[Cabrera:] Welcome back. Before the break we heard part of a conversation between Ken Starr and Joe Lockhart. They applied what happened in the late '90s to what we're seeing today as President Trump faces multiple investigations. With us now to discuss, CNN legal analyst Carrie Cordero. And John Sale. Carrie, I messed that up both times. Jon Sale is with us as well, a former assistant special Watergate prosecutor, both of you very great legal minds. I'm happy to have you with us. Ken Starr offered the moral view of obstruction and the legal view, do you agree with that distinction?
[Jon Sale, Former Assistant Special Watergate Prosecutor:] My first impression was, that it was nice to see Judge Starr and Joe Lockhart sit down together and respectfully agree to disagree because I remember when they were at each other accusing each other of the worst kind of misconduct and we need more people who disagree who can have such sit-downs. I think I know a lot about obstruction, unfortunately, but it's the first time I ever heard Judge Starr's expression moral obstruction. There's no such thing. There's legal obstruction where we can debate what that means. The statute requires a corrupt intent and the Constitution Article 2 does give the power certain unlimited powers to the President. You might call it political obstruction and that's a matter of counting votes. Whether or not you want to indict a President for something like President Clinton did when you don't have the votes to convict him. Moral obstruction, I'll defer to people wiser than me to define what that is.
[Cabrera:] John, is Trump lying to the American people and abuse of power even though it's not a crime?
[Sale:] If there are majority plus one votes in the Congress, it's impeachable. It's not a crime. There's nothing in Title 18 or any other applicable United States statutes that makes lying to the American people a crime. Lying to a grand jury, lying to a federal agent, those are crimes, which is probably why the President did not go in and give a statement to the special counsel.
[Cabrera:] Hum. Here's something else I want you both to hear on whether a President can be indicted.
[Starr:] No person is above the law means that a President can be indicted but that's not the Justice Department policy and Robert Mueller as you know is an officer of the Justice Department and is therefore required to follow that policy. He cannot indict
[Carrie Cordero, Cnn Legal Analyst:] Well, there is a legal opinion, several legal opinions that have been issued over periods of decades from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel and the position that those opinions take is that a sitting President cannot be indicted. What's interesting is that both under Ken Starr's service as independent counsel and in the prior generations Presidential scandal in Watergate, fresh legal opinions on that specific issue were drawn up. We have never heard and so we are operating on the assumption that in the current environment neither the Justice Department nor the special counsel's office has drawn up fresh legal memos looking at the current situation and whether or not a President could be indicted. We're just assuming, because the Justice Department hasn't said otherwise, that those memos have not been written in present times and that therefore the Justice Department is following its historical practice and the special counsel is obliged to follow that precedent.
[Cabrera:] Jon, another topic. Is dangling a pardon illegal? Starr says not unless it includes an actual bribe or quid pro quo, what's your take?
[Sale:] The President undoubtedly has the unlimited power to pardon, but if the pardon is done with a corrupt intent, that is unclear and those are the type of things which we'll have to be tested in court if it happened, but the person pardon would be fear and clear forever, the issue would be to look at the President's conduct and that would be tied up in the courts forever.
[Cabrera:] Carrie, on whether Mueller is doing it right by not holding news conferences, not releasing info to the public as he's going through this investigation, Lockhart says yes, that's correct, Starr says he thought it was more important to be more transparent. He was always putting himself out there. Whose side are you on?
[Cordero:] This is an area where I really think the analogies between the Clinton years' experience and the Starr investigation and the present are very limited. Ken Starr was operating under a completely different environment. He had an independent counsel statute that gave him a level of independence where he could make decisions like that to be more transparent where he could write a big huge narrative report that simply don't apply to the current special counsel. There's different regulations now. The special counsel reports to the Attorney General. The Attorney General has a level of authority to supervise what happens and that was done specifically, those new regulations in reaction to the experience under Ken Starr's effectuation of the independent counsel's statute. In addition, I want to say with respect to your earlier question, the fundamental issue on the President is whether or not he's abusing his executive authority. So, when it comes to an issue like a pardon, many legal scholars will say, look, that is a complete authority that the President has. The question with this President, and this is why we're seeing Congress open a rule of law investigation, is whether or not the President is going beyond his exercise of executive authority and he is doing things that are abusing that authority.
[Cabrera:] All right. Carrie and Jon, I learned a lot. Thank you. Up next, Nazi symbolism and hateful rhetoric caught on tape among high school students. Details on the disturbing trend we should not ignore.