Washington Week with The Atlantic

ROBERT COSTA: Mueller finally speaks out, but what now?

I'm Robert Costa.

Welcome to Washington Week.

Robert Mueller defends his report and his decisions.

SPECIAL COUNSEL ROBERT MUELLER: (From video.)

If we had had confidence that the

president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.

We did not, however, make a determination as to whether the president did commit a crime.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: (From video.)

There was no crime.

There was no charge because he had no information.

ROBERT COSTA: Impeachment calls grow louder, but Speaker Pelosi won't be pushed.

HOUSE SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): (From video.)

Many constituents want to impeach the

president, but we want to do what is right and what gets results.

ROBERT COSTA: And the president launches a trade war with Mexico, next.

ANNOUNCER: This is Washington Week.

Once again, from Washington, moderator Robert Costa.

ROBERT COSTA: Robert Mueller's investigation is complete.

He formally shuttered the special counsel's office this week, but the debate over his

conclusions continues inside the Justice Department, on Capitol Hill, and across the

nation.

Mr. Mueller, after years of silence, stepped forward on Wednesday to defend

his team's work and offered what he hopes are his final remarks on this front.

SPECIAL COUNSEL ROBERT MUELLER: (From video.)

Russian intelligence officers who are part

of the Russian military launched a concerted attack on our political system.

The releases were: designed and timed to interfere with our election and to damage a presidential candidate.

ROBERT COSTA: On President Trump and possible obstruction of justice, he said this.

SPECIAL COUNSEL ROBERT MUELLER: (From video.)

If we had had confidence that the

president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.

We did not, however, make a determination as to whether the president did commit a crime.

ROBERT COSTA: The president fired back.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: (From video.)

I think he is a total conflicted person.

I think Mueller is a true never-Trumper.

ROBERT COSTA: Attorney General Bill Barr raised questions about Mueller's legal

analysis, telling CBS News that he disagreed with, quote, "a lot of it."

He added that it: did not reflect the department's view.

Joining me tonight, Yamiche Alcindor, White House correspondent for the PBS NewsHour;

Devlin Barrett, national security reporter for The Washington Post; Susan Page,

Washington Bureau chief for USA Today; and Jerry Seib, executive Washington editor for

The Wall Street Journal.

Devlin, you've covered the Department of Justice day

in, day out.

Listening to Robert Mueller, his associates, DOJ officials, what

was most significant about Mr. Mueller's statement?

DEVLIN BARRETT: First of all, that he spoke at all is the most significant.

You know, I think for two years Mueller has sort of been this blank canvas upon which

people have projected both their hopes and their fears about where this investigation

will lead, and he finally spoke, and that's very powerful.

That's, obviously, very compelling precisely because he's never done it before.

But his message was really interesting in that it was one of, folks, I'm done here; you

know, whatever you decide to do is up to you now.

You know, this investigation has been

on sort of two roads for a long time, a legal criminal investigation and then the

political road, and I think those two roads have now merged.

And Mueller is saying I'm: not driving any further down the road; whatever happens will be on the political road

and it won't involve me.

I don't know that Congress is going to take that for an answer.

ROBERT COSTA: Before that merger happens, did he offer any clarity on obstruction of justice?

DEVLIN BARRETT: The problem for so many people with what Bob Mueller has done is that he

insists he will not answer that question, and he insists that so forcefully that he

insists he won't even consider the question.

And that's the basic contradiction of his work,

right, because why do you investigate the president if not to reach a decision on that point?

He believes, and he lays this out in his report, that Justice Department policy does not

permit him to reach a decision on that.

And I think, frankly, House Democrats would like him to reach a decision because I think

they think that would help their cause in investigating the president.

But what he: laid out this week is a very emphatic I'm not going there and you can't make me.

ROBERT COSTA: Susan, who was the audience for Mr. Mueller?

SUSAN PAGE: I think - I think his audience - of course, we were all consumed here in

Washington, but I think he actually had a message very much directed at Americans

generally across the country that got less attention, and it was the subject he started

with and finished with in his just nine minutes - so not a lot of ground that he could

cover in just nine minutes.

He started and finished by talking about Russian

meddling - not about President Trump's role; about Russia's role.

