Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. I'm June Grosso. Every
Speaker 1: day we bring you insight and analysis into the most
Speaker 1: important legal news of the day. You can find more
Speaker 1: episodes of the Bloomberg Law Podcast on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud,
Speaker 1: and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcasts. Democrats tried to
Speaker 1: construct a narrative that the report showed that President Trump
Speaker 1: was guilty of obstruction of justice. At one point, Congressman
Speaker 1: Hachem Jeffreys of New York went through the elements of
Speaker 1: obstruction of justice and showed the points in the report
Speaker 1: that met those elements. And then when he ended, though,
Speaker 1: Robert Mueller decided to sort of way lay him and
Speaker 1: dispute a little bit about what he said. No one
Speaker 1: is above the law. No one the president must be
Speaker 1: held accountable one way or the other. Let me let
Speaker 1: me just say, if I might, I don't subscribe necessarily
Speaker 1: to your um the way you analyze that. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying it's out of the ballpark, but I'm not supportive
Speaker 1: of that analytical charge. And those were the kind of
Speaker 1: responses that we heard from Robert Mueller. Not supportive of
Speaker 1: the charge. I don't necessarily agree with what you said.
Speaker 1: I refer you to the report generally accurate, very little disagreeing,
Speaker 1: except when it was discussed that the allegation by Republicans
Speaker 1: that the members of his team were politically biased joining
Speaker 1: us Now is Robert Mints, a partner at McCarter and
Speaker 1: English and a former federal prosecutor, Bob Anyone listening to
Speaker 1: this and hearing it in a vacuum, not knowing what
Speaker 1: had gone on. What do you suppose they would make
Speaker 1: of his three hours of testimony? Well, that's a great question,
Speaker 1: because it's almost as if there were two different movies
Speaker 1: being watched here. It's been referred to at the report
Speaker 1: was was long, was four hund or forty eight pages,
Speaker 1: and nobody read it, and this is gonna be the
Speaker 1: movie version that was going to be a riveting experience
Speaker 1: for millions of Americans. I don't think they got that.
Speaker 1: He really had lots of long winded speeches from both sides,
Speaker 1: cross examination, leading questions. Nobody was able to draw Mueller
Speaker 1: out into giving any kind of a narrative. He never
Speaker 1: added any color, any background, He provided no further insights
Speaker 1: into how he reached any of his conclusions, and at
Speaker 1: the end of the day. It was difficult for Democrats
Speaker 1: to even got the single sound bite they were hoping
Speaker 1: to get. I think maybe the best they got was
Speaker 1: when Mueller said the president was not exculpated for the
Speaker 1: acts he allegedly committed. Uh. And and even that is uh,
Speaker 1: is not the greatest sound bite after what is it now?
Speaker 1: What three hours of testimony? One thing we did learn
Speaker 1: is that from the very outset, Muller and his team
Speaker 1: agreed to the Office of Legal Counsel's opinion that a
Speaker 1: president cannot be indicted. So everything they did after that
Speaker 1: was based on that. Could that color the way they
Speaker 1: viewed the evidence? Yet to me, that is the biggest
Speaker 1: puzzle about all of this that's never really been clearly answered,
Speaker 1: And I was hoping that Mueller might shed some light
Speaker 1: on that, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen.
Speaker 1: Because when Bill Barr, the a G testified to Congress,
Speaker 1: he told Congress he asked Muller to reach a conclusion
Speaker 1: on all crimes. And yet as to obstruction of justice,
Speaker 1: we know that Mueller didn't didn't do that. It was
Speaker 1: really a situation where Mueller looked at the d J
Speaker 1: guidelines and decided that he could conclude that there was
Speaker 1: no evidence, as he did on the collusion or uh
Speaker 1: conspiracy part of it, that there was insufficient evidence to
Speaker 1: bring criminal charges. But on the other on the flip
Speaker 1: side of the coin, whether or not there there might
Speaker 1: be sufficient evidence to charge obstruction. He said that the
Speaker 1: DJ guidelines prohibited prohibited him from reaching that conclusion. And
Speaker 1: then there's a second d J guideline that also says
Speaker 1: that you can't add talk about an unindicted co conspirator.
Speaker 1: So not only could he not reach a conclusion about
Speaker 1: whether a crime was committed, but he also couldn't even
Speaker 1: explain the underlying facts that might have ultimately influenced somebody
Speaker 1: down the road to decide whether a crime was committed.
