[Unidentified Female:] Which is interesting because of the later Friday he said it would be Mueller's principal conclusions. Well, that is not the case here. Page three, Mueller didn't have a principal collusion. It's Bill Barr and Rod Rosenstein's principal collusion without consultation with Mueller that there wasn't obstruction of justice.
[Wolf Blitzer, Cnn:] Everybody stand by.
[Announcer:] This is CNN breaking news.
[Blitzer:] The following major breaking news. I want to welcome our viewers here in the United States and around the world. I am Wolf Blitzer in Washington. After nearly two years, we now know the main conclusions of Robert Mueller's Russia information. A four-page single-spaced summary was released by the attorney general of the United States, Bill Barr. Part of the report reading and I'm quoting now. The investigation did not, did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russians government in its election interference activities. The President's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani told us just a little while ago that the findings were better than he expected and President Trump just responded as well.
[Donald Trump, President Of The United States:] It was a complete and total exoneration. It's a shame that our country had to go through this. To be honest, it's a shame that your President has had to go through this. This was an illegal takedown that failed. And hopefully somebody is going to be looking at the other side.
[Blitzer:] It comes to the question of obstruction, the attorney general Barr said Mueller did not have enough evidence to prosecute but could not exonerate the President. This is all far from over. Right now top Democrats are already calling for the full Mueller report to be released immediately. And the House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerry Nadler says his committee will be calling for the attorney general Bill Barr to testify soon. CNN's Laura Jarrett is over at the justice department. She has been watching all of this unfold. Laura, what's, first of all, the latest information you are getting?
[Laura Jarrett, Cnn Justice Reporter:] Well, Wolf, the latest we are getting is what happens next. Obviously, as Capitol Hill is champing at the bit to get every last piece of the underlying materials here, this is not Mueller's report. This is attorney general Bill Barr's report. And as he explains here, he is working with the special counsel as well as the deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, and another select group of advisers trying to figure out what else can be produced here. The main issue on that is the fact that there is grand jury material potentially exposed by just simply turning over the report. And so, I'm told by a senior justice department official that this team of advisers is already working. That process has begun to try to figure out how to scrub the report and figure out what really is left to be turned over to Congress and by extension, the public. The other interesting part about this four-page memo from Barr that sort of lays out the obstruction of justice case is to note how Mueller really punted on that issue even though he was the special counsel appointed in this case to try to figure out what gets to the bottom what the President's intent on that issue is. It makes it pretty clear that Mueller says there's evidence on both sides. He punted to the attorney general to get to that ultimate question. And the attorney general found that there wasn't a prosecutable case because there wasn't corrupt intent and they couldn't make a nexus to an actual criminal proceeding. But of course, he couldn't assess the criminal intent because Mueller never sat down with the President, Wolf.
[Blitzer:] Indeed. Laura, stand by. Manu Raju is up on Capitol Hill for us. Manu, so are members of Congress reacting to this and the reaction is intense?
[Manu Raju, Cnn Senior Political Reporter:] Yes, top Democrats are not satisfied with this four-page letter. They are saying they can't trust what Bill Barr has said. They want to see all of the evidence that led Bob Mueller to reach these conclusions. They want to see the full report demanding the public release and release to Capitol Hill as part of as Democrats try to pursue their own investigations in the days and weeks ahead. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer just put out a statement saying there are raises as many questions as it does where you have answers as well as Jerry Nadler, the chairman of the House judiciary committee made clear he wants to hear from Bill Barr in a public testimony before his committee. He said in light of the very concerning discrepancies and final decision making of the justice department following the special counsel report where Mueller did not exonerate the President, we will be calling attorney general Barr in to testify before a House judiciary in the near future. Now, Republicans have a much different reaction. They are saying this is a complete vindication for the President and exoneration. A great day for the President. They are saying it's time for the Democrats to move on, not retrace the same steps that Bob Mueller did as part of his Russia investigation and part of his obstruction investigation. Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the Senate judiciary committee saying in a statement good day for the rule of law. Great day for President Trump and his team. No collusion and no obstruction. The cloud hanging over President Trump has been removed by this report. But, of course, a lot of questions about how Bob Mueller reached these conclusions. Will the justice department provide Congress with the full report or the underlying evidence? Bill Barr said in that letter, Wolf, that he would do his goal was to release as much as possible under the law, under the regulations and abiding by justice department policy. There is still a lot of questions tonight about exactly what that means.
[Blitzer:] We will see how much he releases and what the Democrats do about that. Manu, stand by. CNN's Abby Philip is over at the White House for us. Abby, the President clearly is feeling pretty good about these findings.
[Abby Philip, Cnn White House Correspondent:] That's right, Wolf. Our sources are telling us the President who spent the weekend in Florida at Mar-a-Lago is in a fairly jovial mood as he returns back to Washington on air force one. He stopped and talked to reporters a little bit before he got on that airplane and he said this was a complete and total exoneration. His campaign and his aides are saying it is a vindication for a President who has been saying no collusion and no obstruction for two years now. Now, the White House is not making a distinction. That distinction you have been talking about between the findings on collusion and the findings on obstruction. Because they are focusing on how they can use this to move the President forward. They are thinking about 2020 and they are thinking about how to fire back at a Democratic majority in the House. Wolf, I want to point you to two things the President talked about in his comments with reporters. He talked about the many people that he said had been hurt by this investigation. Many of his associates who were charged with crimes, are facing prison time as a result of some of the findings of this investigation. And he also asked why the justice department or people are not looking into the other side. Now, it's likely that he is referring to the Clinton campaign which he has been saying where really the people colluding with the Russians. But these are just two points that we should focus in on as we look at the next steps for President Trump. President Trump at this moment is not backing down on this. He called this an illegal attempt at a takedown of his administration that failed. And I think he is really planning at this moment for fighting back. He is not going to just let the Mueller report go by the wayside. And it's worth noting, Wolf, he didn't talk about Russian interference that was part of the findings of the Mueller report. And he didn't thank Robert Mueller for his work. This is a President who is still pretty irritated that as he said, that he had to go through all this through over the first two years of his presidency, Wolf.
[Blitzer:] Important points, indeed. Abby Philip at the White House. I know you are getting more reaction. The President on his way back to the White House from Florida. Air force one should be landing fairly soon, we are told. Our chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin has been watching all of this. Step back a little bit, Jeffrey. Give us your perspective on what has just folded here in the United States over the last few hours.
[Jeffrey Toobin, Cnn Senior Legal Analyst:] Well, this has been an enormous investigation. And the first part of Bob Barr's letter really sums up the number of interviews, a 500 interviews, hundreds of subpoenas, search warrants, foreign request, request to foreign governments for information. So the thoroughness of Robert Mueller's investigations can scarcely be doubted at least based on what we know now. And there were two general areas that Mueller was investigating. And they really never changed from day one. The first was what came to be called collusion which was the involvement of the Trump campaign or anyone connected to Donald Trump with the acknowledged efforts by the Russian government and people and entities affiliated with the Russian government to help Trump win the election and hurt Hillary Clinton's campaign. And there were two criminal cases brought as a result of that investigation. One involving the use of social media to help Trump and hurt Clinton. And another involving the hacking of emails of Democrats and people affiliated with the Democrats. And there have been a lot of suspicion about that, about people like Roger Stone and Paul Manafort with who had some interactions with the Russians. And of course, there was the famous Trump tower meeting in June of 2016 with Donald Trump junior and the Paul Manafort and the President's son-in-law was there as well. The conclusion for all of that for Mueller repeated by Barr today was that there was no illegal activity there. That no one affiliated with the President or his campaign directly or indirectly helped the Russians sabotage this campaign. And it's an enormously important point. The second general area in the investigation is the one that prompted the appointment of Mueller in the first place which is James Comey's firing by Donald Trump as FBI director, and the question of whether that action and other actions that the President took were an obstruction of justice, were a criminal act. And here the result of Mueller's investigation is sufficiently is considerably more ambiguous, because Mueller apparently, and this is a it's confusing as presented by Barr here, did not reach a conclusion about whether there was a criminal act by the President. He apparently sort of turned over the evidence both pro and con to Mueller himself, to Barr, and the attorney general himself to make that determination. Mueller did not make a recommendation about obstruction of justice. Barr in consultation with his deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein concluded based on the evidence that was presented to him from Mueller and he did it very fast. And he only got this evidence apparently on Friday. A two-year investigation, and he concluded today that there was no basis to pursue an obstruction of justice charge against the President. And it's very important that in Mueller's letter, and what is certainly to be a frequently quoted passage from Mueller's report that was quoted by Barr, he said while the report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him. Certainly, Congress is going to want to see the underlying basis for that conclusion and that is sort of where we go now. Congress is going to have to take over that part of the investigation if it's so inclined.
[Blitzer:] It's very significant, because the as you correctly point out, the special counsel said that while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him, but then the attorney general Bill Barr and the deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein in their analysis of what they got from Mueller, they say they have concluded that the evidence developed during the special counsel's investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction of justice offense. So that's what the conclusion of the attorney general and the deputy attorney general, Jeffrey, was the special counsel, he stopped short of that.
[Toobin:] That's exactly right. And what is different about what we saw and what we expected was that it was Barr and Rosenstein, the President's appointees who made the ultimate conclusion about obstruction of justice, not the special counsel, Mueller. And what's even stranger about that is that it was the whole reason why Mueller was appointed was that the hierarchy of the department of justice has an inherent conflict of interest when investigating the President of the United States. So the issue of how and why it was Barr and Rosenstein who came to reach this conclusion about obstruction of justice and not Mueller himself is something very much worthy of investigation. I'm not saying it's corrupt. I'm not saying it's improper. But it is certainly not required by the regulation under which Mueller was appointed, and how it came to be that Barr made the con reached the ultimate conclusion about obstruction of justice and not Mueller, that's something that Congress is certainly going to want to investigate.
[Blitzer:] Yes, very significant development indeed. Gloria Borger, let's get your analysis right now. He is very firm, Mueller in saying there was no collusion, not very firm on the whole issue of obstruction of justice.
[Gloria Borger, Cnn Chief Political Analyst:] Well, and I think, you know, to add onto what Jeffrey is saying, I think what Congress is going to want to get the answer to is why did the special counsel pass on the question of obstruction of justice? Why did the special counsel, you know, we know that the from the Barr letter that the special counsel views the difficult issues of law. In fact
[Blitzer:] Gloria, hold on for one moment. We lost your mike for a second. We are going to fix that. I want to go to David Gergen who is watching all of this unfold as well. And David, you have a unique perspective. You have seen a lot of these activities over the many years you have worked for four U.S. Presidents. You have now gone through probably several times reading this letter for the attorney general to Congress. What do you think?
[David Gergen, Cnn Senior Political Analyst:] Well, I think overall it is very clear and very significant decision in favor of the President. And I think it's probably one of the most important things that's going to happen this term. It doesn't obviously change who he is. His temperament, his fitness for office on other issues, but this has obvious and clear implications for the 2020 race. Beyond that, though, Wolf, I think there are something else, two other things that are significant. This was also good for the country in one fundamental sense. And that is it's important for us to not believe our President is a crook. That our President and his team conspired. They didn't conspire. And that's a good thing. They did a lot of things that were suspicious, but they didn't conspire. And I think that's healthy for the country. There's another group that won a victory here in this, in my judgment, and that was the department of justice. The people have done this investigation and have been under enormous not only just pressure but just all sorts of attacks. They are angry partisan Democrats. They were trying to bring down the President. And low and behold, they defended the President and found him, you know, basically not guilty on count one. And I think that shows that this was an impartial group. Then we ought to show a lot of respect for their findings. Whether we like it or not, and you know, there are many, many people out there that are going to be extremely disappointed by this outcome. But this was a way, a good way a country settles significant disputes. We do it through the rule of law, and I think that's to be celebrated.
[Blitzer:] It's clear, David, that the Democrats on Capitol Hill are not happy with this conclusion that there was no collusion or conspiracy or cooperation between the Trump campaign and the Russians.
[Gergen:] Well, I can understand why they are disappointed. They thought this was, you know, there have been so many things that have been suspicious about this. And when the President today which I thought was an entirely inappropriate remark just a short while ago that this was an illegal takedown that failed. It's worth remembering that what cause, what set this investigation off, what triggered it was suspicious activity by people who worked in the Trump campaign. And that was picked up by our counterintelligence people. And that's when the ball started rolling toward this investigation. So I think we can question aspects of the investigation as Jeffrey did and is an admirable summary of what was found, what was stated today. But I think nonetheless, we have had a fair now and a very thorough investigation. And on the fundamental question of a conspiracy, they just didn't find the evidence. And by the way, that's what the House intelligence committee has said, and the Senate intelligence committee basically have said. They haven't found serious conspiracy.
[Blitzer:] Yes. That's an important point as well. We are getting new information, significant information. Pamela Brown and Laura are working their sources. Pamela, first to you. What are you learning?
[Pamela Brown, Cnn Justice Correspondent:] We learned the special counsel's office deliberated with top DOJ officials about issuing a subpoena to interview President Trump which would have been a significant investigative step. Ultimately, the decision was made to not take that step and not issue a subpoena. We know that Robert Mueller and his team had asked the Trump legal team to interview the President on multiple occasions and they were rebuffed. And internally, they were the sensitive discussions between Robert Mueller's team and DOJ officials about whether it was necessary to take that step in this investigation looking at possible collusion and obstruction of justice. But ultimately we are told that the officials, they weighed everything. They looked at what they had, and they didn't believe that the evidence had the merits to pursue a subpoena. That this was separate from the notion that you cannot that a President cannot be indicted as is DOJ policy, but beyond that, we are told that they didn't feel like they had the evidence and the merits to pursue a subpoena. This is significant far couple reasons because the question has been raised by did Mueller capitulate and he didn't pursue the interview. He was able to wrap up this investigation without getting that sit- down interview. We know that written questions were submitted this last fall having to do with activity before the election, but nothing having to do with obstruction. But now we are learning, Wolf, our team, me and Laura and Evan Perez are learning that there were these deliberations internally to not issue a subpoena. Important to point out, though, Bill Barr in his letter to Congress on Friday said that there were no requests that were denied. That is because these were just discussions. Robert Mueller never made the formal request to issue a subpoena and was rejected by Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general at the time. Back to you.
[Blitzer:] Very significant development on a critically important issue why the President of the United States was not subpoenaed to actually sit down and answer questions orally. Did so in writing. Written questions, written answers but not an oral interview. Laura, what else are you picking up?
[Jarrett:] Well, it's clear, Wolf, you see a glimpse of this in attorney general Bill Barr's letter to Congress today. Obviously, he wasn't here at the justice department when all of these sensitive discussions are ongoing between the justice department and the special counsel's office on the other hand. But you see in Barr's letter how the justice department really didn't believe they had a prosecutable case on collusion or conspiracy issues between the Trump campaign and Russian officials, on the obstruction of justice issue either, at least from Barr's perspective. Now from Mueller's perspective, he thought there was actually evidence on both sides of the question and so he left the question unresolved, punting to the attorney general bill Barr because of their difficult issues of law and fact. So on the obstruction issue, he thought there was at least a close call there. And so, you see why they did at least raise the issue, the specter of the subpoena. It wasn't off the table. And that's something new. We didn't know before what exactly those internal discussions looked like, whether they thought it was even worth going down that road. Ultimately they decided not to pursue it. But the fact that it was even raised at all is significant, Wolf.
[Blitzer:] It certainly is. Evan, you are working your sources as well. This is an important new piece of information we are picking up.
[Evan Perez, Cnn Justice Correspondent:] It is, Wolf. And I think this is where certainly members of Congress will have to ask more questions of what exactly these deliberations look like. What exactly happened behind the scenes? Because we know that the President never sat down for an interview. We know that Mueller wanted an interview. We know all the way through October. Again, for about a year there was these there were these negotiations back and forth about sitting down, having the President answer questions. And it was the President's legal team that put rails around this. First they said he shouldn't have to answer any questions before his inauguration. That there was certainly a different standard with regard to a sitting President. And so one of the things that they did is again, some very, very good legal work from Jay Maskin, from Jay Sekulow, and even going back to John Dowd and Ty Cobb. There was some good legal work that protected this President from, frankly, some of his own behavior. In the end it looks like what happened here is Mueller raised the idea of a subpoena. Rod Rosenstein and his team looked at it. They had a back and forth, and Mueller never formally made a request for a subpoena.
[Unidentified Male:] That could be because there was potentially no charges to be brought. Right?
[Borger:] Right.
[Unidentified Male:] So because of that reason, what's the purpose of subpoenaing the President? It's significant that they even thought about doing this. I mean, we spent how many months trying to figure out, you know, if this was going to happen. Even up until I think last week we were wondering what could be the delay in this report. Is there some chance that they are still trying to subpoena the President? And this was something that the President's lawyers, you know, as Evan said, and people around him are always concerned. Then the issue is going to be well, does the President take the fifth? Do they allow him to go ahead into the grand jury alone without his lawyers and testify? But significant in that they even thought about it. Obviously we don't know the deliberations that went into it and ultimately what was decided and we may never know.
[Blitzer:] Are we going to get the Q&A, written Q&A that the President did with the special counsel Robert Mueller? It would be really important to see that.
[Unidentified Male:] Because this investigation technically now is closed, Wolf. We may see that. We may see that in some form as we did in the Hillary Clinton investigation.
[Borger:] You know, Wolf, I'm just communicating with some sources who were involved in this peripherally and directly. And I think the feeling is that if you have these informal discussions, and you are told informally you don't have enough for a subpoena, then you know you don't have enough to charge the President. And that if these conversations were going on, that helps explain why Mueller was so vague in his report, because clearly he wanted to interview the President. He wanted to interview the President. And he wasn't going to get to do that. And so he wasn't going to reach a conclusion, and he left it up to Barr, then, or the question that I have is did he really leave it up to Barr or did he want to leave it up to Congress to make that decision? And Barr and Rosenstein decided OK, they are going to make the decision. But it could have gone another way..
[Unidentified Female:] But in any situation, let's say he was trying to leave it up to Congress. Maybe that's technically his job, but in the real world levering it leaving it up to a partisan Congress is risky business.
[Unidentified Male:] the point that I want to make and maybe Evan to talk about this, too, is the idea that you are subpoenaing someone who is part who is a target of an investigation. You know, the department of justice, it's I don't know, it seems to me they don't normally do that.
[Perez:] Yes. You don't normally do that.
[Unidentified Male:] So would they have done that in this case given, obviously, he is the target. We know that he is the target -.
[Blitzer:] But they did ask written questions?
[Unidentified Male:] They did. Very different because it's not under oath. You can't
[Blitzer:] But if he would have lied in the written answers, that is under oath.
[Borger:] That was before that was
[Blitzer:] You can't lie to the
[Fbi. Unidentified Male:] Right. That is a good point.
[Borger:] But that was about collusion, Wolf. That was before he became President.
[Blitzer:] Phil Mudd is with us. I want to bring in Phil Mudd who used to work at the FBI. He used to work at CIA. He is our counterterrorism analyst. And Phil, remember what the first mission of Robert Mueller was when he received a letter on May 17th, 2017 from then acting attorney general Rod Rosenstein. His mission was to find quote "any links andor coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump." Well, we now know the answer to that. Mueller has concluded there was no such coordination or links.
[Philip Mudd, Cnn Counterterrorism Analyst:] That's sort of true. Let's step through a few pieces. Let me take three in particular. Number one, the Russian piece. The indictments by the Mueller team clearly indicate that at the Russian end there are people responsible for conspiring on the Russia side to interfere with the elections in America. As we have seen the last couple hours, the special counsel concluded that there are not individuals on the American side who are responsible for conspiring with the Russians to undermine an American election, but there are other pieces of this. One, did people obstruct? Obviously the special counsel came out in the middle and said we investigated this. We will leave it up to the prosecutors, that is the attorney general, to determine whether we should prosecute something that we think is a little bit questionable. And the attorney general said no. There is one final question, Wolf, and that is where I think the President has been genius. The question is not simply whether the law was violated in terms of whether people did things that were inappropriate with the Russians. The question for the American people is do you think that the activities undertaken by people in the circle of the President of the United States or for a candidate to be the President of the United States, do you think those activities were appropriate? I think if you look at everything we've seen with the genius of the President, it's been to raise the bar to say I don't care whether the activities of Don Junior or other people in my circle were appropriate. The only bar is whether they are illegal. I think that's the genius of the President. The bar is now whether things are illegal, not just whether they're inappropriate.
[Blitzer:] And the Congress can investigate inappropriate activities, but for all practical purposes, Phil, the justice department as a whole has concluded it's over.
[Mudd:] Sort of. I mean, if you look at the basic pillars of the investigation, collusion with the Russians, the special counsel says no. Obstruction, the special counsel as we just discussed says over to the department of justice and the attorney general, and I think he's supportable on this. I support him and Rosenstein said no. There is one word that doesn't appear significantly in the special counsel's final four-page document interpreted by the department of justice, money. What happened to Manafort? Money. What happened to gates? Money. What happened to Cohen? Dirty money. So when we are talking about exoneration of the President and his circle, we could talk about participation and conspiracy related to the election. We could talk about obstruction of the investigation, but if you look at indictments already, several of them, the most significant including Manafort are money. And if you look at what the southern district is investigating, I suspect money. I agree with the President, and I agree with the White House. This is a victory in a sense. I don't think it's a victory for the American people. But it's a victory for the White House, but there is still an outstanding question. How much dirty money are we going to find and are there further indictments on dirty money? I'm not sure.
[Blitzer:] There's a lot of other investigations that are still continuing. Phil, stand by for a moment. I want to play for our viewers what the President of the United States said as he was heading back from Florida to head back here to Washington as he was about to board air force one.
[Trump:] So after a long look, after a long investigation, after so many people have been so badly hurt, after not looking at the other side where a lot of bad things happened, a lot of horrible things happened. A lot of very bad things happened for our country. It was just announced there was no collusion with Russia. The most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. There was no collusion with Russia. There was no obstruction and none whatsoever. And it was a complete and total exoneration. It's a shame that our country had to go through this. To be honest, it's a shame that your president has had to go through this for before I even got elected, it began. And it began illegally and, hopefully, somebody is going to look at the other side. This was an illegal takedown that failed. And hopefully, somebody is going to be looking at the other side. So it's complete exoneration. No collusion, no obstruction. Thank you very much. Thank you.
[Blitzer:] All right. April, what's your reaction?
[April Ryan, Cnn Political Analyst:] Listening to what the President had to say yes, Wolf. Listening to what the President had to say, he is not fully exonerated. As we know, there are investigations still happening. But what we do know, over the weekend, is that the President and those around him were the mood was very victorious. We were hearing that there were high fives in Mar-a-Lago over the weekend. And today, even more so, the President feels that he has got a public relations victory. He has a brand victory. And he also has a public perception victory because the original mandate for this investigation was collusion. He is not found guilty of collusion in this report. But he was wrong talking about the issue of obstruction of justice. That is still lingering out there. And now the question is if the House Oversight and Government Reform, if Intelligence and if Judiciary will decide to take this up. And Nancy Pelosi could actually offer more money for these committees to actually investigate. But the problem is, and this is what the President is banking on and this is why he feels this is why he feels it could be a victory. Because the messaging. If there is an overreach or perception of overreach, the President wins because Mueller's report said that he was not found guilty of collusion, but there is still obstruction of justice. So the President is taking this as a big victory.
[Blitzer:] He certainly is. And I suspect, you know, Dana, we're going to be hearing a lot more from the President.
[Bash:] Yes.
[Blitzer:] He's still about to land here in Washington aboard Air Force One. He made that brief statement as he was boarding. He also made a quick little tweet, no obstruction, no collusion, and all of that. But I suspect we're going to be hearing more.
[Bash:] Yes. Somebody was asking before, well, why didn't he wait and do a big event? Why didn't he wait? Because he's the President of the United States who has been saying this mantra, no collusion, for so long, and now he has this, at least, summary to help prove his point. To vindicate him.
[Blitzer:] Yes.
[Bash:] And so he has been chomping at the bit to be able to say that with this report, and he has the chance to do it. And he is, no question, going to do it over and over again. And you know what? You can't blame him.
[Blitzer:] Yes. I always suspected that if he was going to be really happy with this report. And clearly, he is very happy with this report, Gloria, that there would be an Oval Office address to the nation.
[Borger:] Well
[Blitzer:] That he would call the White House would call the networks and say the President is about to make a statement.
[Borger:] Right. Well, that who knows? That didn't happen today. You know, I was sort of wondering on the whole witch-hunt question and the angry Democrats on Team Mueller and everything else, whether the President would actually say something about the Justice Department, but that didn't happen. He started talking about the illegal, you know, investigation.
[Evan Perez, Cnn Senior Justice Correspondent:] And it is not. I mean
[Borger:] Exactly.
[Perez:] To be clear, this was a legally
[Borger:] Totally.
[Bash:] Absolutely.
[Perez:] vindicated investigation. It was an important investigation.
[Borger:] Right.
[Perez:] An important investigation for us to follow.
[Borger:] But he would
[Blitzer:] The President, you heard he said it was an illegal takedown that failed.
[Borger:] Right, but, you know, he would not be so generous as to say that, in fact, the Justice Department had done its job.
[Perez:] Right.
[Borger:] That Bob Mueller had done his job, that Bill Barr had done his job, and that Rosenstein, whom he once tweeted a picture of behind bars, had done his job. But we you're not we're not going to hear any of that from the President. From the Democrats, it's very clear to me, though, Wolf, when you look at what Schumer and Pelosi released today, they do not believe that they have that this should end and that they're going to demand every piece of paper. Because the question out there and I keep coming back to this question about the interview with the President. The question that is out there is about obstruction. And Mueller did not come down, one way or another, and they want to know why, and they want to know why Barr did without interviewing the President. I think that is you know, the President's lawyers are to be commended on this for throwing themselves in front of this in front of a bus and saying, you're not going to interview the President here. But Mueller said, I can't decide on this, you know, whether he committed a crime
[Perez:] But especially
[Borger:] or exonerated him. And Barr and Rosenstein said we are deciding.
[Perez:] Especially if you consider that Donald Trump, for the better part of two years, has made so much about Hillary Clinton's interview and the circumstances. And even made up stories about how, well, the fact that she wasn't under oath, which, by the way, is
[Borger:] Right.
[Perez:] It doesn't matter, right? He's made such a big deal about Hillary Clinton's interview with the FBI on the Fourth of July in weekend in 2016. And now, this has become I think this is going to be a big focus for the Democrats.
[Borger:] It's going to be the big issue.
[Blitzer:] And you know
[Perez:] For the politics.
[Blitzer:] Right, that's And, Shimon, the statement from the President's legal team Rudy Giuliani, Jay Sekulow, Jane Raskin, Martin Raskin concluded with these words: this is a complete and total vindication of the President.
[Shimon Prokupecz, Cnn Crime And Justice Reporter:] For any attorney, you have to think of it this way. If you were if it wasn't Donald Trump, it was someone else being investigated, and you know your client has been investigated for two years, and prosecutors, top-level prosecutors at the Department of Justice, the Attorney General, comes in and says, yes, there's not enough here, we're not pursuing charges, yes, it's complete vindication in their eyes. The other thing I want to make a point in what the President said in talking about how people were badly hurt, he made a point to mention that in his remarks. And so now what we look forward to, when we talk about the future, is pardons and whether or not people even Michael Flynn. You know, the President has felt badly for what happened to him here, the President said. He certainly feels bad for what happened to Paul Manafort. And then Roger Stone. Obviously, that's still ongoing. But we've heard those him talk about them.
[Blitzer:] And Rick Gates, the deputy chairman of his campaign.
[Prokupecz:] Well, he is still cooperating and he is
[Bash:] Not so much but he hasn't been sentenced.
[Blitzer:] And he hasn't been sentenced yet.
[Borger:] Not so much.
[Bash:] Yes.
[Prokupecz:] He is
[Borger:] Not so much.
[Prokupecz:] Yes, not so much.
[Bash:] He never had a
[Prokupecz:] But you know that this is on the back of the President's mind. And his attorneys have done a tremendous job here in the end of trying to keep him from firing Mueller, trying to keep him from pardoning people, keeping him away from the FBI agents and the Special Counsel team when they wanted to sit and talk to him, so.
[Perez:] People a lot of people made fun of the President's legal team. I mean, obviously, you know, there's a lot of people who declined the offer when the President wanted to hire him.
[Prokupecz:] Yes.
[Perez:] Hire them.
[Bash:] A lot of people is generous, most people.
[Perez:] Right, exactly. But they ended up getting some very good lawyers who, frankly, protected this president, even despite the President's own efforts to hurt himself.
[Borger:] And don't forget, early on, an interview was scheduled with the President.
[Perez:] Yes.
[Borger:] Remember? We did that story at Camp David in January.
[Perez:] Yes. Yes.
[Borger:] They were all set to do an interview and then John Dowd pulled it back, who was the President's attorney at the time.
[Perez:] Right.
[Borger:] You have these new attorneys coming in, the Raskins, who have done a job and said, we're not going to let and Jay Sekulow, we're not going to let the President anywhere near an interview. So that was a moment when the President could have been interviewed and he wasn't.
[Bash:] You know what's interesting? There's the interview part, and then the idea of the President and his team, especially since it changed and they became so much more aggressive toward Robert Mueller, spent so much time trying to delegitimize his report and his investigation. Now, they're saying it vindicates him. Can they have it both ways?
[Perez:] They will.
[Borger:] Just wait.
[Bash:] Can it be an illegitimate an illegitimate investigation
[Blitzer:] Complete and total
[Bash:] that concludes
[Blitzer:] Complete and total vindication.
[Bash:] vindicating him?
[Borger:] Right.
[Bash:] I mean, I'm not sure.