And the fact is, the fact that that has gotten not - hasn't been as inflammatory as it

seems like it should be is remarkable because the impact of Russian meddling on our

election, which is going to continue, has much more far-reaching, longstanding

consequences than even President Trump.

ROBERT COSTA: If it's so important, will Congress act on Russian meddling?

SUSAN PAGE: On Russian meddling?

Well, I think it's - you know, there is - the House

has passed some legislation aimed at trying to shore up defenses and there's been some

action, but there hasn't been the kind of concerted national campaign to harden our

election systems that you would have expected, I think, after the 2016 election.

GERALD SEIB: You know, and I think - I think one of the interesting unobserved parts of

that whole problem is that this does increase the pressure on Mitch McConnell, the Senate

majority leader, to move legislation designed to stop election interference by the

Russians and by others, and he's kind of sat on that and he's gotten away with sitting on

it for months and months.

But I think one of the things Bob Mueller probably wanted to

do was turn up the heat a little bit on Congress to act in that sense.

You know, the other thing I found interesting about it was that Bob Mueller seemed a

little conflicted on the obstruction of justice.

But there was a huge wink involved there, which was to say, well, we didn't find that the

president didn't obstruct justice, and now it's time for others to decide what to do

about it.

And it was seen as kind of a wink to Congress: Well, now it's your turn, as

you said, and that was the other takeaway from it.

The third point I would make is that the president was pretty conflicted, too, because

he wants to say Bob Mueller exonerated me - complete exoneration; oh, by the way, he's a

never-Trumper and he was deeply conflicted.

You kind of can't have it both ways.

Either Mueller is honorable and exonerated me or you can't trust anything Mueller says.

But you know, that's the way it plays at the White House right now.

ROBERT COSTA: How is it playing at the White House?

Inside the West Wing, what's the mood?

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: I think the mood inside the West Wing is one of President Trump still

feeling very angry at the fact that the Mueller investigation ever happened.

I think that we saw him tweet today or tweet this week I had nothing to do with Russia

helping me win the election; and then quickly backtracked and said, actually, that's not

what I meant, what I meant was I won this all by myself.

And that's pretty remarkable because we have all these intelligence agencies and Bob

Mueller saying we should really be concerned about Russia and its - and its role in the

elections.

I think Susan's really right when you think about he started and ended his

message with that, so that was a message to the American people.

I will add, though,

that from the political point of view I think if you look deeply at what Robert Mueller

said there was - for Democrats he was saying my - this report is my testimony.

I took that to mean, OK, Democrats, I know you're going to want to do oversight, but when

I come to Congress if I have to come to Congress I'm not going to go beyond my report.

ROBERT COSTA: Is he going to come to Congress, Yamiche, based on your conversations with

House Democrats?

Are they going to call him?

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: I'm not sure.

I think that if you listen, Adam Schiff from the

House Intelligence Committee, he sounds like he might subpoena Mueller.

But Jerry Nadler, when he was asked, you know, what are you going to do, are you going to

subpoena Mueller, he said, you know, I heard much of what I thought I was going to hear.

So maybe - he didn't even say maybe not; he just basically stopped at that point.

I will say, though, if you're a Republican who was listening to Bob Mueller, you also

have to make it very clear that he said if I thought I could clear the president I would

have, and I think that that's the political message to Republicans.

He's making it crystal clear I'm not giving him a pass, I'm not exonerating him, which is

exactly what the president has been saying over and over again, and Robert Mueller's

basically saying that's not what I'm saying.

ROBERT COSTA: Do your DOJ sources, Devlin, expect Mueller to head to Capitol Hill even

though he wants this to be his final word?

DEVLIN BARRETT: I think there is still a great deal of expectation and pressure from the

Congress for him to come and testify.

I think part of the message he's sending is that

he will be a hostile witness.

I think it's sort of an interesting question for the

House Democrats: Do they - are - which is worse?

ROBERT COSTA: Well, what about Attorney General Bill Barr?

How does he handle it?

DEVLIN BARRETT: I think Barr - from Barr's point of view, Mueller has said he doesn't

want to go.

I don't think - first of all, Mueller is not a DOJ employee anymore.

Barr can't make Mueller do anything.

So at this point, it's really a conversation

between Mueller and Nadler and some others in the House.

