-Special Counsel Mueller has finished
his portion of this investigation
and submitted his report to Bill Barr,
and now is where sort of the real drama begins.
Bill Barr has to decide what of this report
is he gonna send to Congress,
what of this report is he going to make public, if anything.
-Mr. President, should the Mueller
report be released while you're abroad next week?
-That will be totally up to the new attorney general.
He's a tremendous man.
-At the end of the day, I would make a decision
in good faith based on the laws and the facts.
-The one question that we sort of hope the report will answer
once it becomes public, if it becomes public,
is did anyone on the Trump campaign actually conspire
with the Russians to influence the election?
-I have no reason to doubt that the Russians attempted
to interfere in our election.
No matter what Bill Barr decides today,
I don't think this report can stay hidden forever.
He's going to face such intense pressure from Congress,
from reporters, from the public,
and someday, no matter what he wants to do now,
this thing is going to be released.
He cannot keep these secrets forever.
The fresh political storm is gonna be Congress' effort
to reveal what Robert Mueller found.
Democrats control the House in Congress,
and that means they have subpoena power.
So you're gonna see some of these key committees,
like the House Intelligence Committee,
like the House Oversight Committee
throw their weight around
and try to get to the bottom of what Robert Mueller found.
This is politics, right?
They want to figure out what President Trump
did wrong and expose that.
On the Senate side, though, Republicans are in control.
And while they certainly have an interest,
and many of them have talked about having an interest
in having Mueller's work be aired publicly,
particularly Trump's strongest allies
are gonna seek to undercut what Robert Mueller
found or undercut his investigation.
But at this point in the investigation,
Special Counsel Mueller has charged 34 people.
Among those people charged are Mike Flynn,
the former national security adviser, Paul Manafort,
President Trump's former campaign chairman,
Rick Gates, his former deputy campaign chairman,
Roger Stone, his friend of several decades,
and the list goes on and on.
Robert Mueller has also charged two big batches of Russians
with election-related crimes, one big batch who Robert Mueller
says sought to influence the election
basically via a social-media campaign,
and another batch that he claims hacked Democrats' e-mails
and sort of worked to get those e-mails published
with the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks.
Robert Mueller has not directly alleged that anyone
in Trump's orbit actively conspired
with Russia to influence the election.
All of the charges have been about lying
to investigators, lying to Congress.
Certainly there's been some Russia-related
activity in there,
but nothing directly to the core mission,
which is did the Trump campaign conspire
with Russia to influence the election?
Robert Mueller is a special counsel,
and he operates under the special counsel regulations.
-Under the current regulations,
the special counsel report is confidential.
The report that goes public would be a report
by the attorney general.
-They don't offer a lot of specificity
on what happens next.
Bill Barr has latitude to kind of say
something himself to Congress.
-I am gonna try to get the information
out there that's consistent with these regulations,
and to the extent I have discretion,
I will exercise that discretion to do that.
It's possible he could sort of re-digest Mueller's report
and put together his own summary.
It's possible he could just sort of write a cover letter and say,
"Hey, Congress, Robert Mueller's done with his investigation.
This is what he's found.
Attached is his report."
We don't really know, because the regulations
don't say precisely what it is that Bill Barr should do
once he gets its report.