[Blitzer:] We're also following we're getting reaction from the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates. Bernie Sanders tweeted this, quote, I don't want a summary of the Mueller report. I want the whole damn report. Kamala Harris tweeted, the Mueller report needs to be made public. The underlying investigative materials should be handed over to Congress, and Barr must testify. That is what transparency looks like. A short letter from Trump's handpicked Attorney General is not sufficient. David Gergen, what's your reaction so far to what we're hearing from these Democratic presidential candidates?
[David Gergen, Cnn Senior Political Analyst:] Well, I think the Democratic presidential candidates have been smart to issue those comments because the public does support giving over the report and making it public, making it transparent so that the underlying part of it can be examined. I think that's quite reasonable. But I must say, on both sides, some of the activists in Washington, it seems to me, are creating narratives that they may welcome to regret. It's totally understandable, as everyone is saying, that the Trump people are celebrating. I understand that. But when the President calls it an illegal takedown an illegal takedown that's a vindictive view. And they'd be well advised to remember Churchill who said, in victory, magnanimity. A little generosity, as Gloria just said, would go a long way here. But if they're going to come back and just be vindictive and sort of continue on that train, I think that there are going to be a lot of people in the middle, who would be open to coming over and be more supportive of the President, who are going to find that kind of argument pretty insufferable. Because, you know, this whole investigation started because of suspicious activities about people around the President, and so it was important and legal to do it. Now, the Democratic side, I must say, this obstruction issue, while I think it's important to get into it, I think you're going to have a hard the Democrats are going to have a hard time getting the public to swing behind this because there's no underlying crime. And they're going to say, well, what difference is it? So if he if there was partial obstruction, so forth and all, the critical question was, was there a conspiracy? And an exhaustive investigation has found there was not, and that's pretty darn important. I think the Democrats are going to have to start, you know, thinking more 2020 and about what they have to offer the country as opposed to making this simply a referendum on Trump.
[Blitzer:] Air Force One has just touched down at Joint Base Andrews outside of Washington D.C. in suburban Maryland. The President should be getting off Air Force One fairly soon. We'll see if he stops and makes another statement to reporters who will gather at the bottom of those stairs and see if he says something before getting off and heading back to the White House. Jim Acosta, our chief White House correspondent, is joining us right now. Jim, are you getting any indication we're going to hear from the President again?
[Jim Acosta, Cnn Chief White House Correspondent:] Not just yet, Wolf, but, I mean, it does sound as though he has more to say. You know, he didn't say very much when he got on the plane there in Florida about 1-12 ago, and so I assume he'll have more to say if and when he lands over here at the White House. In the mood to talk, I suppose. That really is the bottom line here and what his advisers have been telling him on Air Force One on his way back to D.C. But, Wolf, I just spoke with a Trump adviser in the last several minutes who said, listen, make no mistake, in the next several days, in the fallout of the release of this letter from the Attorney General about the Mueller report, expect Trump and his team to, as this adviser put it, slam and shame the media. They feel very strongly inside Trump world, Trump campaign, inside the White House, inside the President's legal team, that the media is culpable in all of this, and that they plan to make this very clear in the coming days. And you heard the President talk a little bit about his feelings a few a couple of hours ago when he got on Air Force One and said this was an illegal investigation, an illegitimate investigation. I think you're going to hear more language like that. In the words of this Trump adviser, Wolf, this is Al Capone's vault all over again. That's in reference to the Geraldo Rivera live T.V. expose about Al Capone's vault that ended up turning up nothing. And that is exactly how they feel at this point. Now, I did talk to a separate Trump adviser, a source close to the White House, who said, listen, in terms of the next coming steps, you know, they're just trying to enjoy this moment. They feel completely vindicated in all of this. There is going to be this question of pardons and will the President be issuing pardons in this investigation. According to the source other source close to the White House I spoke with, it's way too early to have that conversation in terms of how the President is going to be doing all of this. But in the words of this other adviser, you're much better off being a Paul Manafort at this point than you are being a Michael Cohen. As Paul Manafort demonstrated throughout his entire ordeal, he stayed very loyal to the President and, obviously, is in a much better position for a pardon if the President decides to issue one than Michael Cohen. And in the words of this Trump adviser I spoke with just a little while ago, nobody likes a rat in jail. And so I suppose they still have some pretty tough feelings about Michael Cohen, Wolf.
[Blitzer:] Jerry Nadler, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, is speaking.
[Acosta:] OK.
[Rep. Jerry Nadler , Chairman, House Committee On The Judiciary:] outlining his summary of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report while making a few questionable legal arguments of his own. I take from this letter three points. First, President Trump is wrong. This report does not amount to a so-called total exoneration. Special Counsel Mueller was clear that his report, quote, does not exonerate, close quote, the President. The Special Counsel spent 22 months uncovering evidence of obstruction and other misconduct. Attorney General Barr, who auditioned for his role with an open memorandum suggesting that the obstruction investigation was unconscionable and that a president and it was almost impossible for any president to commit obstruction of justice since he is the head of the executive branch, made a decision about that evidence in under 48 hours. His conclusions raise more questions than they answer, given the fact that Mueller uncovered evidence that, in his own words, does not exonerate the President. It is unconscionable that President Trump would try to spin the Special Counsel's findings as if his conduct was remotely acceptable. Second, given these questions, it is imperative that the Attorney General release the full report and the underlying evidence. The entire unfiltered report, as well as the evidence underlying that report, must be made available to Congress and to the American people. As much information as can be made public should be made public without delay. I intend to fight for that transparency. We will ask the Attorney General to testify before the House Judiciary Committee. We will demand the release of the full report. The American people are entitled to a full accounting of the President's misconduct referenced by the Special Counsel. Third, the Attorney General's comments make it clear that Congress must step in to get the truth and provide full transparency to the American people. The President has not been exonerated by the Special Counsel, yet the Attorney General has decided not to go further or apparently to share those findings with the public. We cannot simply rely on what may be a hasty partisan interpretation of the facts. Earlier this month, the House passed a resolution calling for the full and complete release of the Special Counsel's report by a vote of 420 to nothing. We now call on the Attorney General to honor that request to release the report and the underlying evidence and to appear before the Judiciary Committee to answer our questions without delay. That's the statement. Thank you. I'll take a few questions.