Speaker 1: So from the very beginning, this was sort of a
Speaker 1: doomed investigation. To me, that is the biggest puzzle as
Speaker 1: to why Mueller approached it this way, Why he viewed
Speaker 1: his mandate as allowing him to decide that no crime
Speaker 1: has been committed, but at the same time he was
Speaker 1: prohibited from this from making the opposite conclusion. I gotta
Speaker 1: ask about some of the GOP strategy which was to
Speaker 1: really come at Mueller hard to undermine the integrity of
Speaker 1: the testimony, are really the report itself? Was that a
Speaker 1: smart move on the Republicans part? Did it or did
Speaker 1: it make them look like they were kind of ganging
Speaker 1: up on a man who has served his country both
Speaker 1: in uniform and and in civil service. Well, I guess
Speaker 1: we'll have to see how it plays out. I mean,
Speaker 1: one thing Mueller did, I thought effectively, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: this was by design. He was not going to be
Speaker 1: drawn into the political fray here by either side. The
Speaker 1: Democrats had the advantage of being able to ask these
Speaker 1: long leading questions where they quoted directly from his report,
Speaker 1: and Mueller would simply say, yes, you're essentially reading my
Speaker 1: report correctly. Um. But the Republicans didn't didn't have that
Speaker 1: because they wanted to get into the question of how
Speaker 1: this investigation began, and that was clearly not something that
Speaker 1: Mueller was going to go down. That was that goes
Speaker 1: into the whole internal workings of the investigation and the
Speaker 1: type of things that he said at the very beginning
Speaker 1: of this of a testimony he was not going to
Speaker 1: get into. So instead you did have Republicans, as you say,
Speaker 1: going aggressively after him UH, and really giving sort of
Speaker 1: long speeches and really challenging, I thought, in in a
Speaker 1: very aggressive way, um, the integrity not only of the investigation,
Speaker 1: but of Robert Mueller himself. And I guess we'll have
Speaker 1: to see you the days ahead. Whether that was a
Speaker 1: smart move by the Republicans, I think that in his
Speaker 1: second session, so there was a first session, there's a
Speaker 1: little break. He did come back a little bit more.
Speaker 1: He did speak a little bit more, if you can
Speaker 1: call two or three sentences speak a little bit more.
Speaker 1: But and at one thing that he did do is
Speaker 1: he did defend or try to defend the integrity of
Speaker 1: the people that worked for him and as far as
Speaker 1: contributions they'd made to Democrats, he said that I've never
Speaker 1: asked that question of anyone. So, as a former prosecutor,
Speaker 1: let me ask you, in all your time in UH
Speaker 1: as a federal prosecutor, were you ever asked about what
Speaker 1: your political affiliations were? No, you're you're not asked that question.
Speaker 1: When you're hired by the Department of Justice. There are
Speaker 1: limitations that prohibit somebody who is works with Department of
Speaker 1: Justice from getting involved in politics. The hattack prevents you
Speaker 1: from being actively involved in politics, but it doesn't stop
Speaker 1: you from making a contribution to one political candidate or another.
Speaker 1: And so the policy department justice has always been not
Speaker 1: to get into someone's political affiliation, because once you open
Speaker 1: that door, if you think about it, now, now you've
Speaker 1: you've created a situation where where politics and somebody's political leanings,
Speaker 1: whatever those might be, have become relevant. And so there's
Speaker 1: a bright line there that's always been followed that you
Speaker 1: just don't get into that. And Mueller I think got
Speaker 1: the most animated and spoke the most forcefullly when his
Speaker 1: team was attacked. Um. And there were suggestions that that
Speaker 1: this was somehow biased. Um. You know that of course
Speaker 1: overlooks the fact that Mueller himself is a Republican and
Speaker 1: he was the one ultimately ultimately making the final decisions
Speaker 1: about what was in this report. I had to laugh,
Speaker 1: Bob when they questioned him about one of his associates,
Speaker 1: Andrew Wiseman's uh, one of his decisions being overturned by
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court. I mean, to bring that up in
Speaker 1: a hearing like this shows you how much research they did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of work that went into it.
Speaker 1: I think on both sides, because both Republicans and Democrats
Speaker 1: were trying to figure out how they could score some
Speaker 1: political points here. There were there were really no surprises.
Speaker 1: Everybody knew that Robert Mueller was not going to answer
Speaker 1: questions that went beyond the report itself, and so there
Speaker 1: was a lot of time that went into figuring out
Speaker 1: how they could score points for their respective political bases. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I think you know, the Republicans decided that they'd
Speaker 1: give these long winded speeches and the Democrats have sexually
Speaker 1: decided that they would quote from the report itself and
Speaker 1: simply get Mulitar acknowledge that they read the quotes correctly.
Speaker 1: So at the end of the day, it's hard to
Speaker 1: see how this hearing is going to advance um the
Speaker 1: public's view of of the Mala Report one way or
Speaker 1: the other. I think most people have already made up
Speaker 1: their minds. That seems to be correct. And I thank
Speaker 1: you so much for joining us as always, Bob. That's
Speaker 1: from more federal prosecutor Robert Mintz. He's a partner at
Speaker 1: McCarter and English. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Law podcast.
Speaker 1: You can subscribe and listen to the show on Apple podcasts,
Speaker 1: SoundCloud and on bloomberg dot com slash podcast. I'm June Brosso.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg