[George Howell, Cnn Anchor:] Releasing the Mueller report: new details from the attorney general about when and how much of that report could be revealed. Plus, shutting down the U.S. border: President Trump makes a threat, again saying he would act as soon as next week. Also ahead this hour, defeat for the third time: Theresa May's Brexit plan gets voted down again, leaving the United Kingdom in political limbo. Live from CNN in Atlanta, we welcome viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm George Howell. CNN NEWSROOM starts right now.
[Howell: 4:] 00 am on the U.S. East Coast. We could get our first look at the full Mueller report on Russian election interference in weeks. In a letter to Congress, the U.S. attorney general said it would be made public by mid-April, if not sooner. That report is nearly 400 pages long. Here is the thing, how much will be revealed and how much will be redacted is still not known. House Democrats say it's not good enough. Kaitlan Collins starts us off.
[Kaitlan Collins, Cnn White House Correspondent:] President Trump giving the all-clear...
[Donald Trump, President Of The United States:] I have nothing to hide.
[Collins:] voicing confidence in Bill Barr after the attorney general announced Congress will have Robert Mueller's redacted report within weeks.
[Trump:] I have great confidence in the attorney general. And if that's what he would like to do, I have nothing to hide. This was a hoax. This was a witch hunt.
[Collins:] Barr telling lawmakers the White House will not see the document before they do and that Trump is deferring to him on asserting executive privilege. Despite calling the special counsel's investigation a witch hundred, Trump saved his harshest words for Mexico today.
[Trump:] I'm very upset with Mexico.
[Collins:] Repeating his threat to shut down the southern border, but this time with a deadline.
[Trump:] There's a very good likelihood that I will be closing the border next week. And that will be just fine with me.
[Collins:] Trump warned earlier today that if Mexico doesn't stop undocumented immigrants from crossing into the U.S., he will close it down and halt all trade.
[Trump:] And we will keep it closed for a long time. I'm not playing games.
[Collins:] The presidential threat coming days after the nation's top border official warned that a crush of asylum-seeking families has put immigration enforcement at its breaking point.
[Kevin Mcaleenan, U.s. Customs And Border Protection:] This is an unfortunate step and very challenging for our law enforcement professionals to digest.
[Collins:] But also one day after Trump total crowd in Michigan that those fleeing violence and poverty are sometimes faking it.
[Trump:] They're all met by the lawyers and they say, say the following phrase. I am very afraid for my life. I am afraid for my life. OK. And then I look at the guy, he looks like he just got out of the ring, he's the heavyweight champion of the world. He's afraid for his it's a big fat con job, folks.
[Collins:] In his first rally since the end of this special counsel's 22-month investigation...
[Trump:] And after three years of lies and smears and slander, the Russia hoax is finally dead. The collusion delusion is over.
[Collins:] as Trump took a victory lap around Democrats...
[Trump:] The Democrats have to now decide whether they will continue defrauding the public with ridiculous bullshit, partisan investigation, or whether they will apologize to the American people.
[Collins:] the president taking delight in going after the House Intelligence chairman in particular.
[Trump:] They're on artificial respirators right now. They're getting mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, little pencil neck, Adam Schiff, got the smallest, thinnest neck I have ever seen.
[Collins:] Now the president has threatened to close down the border before. But he's never offered a timeline like he did today. Right now there are still questions swirling around the White House about what this will do because, though the president today described it as a potentially profitable endeavor, it would, of course, affect businesses, factories, those communities down there on the border that cross over so frequently. And right now the White House is not commenting on whether or not the president's threat also applies to air travel Kaitlin Collins, CNN, the White House.
[Howell:] You heard from the commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. He says the immigration system is at a breaking point. Let's look at the numbers. Immigration officials say, Monday alone, they arrested 4,000 people trying to cross illegally into the United States. In March, 40,000 children will come into the Customs and Border Protection custody. March will be the highest month for apprehensions and encounters since 2008. The results, he says, sets the potential for a tragic incident. Let's get analysis from Natasha Lindstaedt. She is a professor of government at University of Essex. Good to have you.
[Natasha Lindstaedt, University Of Essex:] Thanks for having me on.
[Howell:] Border officials are saying their resources have become strained. The U.S. president threatening to shut down the southern border and he has this to say about what he calls a crisis.
