Trump Tries To Discredit Probe As White House Braces For Report.
KEILAR: And we are back now with our "POLITICS LEAD." And the White House bracing for the Mueller report. Today Rudy Giuliani telling the Washington Post the President's legal team is preparing a counter report though they're not sure if they'll need to release it -- release it. I want to bring in our legal experts to talk about this. Elie Honig, to you first, is a counter report, is that normal?</s>ELIE HONIG, FORMER ASSISTANT U.S. ATTORNEY, SDNY: It could be. Look, the White House clearly expects to see the report in advance hey bracing for this because I think they understand that this will be a monumental moment when that report goes over to the attorney general because at that point, it's really more of a mild post than a finish line. But I think they -- the White House fully realizes that that is where the big questions start to get asked and we're going to see in enormous. I think multi-branch rumble over that report, who gets to see it, what gets to Congress, what comes out on the public and we're going talking about big principles, separations of powers, checks and balances, due process. So we're about to see a big multi-branch rumble breakout.</s>KEILAR: And Michael Zeldin, walk us through what this sets in motion. What is the process of what happens once this has gone to the attorney general?</s>MICHAEL ZELDIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Right. So the attorney general receives the confidential report of Mueller. It does not go to the White House. It only goes to Barr. Barr then has to review it to make a determination what he's going to notify Congress of. That would include the fact that Mueller is done and whether or not in the course of the Mueller investigator, he or the Justice Department that is denied Mueller any investigative tools he wanted to use such as a subpoena of the President. That is where it begins and ends for the Justice Department and Mueller. If however, in the receipt of this report Barr finds that there's an executive privilege, arguable materials that he wants to release to Congress, then he will show those portions of his report to the White House first before the release. Then it all goes over to Congress to see if they happy with what he has sent to them or whether they want to do some sort of subpoena for the whole report and the underlying documents because it's not just the report. That could be a very skeletal thing. It is all of the appendixes one would normally have in a report that is most relevant to the House to make a determination politically about whether they should be doing about that which Mueller gathered.</s>KEILAR: That came into play with the Clinton impeachment for sure. It is a good point, Michael. So, Shan Wu, as you see President laying out what's really a P.R. strategy. They are trying to -- the White House is trying to create this expectation that the president may be exonerated by anything that doesn't have collusion specifically by him in this report. You know, legally though, what are the issues for the President moving forward not just here but other investigations that have spun off of this?</s>SHAN WU, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: I think legally the problem is no matter what is released there's going to be negative type information. And so legally he's facing so many different investigations. He's got the Congressional investigation, he's got the Southern District case. This is simply going to lay out the foundation from where all of that came from. So that's generally going to be a very, very unpleasant experience.</s>KEILAR: Generally a very unpleasant experience, understated there. Shan Wu, Elie Honig, Michael Zeldin, thank you so much. I'm Brianna Keilar in for Jake Tapper and our coverage on CNN continues right now.