An interesting discussion on CNN's New Day about the potential restrictions on how much information there can be in Robert Mueller's final report, including David Gregory, Jeff Toobin, and John Berman.
"To those who are new this hour, Rosenstein gave a speech yesterday where he talked about the principle if you're not charged, the government says nothing, the clear implication being the Mueller report will not include anything about people who were not charged, including and especially Donald Trump. What makes that so bizarre is that Donald Trump is president of the United States," Jeff Toobin said.
"There is a Justice Department policy that says he can't be indicted, so, is Rosenstein saying, A, he can't be indicted and, B, if you're not indicted, you can't say anything about the person. Does that mean we can't hear anything about Donald Trump? That would be a bizarre scenario."
"It's convenient now they're enforcing this rule when we know all these committees from Judiciary on down have gotten hundreds of thousands of pages of transparency that they've asked for on people not indicted, Andrew McCabe, Hillary Clinton, I could go on," Alysin Camerota said.
"Absolutely. It's a reaction to that," Dana Bash replied. "The way I read what Rod Rosenstein said was we are not going to have a James Comey situation here, fall of 2016 or summer of 2016 he goes out and gives a press conference and says, 'I will not indict Hillary Clinton but here are the 10 reasons she's a horrible person.'
"So Donald Trump wins both ways," Toobin said.
"Hang on a second. There's three separate issues," John Berman said.
"What Comey did running the FBI before the election and one thing people will point to. and what DoJ did since Donald Trump has been president, turning over documents to these various congressional committees, sometimes reluctantly and have turned them over with discussions with Trey Gowdy there, and if the president can't be charged are they basically saying we won't give you anything? Full stop. There are three separate bars there. Sorry, David. The one difference is between Comey and this situation, this involves the independent counsel."
"The precedent here goes back to the impeachment of President Clinton and the Starr report and does seem to be a reaction to that and minimalist reaction to what's released to Congress and separately. That's separate from guidelines, in Comey's case, that says if you don't charge somebody, don't talk about it," David Gregory said.
"We have all the stuff on Carter Page Republicans demanded, the FISA documents. Carter Page hasn't been charged with anything. Remember that, the bar is there for that," John Berman said.
"That's the point. They now seem to be applying a different rule about derogatory information," Camerota said.
"The regulation of, the special counsel regulation was written in response to the Starr Report. The Starr report was perceived, especially by Democrats, too much information came out," Toobin said. "
"They wrote this regulation, which actually suggests a very narrow scope for the report by the special counsel. If in fact it is a narrow scope, and it's written somewhat ambiguously, that may wind up limiting what Democrats want to know about Donald Trump.
"So Fighting the last war is often problematic because you never know where the next war will take place."