And I think the challenge for Democrats is, do you want a hostile witness or no witness?

Which is - which is better/worse for what you're trying to accomplish, which is to keep

public pressure on the president and give these investigations some oxygen and some fuel?

SUSAN PAGE: One of the things that's been so annoying to both sides is that Mueller

won't do what either side wants him to do.

DEVLIN BARRETT: Correct.

SUSAN PAGE: He won't go and say, you know, there's really nothing there, case closed, we

should move on.

But he also doesn't give the kind of crisp answer that Democrats were

hoping he would give to say yes there's something to do here, yes you should impeach,

which was the message that some Democrats heard, but it wasn't explicitly what he said.

ROBERT COSTA: It's not just about being crisp.

Was he too late?

Now he's debating the attorney general about the meaning of his own report.

GERALD SEIB: Well, I think that he didn't want to - as Devlin suggested at the outset -

I don't think he wanted to do this at all.

I think he wanted to go away without ever

saying a word.

It's ironic in a town where most people run toward a television camera,

that Mueller runs away as fast as he can.

But I think he felt he had to close the book and put

a period at the end of a sentence in some fashion and this was the fashion by which he did it.

ROBERT COSTA: House Democrats want to open the book, a growing number of them, on the

question of impeachment.

What are the pressures, though, Yamiche, on Speaker Pelosi?

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: The pressures on Speaker Pelosi are that there is still a minority of

Democrats in the House that want to impeach the president, but they're loud and they are

people who are very savvy with the media and they're people who have a lot of energy behind them.

And, by the way, you have now Democrats who are running for president, who more and more

of them are saying we should look into impeachment and we should - and we should impeach.

So I think there's this idea that Nancy Pelosi, I think she still has a handle on her

caucus as of today, but when Democrats come back and the Congress comes back, that could

be a completely different story.

ROBERT COSTA: Susan, you're writing a biography of Speaker Pelosi.

What's your read on her positioning?

SUSAN PAGE: Well, she's got this - she's in kind of a bind.

She's got, at this point, 55 House Democrats who support either an impeachment,

empaneling an impeachment committee or starting an impeachment inquiry of some sort.

But she's got 41 Democrats who flipped Republican seats in 2018, gave Democrats control

of the House of Representatives.

There is no overlap between those two lists.

The people, the members who flipped seats and on whom Democratic control is crucial are

entirely separate from the 55 Democrats who now support some kind of impeachment inquiry.

And that's because impeachment is a risky business.

It's risky for the president, but it's risky for Democrats who really got elected,

regained control of the House with a promise to deal with things like health care.

ROBERT COSTA: Is it a risky business for Speaker Pelosi?

You've been through so many Washington wars as a reporter.

GERALD SEIB: It's absolutely risky.

I mean, among those people are 21 House freshmen who won in districts that Donald Trump

carried in 2016 and they look at their districts and say people are going to be mad if we

move to impeachment, that's not a very useful strategy, you know, from our point of view.

So there's another risk involved, by the way, and I wrote a column a couple of weeks ago

saying at the - in the - at the top, maybe President Trump wants the Democrats to impeach

him.

And I thought I was being facetious, but the more I think about it and the more Nancy Pelosi

speaks, I think she may think this way, too.

Maybe he does want them to, because what would happen?

He'd be impeached by Democrats in the House.

He would not be convicted in the Senate.

He could then say I was vindicated and the Democrats overreached and spent all their time

attacking me rather than dealing with the country's business.

ROBERT COSTA: If the Democrats are going to build an impeachment case, it has to go

beyond Robert Mueller's testimony.

Don McGahn could matter, the former White House counsel,

getting to the question of intent.

Do Democrats have more work to do on that intent front?

DEVLIN BARRETT: Well, absolutely and that's why this question of hearing witnesses is so

important.

It's not just Mueller who's a problematic witness for the House Democrats or a

nonexistent witness for them.

It's McGahn, it's a number of former and current White House officials who the Trump

administration has made very clear they do not want coming within a hundred miles of a

hearing room.

And so, you know, the Democrats have approached this problem with

the notion of, you know, we need a high-profile hearing.

If it's Mueller or McGahn or someone else, we need, like, bright lights and a lot of live

TV to sort of drive this point home to the American public.

