Senate Intel Leaders Split on Russia Collusion

Trump campaign. Yesterday, Republican chairman Richard Burr said the committee had found no evidence of collusion, but Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the committee, disagreed, saying the investigation is still ongoing and the committee still had to interview some key witnesses. Joining me as William Banks, professor at

Syracuse University Law School, Bill, how do you read Burr's comments? Well, I think that Burro was was caught by the interviewer to answer a specific question of about the state of play at that particular date, and he gave an accurate answer. They had no conclusive evidence of of conspiracy or collusion at that time, but you know, his his colleagues, Senator

Warner is absolutely correct that there's more to do. Several witnesses have yet to return to the committee, UH, in part because they're still undergoing proceedings related to Mueller's investigation. So the answer is is one that we shouldn't or the riff. I think we shouldn't take it too seriously because the committee will be back together and indeed, for nearly two years now, UH, those two have managed bipartisan investigation.

I expect they'll continue. There's also a question of what is meant by evidence and direct evidence, which seems that both Democrats and Republicans are saying there is no direct evidence. Are they referring to a smoking gun? Because juries sometimes have to draw conclusions based on indirect evidence and circumstantial evidence. Well, that's true. So you know, the when when they're done, when the rest of the witnesses returned and they lay it all out and h there'll be a chance for

us to derive circumstantial evidence. I think, you know, among we've got Michael Cohen yet coming back. There's Paul Manifort, and now there's a lot of attention being focused on an inadvertent leak last week of of some statements made

in in a hearing related to Manifort. That there's a special interest in the in a meeting between Maniford and a Russian named Kilimnick that focused on both interest in solving a problem in the Ukraine to Russia satisfaction, and on and on Trump polling data that was passed between Manifort or Rick Gates to this Russian operative who had

ties to the intelligence agencies there. As far as the Mueller Report goes, I just want to talk a little bit about William Barr, who is going to be the next Attorney General, and his statements that he would like to give as much information as possible in that report to the public, but there may be things that have to be concealed due to security concerns. What do you where do you think he stands right now as far as revealing the Muller Report, It is hard to tell.

And he was he was a little bit coy, I think in the hearings and in committing to a specific position. But we have to understand that we don't yet know. None of us knows what form the Mueller Report is going to take. This is This is not like Watergate.

This is not like ken Starr and and President Clinton, where they had a specific charge about reporting based on a statute the Ethics and Government Act that, as we know, the whole Mueller investigation has been conducted pursu into Justice Department regulations, not pursuing to a law enacted by Congress, and those regulations don't specify a full report to Congress, so we could be looking at any number of different

formats for report length, content, degree of UH specificity. So it's probably not fair for us to prejudge what Bar might do when none of us, including Bar, knows what the report's going to look like. There is a court decision during the Watergate era that allowed the House to review the evidence that Watergate prosecutors had assembled against former President Richard Nixon, and that states that Congress has the right to obtain all evidence. So will that give the

congressional investigators? And in I think it does, I mean that those are important principles. I think Congress, of course has constitutional responsibility to conduct investigations within its purview, and certainly following the laws of the United States is within its purview of investigation. So I think courts would tend

to be very supportive of efforts. But Congress to obtain the information first, we need a dispute, though so far there's no dispute, and I think it's likely that the information is going to come to Congress one way or

the other. Uh. You and I've talked several times about the position of President Trump here had given the politics even though there's a democratic how since we still have a strongly Republican Senate, the prospects of impeachment are are still very much in the in the distance and highly unlikely. And unless that circumstance changes dramatically, I think then there'd be little pressure on bar or on Mueller not to have the materials that he has, whatever format takes widely

disseminated in Congress, would appropriate redactions and such. Something that's been suggested talked about if the Mulla report is not released in full, is calling Mueller to testify before one of the House committees. How would that work? Would it work? It could work again, so long as as he's not revealing secret grand jury information or you know, compromising intelligence

sources or methods. He could freely testify because there's nothing in the Justice Department regulations that would hit him prohibit him from doing so. That would be very interesting, and that would grab ratings as as we thought Michael Cohen's would until he backed out of it. Now, I want to talk about some I would call extraordinary area or even bizarre comments that Trump's former lawyer, John Dowd made.

One of the things he said was that he was afraid that the President couldn't handle an interview with Mueller, because he would if he didn't know the answer, he would just say anything. Is that strange for a lawyer to talk about a former client that way. It's very strange. Mr Dowd didn't do himself any credit or service by making those comments. I'm certainly certain that current council is

very disturbed about Doubt's behavior. He may be right, of course, but that's not something that the Council wants to say about a client in such a high profile matter as this. It's it's certainly this whole case has been unusual from start to finish, the things that lawyers have done, and including Michael Cohen. Do you believe that Michael Cohen at this point will be testifying at one of these committees before he goes to prison, because he keeps on putting

it off. I think he will. I think he has been putting it off. But I think he can't put it off forever, and I think it's going to behoove him to come forward. And you know, I think he probably at the end of the day will be at least in the House, if not in the Senate. Yeah. I noticed that what we started out talking about was that the Senator Burr and he mentioned he was a little bit aggravated. You could say that Cohen had put it off, but they could always call him from prison

and get him to come in. But I suspect that they don't really want to do that. But it is a possibility. Yeah, it is a possibility. Right, He's not going anywhere where he can't be reached, that's for sure. All Right. Well, thanks so much Phil. As always, that's William Banks. He's a professor at Syracuse University of Law School. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can subscribe and listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud,

and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcast. I'm June Brosso. This is Bloomberg m