Walter Dellinger & Jeffrey Toobin on the Mueller Report

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Gentlemen, welcome to the program. Are you completely clear — first, you, Walter Dellinger, as somebody who’s defended the government in court in the past, are you completely clear about what’s happened and where President Trump stands today?

WALTER E. DELLINGER, FORMER U.S. SOLICITOR GENERAL: Well, I think we won’t have any clarity until we see the underlying and said to be a comprehensive actual report by the Special Counsel Mueller. I think what is most clear, Christiane, that has not been discussed in the last two days is extraordinary fact that the attorney general is confirming something we knew in bits and pieces, and that is that there was a Russian military interference in American elections and the president has had nothing to say about this. He’s done nothing and he’s said nothing. So, what is really in a sense the most shocking except that we already knew from the indictments of Russian military officers a lot of the facts. We will now have when we see the Mueller narrative. A more extensive discussion of the really striking fact that Russian military officials broke into sensitive computer systems in order to influence an American election and undertook the quote, so discord, says the Trump’s attorney general in order to disrupt the election. And yesterday and today, the president has still neither said nothing or nor done nothing about this fact and said he is branded about the fact that there is not any sufficient evidence that Trump campaign officials were actively aiding and conspiring with the Russian. But —

AMANPOUR: Right. But it isn’t at the point, Walter Dellinger? We sort of know that the Russians did interfere, and as you correctly point out, there are plenty of indictments and all sorts of evidence to that point. But that this two- year investigation found no evidence of any knowing, unknowing, willing or unwilling collaboration between the president and the Russians or the president’s men or the president’s son, no conspiracy, no collusion to commit a crime in that regard? They’re two different things.

DELLINGER: Well, I think yes, that’s correct. And the point of — the first one is the president’s done nothing in reaction to it the way he should and indeed appears to welcome that. The point of the second one, I think, is slightly overstated. What the attorney general found is that there was not sufficient evidence of an active involvement and agreement, either express or tacit agreement, between Trump campaign officials and the Russians, that does not excuse the information we have about the fact that they welcomed the Russian interference in our elections. And indeed, I deeply fear have set us up for 2020 of the next presidential election to give a green light for foreign powers to interfere in our elections.