[Nadler:] I can't hear you.
[Unidentified Male:] Sorry. The President's legal team is saying this is an exoneration and, you know, it's going in opposite to what the Special Counsel is saying. You know, what's your reaction and what does this mean
[Nadler:] Well, as you point out, the Special the President and his people are saying it's a total exoneration. That contradicts with what the Special Counsel found. It's a lie about what the Special Counsel found, but we should not be surprised that they lie anymore.
[Unidentified Male:] And so you mentioned on Twitter you're going to ask the Attorney General to appear before the committee.
[Nadler:] Yes.
[Unidentified Male:] Would you be willing to use subpoena power if necessary?
[Nadler:] Sure. I would hope that it would not be necessary to use subpoena power to get the Attorney General to appear before the committee. We also want to see the full report, and if necessary, we'll use subpoena power to get that, too.
[Unidentified Male:] Are you worried that executive privilege could be exercised in some of these unknowns on the inside of this report?
[Nadler:] Well, the President could try to exercise executive privilege, but it won't be successful. Executive privilege must be asserted by the President personally. And as the Nixon case in front of the Supreme Court, which was decided nine to nothing, pointed out pointed out, executive privilege cannot be used to shield or hide wrongdoing. In the case of Nixon, the tapes of his personal conversations with people were ordered revealed by the court. And so I don't think that executive privilege will be a very successful defense here.
[Unidentified Male:] Can you talk to the side other side of your colleagues? OK, other questions? There's other questions? Anybody have
[Unidentified Female:] speaker and leader Schumer are answering questions when they say the Attorney General is biased? Is that fair and do you have a comment for the Attorney General?
[Nadler:] Well, it is fair. And, in fact, I questioned it if you listen to what I said. He auditioned for his job by writing a 19-page memorandum giving a very extreme view of obstruction of justice and the presidential power and saying, basically, that the that no president could
[Blitzer:] All right. It looks like we've lost that connection with Jerry Nadler, but we got the gist of what he's saying in New York. He is the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. He wants the Attorney General, Bill Barr, to come before the committee and testify. There you see the President of the United States. Air Force One has just landed outside of Washington, D.C. in Joint at Joint Base Andrews in suburban Maryland. I'm curious to see if the President, in addition to waving, is going to go over and speak to reporters once again as he did just before taking off from West Palm Beach earlier in the day. He's going to be heading over to the White House. He's obviously right now, Dana, a very, very happy man, given this report that his Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein have released. The President's clearly not going to be speaking to reporters. It looks like he's walking over to Marine One. That will take him from Joint Base Andrews over to the south lawn of the White House. Maybe we'll hear from him later tonight. Abby Phillip is over at the White House. What are you hearing, Abby?
[Abby Phillip, Cnn White House Correspondent:] Well, hey, Wolf. Just as the Air Force One landed a few minutes ago, we're getting a little bit more information from the aides to the President who were on the plane with him. The first thing is that they still, as of this moment, have not read or been briefed on the Mueller report. That was true on Friday when we first learned that the Mueller report was finished. And as of right now, they still have not seen that entire document or have been nor have they been briefed on it. But in the meantime, President Trump is in high spirits, according to his aides. He told his Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley, this is very good. You let them know it was good. That's the message he wanted his Press Secretary to deliver to reporters. And as he was flying back from Florida, the President was watching television coverage on all of this. He was talking to his aides about the findings. And interestingly, Wolf, he was rereading that Barr letter that outlined no collusion and, in his view, no obstruction. Although I have to repeat, that was not as clear-cut as the White House and the President want to make it. But the President is poring over that letter, according to his aides. And he's in a good mood. He wants that message out. And I think we can expect that this is going to be a constant, constant drumbeat. We'll be waiting to see if President Trump, once he lands here on the south lawn, will, once again, take an opportunity to talk to reporters, and we'll bring that to you if and when it happens, Wolf.
[Blitzer:] All right, we'll see if he speaks to reporters, if he goes into the press briefing room, or if he makes a statement from another room over at the West Wing of the White House. We'll, of course, have live coverage of that. That Marine One flight only takes about 10 or 12 minutes to get from Joint Base Andrews to the south lawn of the White House. Carrie Cordero, you're our legal analyst. There is a lot of legal stuff going on right now. At least according to Mueller, vindication, no collusion; no vindication of obstruction. He left it up to the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General. They say there was no obstruction, but he was not completely exonerated by Robert Mueller.
[Carrie Cordero, Cnn Contributing Editor:] He was not. And so one point on obstruction and one on collusion. On obstruction, we've we're operating under, I think, a little bit of an assumption that the Attorney General made this decision on obstruction in the last 48 hours, from the time that he received formally received the Mueller report Friday evening to this afternoon when he released that letter. I think that's probably not likely. I think he was briefed. I think it's most likely the more likely process is that he was briefed on what the findings of the Mueller report were sometime over the course of whether the last week or the last two weeks or several weeks. And then he had already formed his decision and consulted with the Deputy Attorney General on his decision that the evidence that the Special Counsel had developed did not meet the statutory standards set for obstruction. On collusion, I think, clearly, the Special Counsel's report, according to this letter, is very clear that they did not think the Special Counsel's office did not think that the evidence established a criminal level of conspiracy. In other words, individuals on the Trump campaign being part of the Russian intelligence conspiracy to defraud the United States. But I think it raises a real question for 2020 about what is activity that is OK. Because Attorney General Barr's letter says that there were multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign. It is silent as to whether they accepted some of that assistance. It just simply says that they didn't coordinate, and they weren't part of the conspiracy. And so I think one question that Congress is really going to have to wrestle with is, what level of activity is acceptable? Otherwise, we could go into the 2020 election with campaigns being under the impression that communication, some level of being in receipt of offers from foreign powers is OK, even if it doesn't rise to the level of criminal conspiracy. And as a national security lawyer, that doesn't sound right.
[Blitzer:] Because in the hold on one second. Because in the instructions that Robert Mueller received from the then-Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, his instruction was to investigate any links andor coordination. He used the word there wasn't a word collusion.