They're reaching, they're searching for a witness and right now they don't have one.

ROBERT COSTA: There's no star witness at this point who's going to make the case for the

Democrats.

Did the president - to Jerry's question - does the

White House want impeachment as a grievance tool for 2020?

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: White House aides will say they're not going to welcome impeachment,

but they are obviously having meetings about impeachment.

And also, there's this idea that White House aides have been telling reporters, including

myself, that having an impeachment proceeding against the president might help him win

back the House and take it back from Democrats.

I also have been talking to sources inside the Trump campaign and they say this would

help turn out our voters, we need them to get excited, we want them to come, and what

better message than to say, hey, they're still mad about 2016 and now they're trying to

take him out of office before 2020?

So that's what I think what: Nancy Pelosi is looking at and why she's proceeding so cautiously.

ROBERT COSTA: Are there any Republican cracks?

We saw Representative Justin Amash of

Michigan.

Is that it?

SUSAN PAGE: You know, so far that's it.

And I think he does not represent a crack.

He's a, you know, he's a particularly principled libertarian member of Congress who

speaks only for himself.

It's not as though someone who - it is not as though Kevin

McCarthy announced that he was in favor of impeachment.

So I think that does not: reflect a crack.

That doesn't mean you could not possibly have some erosion of

Republican support if you had some big disclosure that seemed very shocking.

Now, Republicans have really stuck with President Trump in a remarkable way for the past

two years.

You can't guarantee - the White House cannot be confident that a Mitt Romney,

for instance, wouldn't find something that made him support taking action.

DEVLIN BARRETT: But can you imagine 20 Republican senators voting to convict?

SUSAN PAGE: No.

DEVLIN BARRETT: No, it's - and I think it's interesting.

Nancy Pelosi says another thing that probably doesn't get enough attention.

She talks about how impeachment would be very divisive in the country, not just whether

it's a good strategy or bad strategy for Democrats, and I think she's sincere in that and

she's certainly right.

I mean, that would be extraordinarily divisive and I think

that's a consideration in her mind as she does the calculus on this question.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: The issue is, though, that when you look at the country, politics has

already become so tribal over the last two years.

Take any event - Robert Mueller's statement or what President Trump is tweeting or what -

or what Nancy Pelosi is saying - and if I talk to Republicans, it's a completely

different story than when you talk to Democrats.

SUSAN PAGE: But there's risk for Pelosi not taking action as well, because we know that

this gins up the president's base, but not impeaching a president who many of the most

reliable Democratic voters believes ought to be impeached is - it could hold down

Democratic turnout, it could be a problem for Democrats in 2020 as well.

ROBERT COSTA: A final question on this issue.

Whether the Democrats: impeach the president or not, could he still face charges once he leaves office?

DEVLIN BARRETT: That's always been sort of a theoretical possibility.

And it's something that Mueller says very specifically in the report that it's a scenario

that could happen.

I think that's still a difficult and high hurdle politically and legally.

But yeah, that is definitely on the table in terms of a legal possibility down the road.

ROBERT COSTA: Let's turn to trade.

President Trump has threatened to impose new tariffs

on Mexico with the goal of prompting Mexico to be more aggressive in addressing

undocumented immigration into the United States.

Some high-profile Republicans

slammed the move as a, quote, "misuse" of presidential tariff authority.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Mr. Trump's top trade adviser, Bob Lighthizer,

also opposed the plan, arguing that it could jeopardize the ratification of the

U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement.

Jerry, what does this mean for U.S. consumers?

GERALD SEIB: Well, first of all, it's a very big deal.

I mean, Mexico is the second-largest

provider of imports to the U.S. after China, so there's all kinds of stuff that comes in.

In particular, it's harmful to the auto industry because lots of parts that are put in

American-made cars come from Mexico, so prices of cars goes up, price of Mexican produce

at the restaurant or the grocery store goes up, the appliance that you might buy might

have been made in Mexico, that cost goes up, so there's a lot of impact for consumers.

There's also potential follow-on impact if this actually happens and Mexico responds by

putting tariffs of its own on, then that's going to affect farmers who like to ship

products to Mexico.

One footnote, though.

