Democrats Want To See Full Mueller Report Without Redactions
LEMON: The House Judiciary Committee will vote tomorrow to authorize a subpoena for Robert Mueller's full report without redactions. The chairman Jerry Nadler insisting to CNN earlier tonight that Congress will see the complete report and its underlying evidence. President Trump is doing an about face on this. At first, he said the report should be made public, that he has nothing to hide, and now he's calling the move by the committee ridiculous and a disgrace. So, I want to discuss this now. Elie Honig is here, Olivia Nuzzi, and also, Garrett Graff. Garret is the author of "The Threat Matrix: Inside Robert Mueller's FBI and the War on Global Terror." So good to have all of you on. By the way, Olivia, I love your New York magazine piece. We're going to talk about that here. So, you know, you spoke to officials inside the White House and aides for the president is overselling as he falsely claims his exoneration.</s>OLIVIA NUZZI, WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, NEW YORK MAGAZINE: Right. Well, I mean, we should be clear that the, Attorney General Barr quotes the Mueller report as saying this is not an exoneration, but obviously the president and the White House immediately went to work calling this an exoneration after the letter came out last Sunday. And I was speaking to some White House officials over the last week, Donald Trump's first week in the White House since the letter came out. And some of them were saying that they're worried that he will kind of overplay his hand, that he will overstate, you know, how good this letter really was for him. And when the results of the Mueller report come out and they fear that there will be negative information about him in there, they'll look foolish. And we will all have a lot to talk about with the disparity between what the White House has been saying since the letter came out and what ends up being in the actual report. And of course, Trump, you know, initially said as you just mentioned he wanted there to be a full report. He wanted to see it, they don't have any problem with it. And now of course, the White House is really changing its tune. So, I think there will be a big fight over this, and it will probably be not exactly what the White House has been claiming.</s>LEMON: Well, let's talk about that, Garrett, because you heard the president today go after House Democrats over the Mueller report. Watch this.</s>TRUMP: Nothing you give them, whether it's shifty Schiff or Jerry Nadler who I've known he's been fighting me for half of my life in Manhattan, and I was very successful, thank you. But Nadler has been fighting me for years and years in Manhattan, not successfully. I will tell you anything we give them will never be enough.</s>LEMON: OK, so he said it's been years and years if he knew that Nadler has been fighting, why didn't he say that earlier because he previously said, Garrett, that he wanted the full Mueller report released, and we all knew that he would likely shift on that. Is that because maybe he knows there's some damaging information in there?</s>GARRETT GRAFF, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: I think we, as Olivia as we almost sort of have to assume that there's damaging information in there in part because Robert Mueller has already told us that. You know, his report says as quoted by the Barr report about the Mueller report, that Mueller on obstruction does not exonerate the president. That means that there's clear evidence on both sides of the equation, as Mueller says. But, you know, this is a place where Republicans are sort of in a difficult position because in Whitewater you saw this information be handed over directly to Congress, this protected so- called 6E grand jury testimony information. And then the Republicans also demanded successfully the release of the raw FBI 302s, their interview reports in the wake of Hillary Clinton's e-mail investigation where the FBI made those available within mere weeks of the conclusion of their e-mail investigation into Hillary Clinton. So, there's good precedent for making this politically sensitive information public. From the cases in the past where the Republicans have demanded it themselves.</s>LEMON: So, Elie, let's talk about this. Do you think the fact that the Mueller report does not exonerate the president on obstruction, are the details that -- there are details that might surprise people or support -- excuse me, support that argument, is that something that the president should be worried about or is worried about now?</s>ELIE HONIG, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes. I think the clear danger for the president out of the two main areas that report lies in obstruction and we know that is simple matter of logic because we know that Mueller concluded there was not enough to charge beyond a reasonable doubt on conspiracy with Russia. And again, let me note. That's not necessarily the same thing as exonerate, right? Mueller never uses the phrase exonerate. There's a lot of room between beyond a reasonable doubt that you would need to charge a crime and exonerate meaning proves the innocence. You can have plenty of evidence but still, clearly short of a crime. But we know that --</s>LEMON: Even on conspiracy and coordination.</s>HONIG: Yes. Sure. You can have -- you can have evidence what lawyers call preponderance between 50.1 percent. Right. You could have the weight of the evidence. But beyond a reasonable doubt is the top standard. And if you're short of that you're not charging. So, we know that it came up somewhere short of there, but we know that he found even more evidence on obstruction. Right? So much evidence that he wasn't, Mueller wasn't able to make a decision. And the key thing to keep in mind, I know we've said it over and over, but we've seen it not even 1 percent of the Mueller report. Four hundred pages versus four pages. And I think the transparency issue is going to become a problem for Barr and for Trump. The more they fight to keep things away from the public whether it's grand jury materials, whether executive privilege, there's various things that are being thrown out there as sort of barriers to the public getting the full report, they're going to lose the public.</s>LEMON: So, everything that's in the report, every bit of evidence that they have maybe doesn't meet the legal bar, but it gives the Democrats and that the doubters roads to go down and other things to chase, possibilities.</s>HONIG: Yes. One thing that I learned from doing trials, and I know this is not necessarily a trial setting but I think it's a point about human nature. The best way to lose a jury is if they think you're hiding something from them. Right. And I think that translates the politics to if the American people feel like Barr, Trump, whoever is trying to conceal something, that's going to backfire.</s>LEMON: So, well, you heard the president say Democrats, Olivia, that they're asking too much from this. That seems to be the change now. Before it was like, hey, listen, everything now the Democrats are asking for too much seems to be the talking points here, and it will never be enough. And that's another reason they say this is ridiculous. It should not be released.</s>NUZZI: Right. And I think by saying that they're also kind of implying anybody asking for more transparency, anybody who wants to see the full report which obviously includes a lot of Americans it certainly includes the media, is also asking for too much. Which is of course is not what they were saying when this letter first came out. But you know, you just said that the -- Mueller didn't use the word exoneration. He did but as quoted by Barr, he said that this did not exonerate him. So, when I was having conversations with White House officials over the last week, I would say well, what do you mean he's fully exonerated? It says right here that he was not. And they were kind of implying, he's using it in a spiritual way somehow. You're using it in a literal way. And the letter is, I'm paraphrasing, but the letter is using it in a literal way, and that's not the way that the president was using it or the White House was using it, which is ridiculous. But as always with Trump, I mean, that is how people explain what he says and what those around him have to say.</s>LEMON: So, listen, Mr. Officer, I wasn't speeding in a literal way, it was spiritual way.</s>NUZZI: Right. It was really poetic.</s>LEMON: It was really poetic. The spiritual, which should be exonerating. Thank you. Thank you, all. I appreciate it.</s>NUZZI: Thank you.</s>LEMON: A woman with two Chinese passports, four cellphones, a laptop and a thumb drive full of malicious hard drive enters Mar-a-Lago. She's now facing federal charges. So, who is she?