[Cordero:] Right.
[Blitzer:] It wasn't conspiracy. It was coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump. So they investigated that, and on the issue of coordination, he concluded, Mueller, there certainly wasn't enough coordination to justify criminal charges.
[Cordero:] To justify criminal charges. And so what I'm suggesting is that there may be some gray space in between activity that is offers from a foreign power to assist a campaign. There is some space in between that and what is criminal conspiracy. And I just think, as a country, we need to think more about that.
[Blitzer:] Yes.
[Bash:] Can I just back up what you just said with a sentence from this report? Because it's oh, not this report, the conclusions that Barr sent. That the Russians tried. They reached out.
[Cordero:] Oh, right.
[Bash:] And it says the Special Counsel did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in these efforts despite multiple offers from Russian affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign.
[Perez:] And it's worth underscoring that we're not just talking about a foreign power. We're talking about a hostile foreign power, right?
[Bash:] Right.
[Perez:] That was trying to undermine our democracy. And the Trump campaign folks, they got these entreaties, essentially, from the Russians. We know President Trump was out there publicly encouraging it in essence by saying Russia, if you're listening to me. So, again, I mean, there's a lot of suspicious activity and some of it, frankly, improper for a presidential campaign to be doing.
[Borger:] Right. But we know they didn't dismiss but we but he also you know, he also writes that they didn't conspire.
[Perez:] Right.
[Borger:] So while, you know, Donald Trump, Jr. had the meeting in Trump Tower, he didn't dismiss the meeting. He took the meeting, but Mueller's finding is that he didn't conspire with the Russians.
[Perez:] Reach a crime.
[Borger:] And that didn't rise to the level of a crime.
[Prokupecz:] And we can't forget the fact that a lot of people lied about all of this, right?
[Borger:] Yes.
[Prokupecz:] I mean, Michael Cohen lied, Papadopoulos lied. In this, I think, we have to keep in mind what investigators must have been thinking when they're seeing all this suspicious activity and then when they start confronting people. And when they start asking questions, people are lying to them. So, of course, your antennas just go up as an investigator, well, there's got to be something more here.
[Bash:] Right.
[Prokupecz:] You know, it is this definitely is one of the things that the line that you read, Dana, goes to the Trump Tower meeting.
[Bash:] Sure.
[Perez:] And we from our own reporting in 2016, we know that this is what propelled the FBI's suspicion and why they were investigating this.
[Bash:] Not the dossier.
[Perez:] Not the dossier. It had nothing to do with it. It had to do with the fact that
[Borger:] And why wouldn't it?
[Perez:] these people were they were getting the Russians were talking about what they were trying to do. The FBI knew what the Russians had done to break into the e-mails to try to weaponize it, and then they're seeing the behavior of these people around the Trump campaign and it just raised additional questions.
[Prokupecz:] And the Russians are talking about doing this.
[Perez:] Right.
[Prokupecz:] They're talking about how they have people inside the Trump campaign that they can deal with and talk to. And the intelligence community, people who work for James Clapper, are sitting there, monitoring this, listening to this, and they're all, like, what is going on here? And that is what launches this entire investigation.
[Borger:] So, Carrie, are you saying that because they were willing participants in these meetings, even though they weren't conspiring, that something needs to be done legally to say, you can't do that? I thought you couldn't do that?
[Perez:] It seems obvious that they
[Cordero:] Well, I think the
[Bash:] Right.
[Perez:] Right?
[Cordero:] I think it's something for Congress to think about. Because, you know, remember when we all first started covering this investigation, there was the phrase, collusion is not a crime.
[Borger:] Right.
[Cordero:] Well, then the Special Counsel came up with a legal theory that conspiracy to defraud the United States was the legal mechanism that they were going to use to prosecute this case. Members of the Trump campaign clearly, according to the Special Counsel's office, were not part of that conspiracy that met the legal standard that they could prove, and they weren't part of that actual legal conspiracy. But what I'm asking is, from Congress' perspective and as a country, are we willing to go into another election cycle where it's OK to have meetings with a hostile foreign power, to take the meeting, to not report it to the FBI? That doesn't sound like
[Prokupecz:] I don't I mean, if you look at what the FBI did and the way this investigation was handled, I think if anyone just thinks about doing that again or I think people should be very
[Borger:] They would be a little wiser.
[Blitzer:] They would be very stupid.
[Prokupecz:] Very stupid, right.
[Blitzer:] Yes.
[Prokupecz:] And I still think the
[Fbi -- Perez:] I mean, it seems obvious.
[Cordero:] But isn't this perhaps a vindication that it's OK to do? That's what I'm suggesting. Isn't this result perhaps a suggestion that it was OK to take those meetings?
[Borger:] It wasn't. I mean, it wasn't. And without informing the counsel of your campaign.
[Blitzer:] But it wasn't a crime. It was not a crime.
[Perez:] It was not a crime.
[Cordero:] It wasn't a crime, but what we hear from this result.
[Borger:] But nothing happened.
[Cordero:] But what we're hearing from the President is that I'm 100 percent exonerated. That everything we did under the campaign was OK.
[Perez:] Which is not really true, right.
[Blitzer:] Yes.
[Cordero:] And what I'm suggesting is it's it may not have been.
[Blitzer:] And the question is, you know, Dana, very quickly, impeachment. Are they going to do anything, or are they going to listen to Nancy Pelosi and say, forget about it?
[Bash:] We're not there yet. I think the most important thing that we're going to look for next is what Jerry Nadler just said, which is he's going to have Barr come up. They're going to grill him on this, maybe even Mueller, and then they're going to take the next step.
[Blitzer:] And I promise there will be live CNN coverage. When Bill Barr goes up
[Perez:] We'll be here.
[Borger:] I don't even think we needed to say that.
[Cordero:] Yes.
[Borger:] Hearing it didn't hurt.
[Blitzer:] before the House Judiciary Committee and reports on all of this.
[Prokupecz:] Thanks, Wolf.
[Blitzer:] I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington. Thanks very much for joining us. Our breaking news coverage continues right now.