This is not happening immediately.

The president said I will put these on effective June 10th if Mexico doesn't act -

ROBERT COSTA: Five percent on all goods starting June 10th and then 5 percent in addition every month.

GERALD SEIB: Every month until you hit 25 percent, which would be very onerous.

But there's a period of time here for Mexico to do something to allow President Trump to

back off.

And we've seen this sometimes in the China trade dispute.

There's a threat, there's a panic, the president puts a deadline and then sees enough

progress to say, oh, I succeeded, I convinced them to act and he backs off.

ROBERT COSTA: Why did he act now?

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: That's a question I'm not sure I can answer.

What I can say is that obviously this has been a White House that's been trying to really

make a case that there's a crisis on the border and has been using everything from

changes in asylum to obviously now trade policy to make that case.

I will say this.

I was on the call with the White House officials as they were announcing this and one of

the key questions people asked is, well, what can Mexico do to make sure that these

tariffs don't happen or at least that they don't increase?

There were no clear goalposts from the White House.

So you have a very clear punitive action - it's going to be this date and this date and 5

percent then 10 percent - but they don't say, OK, well if border apprehensions go down by

5 percent, then we'll pull this back or if we have less people in custody, then we'll

pull that back.

So what you have is a vague successful goal or a vague goal for success

and Mexico could pretty much do anything and Trump could say, OK, you know what, I'm

OK, we'll take this away or say they didn't do enough, we're going to 25 percent.

SUSAN PAGE: Well, Jerry said "if this happens," and I think that's a real question because -

ROBERT COSTA: Why do you say that?

SUSAN PAGE: Because, well, for one thing the president's made threats before to do

dramatic, drastic things like this and then not done them, and he often does them at a

moment when he wants to change what we are talking about.

So what are we talking: about this week?

We're talking about the Mueller - Mueller's announcement, and we're

also talking about the controversy over trying to shield the president from having

to see John - the ship in Japan that was named the USS McCain.

Those are both stories on which he was not getting a lot of defenders, and this - now

we're talking about trade and an issue he would much prefer us to be talking about.

GERALD SEIB: And that his base would like to hear about.

SUSAN PAGE: Yeah.

ROBERT COSTA: And we're seeing the president use emergency powers, very controversial

even among Republicans.

It's raising questions about the executive

branch and going into the national security area.

DEVLIN BARRETT: Well, I mean, one of the great things about politics - or maybe one of

the worst things about politics - is that your view of executive power depends very much

in this country on who's the - who happens to be the executive at the time.

You know, there's this battle over how much authority the president has on a whole number

of fronts, and frankly, Attorney General Bill Barr is a big proponent of as much

executive power as possible, and that helps Trump in a number of ways.

And one of the ways that you've seen him, you know, become very close to Trump very

quickly in a way that, frankly, a lot of other Cabinet officials have struggled and

failed to do is that Trump seems to really like his attorney general already, and a lot

of that is because a lot of what Barr is doing is to the benefit of the president.

And for Democrats, they see that as, you know, very dangerous and alarming, and Trump

finally feels he has a real defender, a real lawyer in the Justice Department.

ROBERT COSTA: Does this upend the USMCA, the new version of NAFTA that sits in Nancy

Pelosi's hands on Capitol Hill?

GERALD SEIB: Well, that's the - that's one of the real dangers.

As you suggested, that's one of the reasons some of President Trump's top advisors said

don't do this, because it puts the ratification of the new trade agreement in jeopardy

both here and in Mexico, because in Mexico this sort of thing stirs up nationalist

sentiment which is very clear - close to the surface anyway in Mexico.

And they - there's a chance the legislature down there says, nope, we're not going to do

any deals with the U.S. under these circumstances.

And here it kind of gives Democrats

an excuse to vote against a trade agreement they're not sure they like that much anyway.

So, yeah, I think it creates a political problem for an agreement that's very close to

the president's heart.

ROBERT COSTA: Thanks, everybody.

Appreciate you being here on a Friday night.

Our: conversation will continue on the Washington Week Extra.

Watch our discussion on: politics and social media.

You can stream it on our website, Facebook, or YouTube.

And stay tuned for a special message from your local PBS station.

I'm Robert Costa.

Have a great weekend.