[Trump:] They set up these caravans. In many cases, they put their worst people in the caravan. They're not going to put their best in. They get rid of their problems. And they march up here. And they're coming into the country. We're not letting them in our country. Our Border Patrol, the job they have done is incredible. The job that ICE is doing is incredible. And we have run out of space. We can't hold people anymore and Mexico can stop it so easily.
[Howell:] Natasha, the question here, is this a manufactured crisis as critics have been saying or a real problem that has been gradually building to now a breaking point?
[Lindstaedt:] Well, what Trump is saying and Republicans and his supporters, is there has been a jump in apprehensions. Democrats say this is a crisis of his own making as you mentioned, because actually Mexican immigration to the U.S. has gone down. If you look at the overall trend, immigration into the U.S. from the south decreased. His policy seemed to be not really working in the right way. Under the Obama administration, they were able to start working on immigration reform and making it more of a comprehensive thing. It's not just putting up borders and apprehending people but also looking at the root causes of immigration. So Mexican immigration has gone down but Central American countries are dealing with major crises. Homicide rates making people feel unsafe. It would be better to tackle it from that front and look at the root problem rather than trying to erect borders with huge economic consequences both on the Mexican economy and on the U.S. economy.
[Howell:] I want to pivot to another topic we have discussed. The Mueller report is expected to be released by mid-April, if not sooner, likely to be heavily redacted. In the latest tweet from the president, reading the tea leaves with his thoughts, look at that tweet. The problem, he says, is, "No matter what the Radical Left Democrats get, no matter what we give them, it will never be enough. Just watch, they will Harass & Complain & Resist [the theme of their movement]. So maybe we should just take our victory and say NO, we've got a Country to run!" People are zeroing in on the capitalized no. Is it no to harassment and releasing the Mueller report? What do you make of it?
[Lindstaedt:] I think he's trying to take a strong stance after the Mueller report is released and caused a lot of stress over two years. He's been vocal in saying he's been exonerated and no collusion. Republicans and Trump supporters have been really angry about this. They say this has been a complete witch hunt and they want to be defiant and strong in the fact they feel it was a waste of time and taxpayer money. But the Democrats are concerned about Barr's report. They don't think it was very clear and all the evidence was put out there. There's concerns whatever comes out, if there's so much that is redacted, it may be covering a lot of information that the Democrats are suspicious about. Adam Schiff, who is the House Intelligence chair, made this clear in a speech he gave, when Republicans were aggressively going after him to try to get him to resign. He was saying, I'm not OK with a lot of things that happened, that were clear, that Don Jr., his son, appeared to be exuberant in an email about getting dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Russians; that his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was creating back channels to meet with the Russians. And Trump, himself, said in the summer of 2016, Russia, why don't you go get Hillary Clinton's emails. These things were in plain sight to everybody. There's a suspicion this Barr report wasn't telling the whole picture and may have been biased a little bit. They are hoping the whole thing will come out. Trump, on the other hand, is saying, I don't care what comes out. There was no collusion. There's no proof of collusion. He feels pretty confident that it doesn't matter.
[Howell:] Adding to one thing you mentioned there, the report does not exonerate the president. That's important to underscore. A greater question here, Natasha, will the partial release of this report who knows how much will be redacted. Will the partial release make a difference here for Democrats?
[Lindstaedt:] No, I don't think it will make a difference for Democrats. I think that they want as much of it to come out as possible because of the suspicions that I mentioned. They feel that pretty strongly the Russians interfered with the U.S. election and there may have been some connectioncooperation with the Trump campaign based on how vocal they were about trying to work with the Russians and how clearly they wanted to work with the Russians and relieve the sanctions and so forth. For the Democrats, there are all kinds of other investigations going on that actually have more serious implications for Trump politically and legally; most notably, the campaign finance fraud and his connection with Michael Cohen and basically telling him to pay hush money to someone who he had a relationship with and the fact that Cohen, himself, had been sentenced to prison for three years and Trump was named as an unindicted co-conspirator. That's one of many investigations going on that will have more repercussions and political implications that the Democrats are going to want to pursue. This is more of an emotional thing. They feel something is fishy, something is wrong and they don't buy that there was really much ado about nothing here. That's why they are holding on to this.
[Howell:] Natasha, thank you so much.
[Lindstaedt:] Thanks for having me.
[Howell:] A common phrase in the British Parliament has been, "And the nos have it." The prime minister's Brexit deal fails yet again. Plus Palestinians mark a significant milestone in Gaza. An anniversary that has the Israeli military on heightened alert. Stay with us.