take over the legislative function from congress. i think congress is going to prevail if they take this to court. >> elie, another question, the office of legal counsel, their argument is 33 pages, okay, but then you look at the tax code, at least on this, is written, and it's very plainly written, upon written request from the chairman of the committee on ways and means of the house of representatives the secretary shall furnish such committee with any return or return information specified in such request. i mean, i'm...

Which they say is not a legitimate purpose. i think the courts are going to decide and elie is right this is very likely to turn out the way of what the democrats are arguing. >> elie, can we go back to something you were saying. i want to dig deeper. you said this is william barr's justice department doing what he wants them to do, which is what the president wants him to do. william barr's acting more like a private law firm for the president and not the attorney general of the united states. >> he really is. and it's a shame to see one of the hallmarks of doj over the years, over administra...