Supreme Court Declines Mystery Mueller Case
SCIUTTO: This just in to CNN. The Supreme Court has declined to take up a mystery grand jury case related to the Mueller investigation. Let's go live to CNN's Ariane de Vogue. Ariane, to be clear, not taking it up means that it proceeds, right?</s>ARIANE DE VOGUE, CNN SUPREME COURT REPORTER: It proceeds at the lower -- at a lower court level. The Supreme Court is not going to hear this case. It was a mystery company. And we know at one point it was related to the Mueller investigation. And we know that federal prosecutors had began looking at it, which suggests perhaps that the Mueller team referred this to these federal prosecutors. But again, this case, Jim, has been shrouded in secrecy from the beginning. We got court papers that were blacked out. At one point we didn't even know the identity of some of the lawyers. But what we do know is that last year a federal grand jury subpoenaed this company that's foreign owned. The company said it would not comply. It lost in the lower courts. It asked the Supreme Court to take it up. The Supreme Court said today that it would not. So that, for the company, is the end of the line as far as the courts go.</s>SCIUTTO: Arianne de Vogue, thanks so much for staying on top of it. Meanwhile, the Mueller report is raising more questions than it answers, especially given that Mueller stopped short of exonerating the president on obstruction of justice. Let's speak now to Garrett Graff. He is author of "The Threat Matrix: Inside Robert Mueller's FBI and the War on Global Terror." Garrett, great to have you on. We've been talking about this investigation for some time and you've been very deep into it. To be clear here, the special counsel was definitive on the issue at least of Russian collusion. Collusion with Russia, conspiracy, whatever word you want to use. By any determination, that is a relief and a win for this president, is it not?</s>GARRETT GRAFF, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, Jim, I also think, by the way, it's a win for the country. You know, I think we sort of look at this too closely sometimes in political terms only. But, you know, the fact that the president of the United States did not collude with our leading traditional adversary to -- in the midst of the 2016 president election by all measures is good for the United States as a whole. And I think that that's -- that's one of the things that we have to mark and, you know, might be too strong of a word to say celebrate since that should never be the assumption. But, you know, the fact that both -- we saw that there is no provable collusion here, and that Mueller was allowed to finish out his investigation on his own terms is also, I think, important to mark at this point.</s>SCIUTTO: No question.</s>GRAFF: Maybe those two things are setting the bar too low, but I think it's important to mark that.</s>SCIUTTO: No, for sure, for the rule of law, there was great concern throughout that the Mueller investigation was under threat, that the president might fire him, throw up other road blocks. So very fair point. Second issue, of course, from the -- at least Barr's summary of the special counsel's report is that -- is that Mueller was not clear on whether there was obstruction of justice, saying that there was evidence on both sides. I just want to share a tweet that John Dean, who, of course, served as counsel to President Nixon during Watergate and pleaded to a crime there, he said the following. He said, having to read William Barr's June 2018 memo critiquing Mueller's obstruction investigation and now his summary of Mueller's report, it is clear that Richard Nixon would not have been forced to resign his office if Barr had been attorney general. Barr wants a POTUS above the law. Is that an undue criticism there that Barr, who long criticized an obstruction of justice case against this president prior to his appointment, in effect ran defense here?</s>GRAFF: And I think the answer is, we don't know until we see the report. You know, I do think it is quite notable for someone who at -- is as conservative traditionally by precedent as Robert Mueller, the fact that he went out of his way in the report to say that the report does not exonerate the president is probably as close as we're going to see Bob Mueller get to sort of a Comey-esque statement from, you know, Comey's press conference in July 2016 about Hillary Clinton and the e-mails. I mean Mueller was sort of never going to come out and attack someone virulently for non-criminal behavior. But he -- it is worth noting that he didn't go -- that he did go out of his way to say that it didn't exonerate him.</s>SCIUTTO: Yes, and it's a good point, that that moment Comey in 2016 where he said, listen, you know, it doesn't meet the prosecutorial bar, which is, in effect, what Mueller is saying, but then called her reckless, et cetera. Mueller is no Comey in this case. Garrett Graff, thanks very much. We know we're going to continue the conversation. In other news we're following this morning, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is promising swift action after a rocket strikes a home in Israel. We will have a live report from there, next.