Neal Katyal

I agree with Congressman Nadler there.

The Mueller investigation has proved that not to be the case. That's not a criminal case. That's not an indictment.

Oh, yes. And I think even Donald Trump agrees, which is why he didn't try to put him up for a nomination and put Barr in.

This isn't venting like to you or something like that, and the criminal intent there could very well be met because it doesn't require completion, it just requires an attempt to try and do something that is illegal.

If it's true, that's kind of a core classic impeachable offense.

That's the heart of our democracy. And this isn't like some antitrust technical thing.

What Trump is basically doing is bringing back King George III. I mean, not just on his odious views of race and so on but on, you know, the most fundamental value we face, which is free speech.

If the president tried this or Barr tried this, I actually think it would backfire because a limited Barr report to Congress will just empower Congress to investigate through all of their committees.

Hiding information about presidential wrongdoing, it's not going to work.

The president himself, his lawyers have been saying that he can't be indicted because he's a sitting president. And every scholar who takes that view also says to make sure a president is not above the law, the remedy is impeachment.

It sure seems like the Trump folks are reading the special counsel regulations the way they read the constitution, which is to look for a loophole here and a loophole there. And it's not going work.

This is the heart of the most foundational question the American republic faces, which is how do you investigate the chief executive, the president of the United States.

I think when you're talking about wrongdoing by the President, potential wrongdoing, more is better than less.

But let's say that Mueller turns the report over to Barr next week. Barr is then going to conduct a review of that report.

It's all, Anderson, speculation at this point. So, we don't actually know that Mueller has turned -- is going to turn in the final report.

I actually think that if it is a brief summary, it actually could be counterproductive to the president because it won't resolve anything.

The hard question is, does Mueller have to provide all of those answers or in this world with Congress and other investigators like the Southern District, can they carry the ball forward?

And the last thing our Founders would have wanted is for the president to be able to do on his own what the Congress of the United States says you can't do.

This is something presidents don't do for really good reason.

The idea that the president is declaring a national emergency just because he didn't get the votes in Congress, that's not an emergency.

The mandate of Congress is much broader than Mueller

If that's the case, then boy, the American people really need to see it, and we have no confidence that the acting attorney general's going to let us.

Ordinarily, we wouldn't need anything like this. Ordinarily, we have presidents who tell the truth.

It sounds like a threat or at least a campaign by Whitaker to be named deputy attorney general or something like that with Trump.

I think the President should be on warning that his tactics here are really the tactics not of innocent people, but of mob bosses.