{"id":2957,"date":"2019-04-18T13:18:14","date_gmt":"2019-04-18T17:18:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/press.nbcnews.com\/?p=2957"},"modified":"2019-04-18T13:18:14","modified_gmt":"2019-04-18T17:18:14","slug":"second-nbc-news-special-report-on-mueller-coverage-notes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nbcuniversalnewsgroup.com\/nbcnews\/2019\/04\/18\/second-nbc-news-special-report-on-mueller-coverage-notes\/","title":{"rendered":"Second NBC News Special Report on Mueller\/Coverage Notes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

At 11:04am ET<\/strong>, NBC News cut in to regular programming\nfor the second NBC News Special Report<\/strong> on coverage of the public release\nof the Mueller Report, anchored by Lester Holt <\/strong>and Savannah Guthrie<\/strong>. \nThey were joined by NBC News\u2019 Chuck Todd<\/strong> and Andrea Mitchell,<\/strong> in\naddition to Justice Correspondent Pete Williams<\/strong> and others (see below). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

President Trump\u2019s attorney Jay Sekulow<\/strong> spoke with NBC\nNews following the release of the report. The second report ended at 12:25pm\nET<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NBC News Justice Correspondent Pete Williams to Lester\nHolt:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI am just going to say – we\nshould think about how extraordinary this is. We have 400 pages of a report\nthat was — if you read the Special Counsel rules that our friend Neal Katyal\nhelped draft, they say that the Special Counsel should submit a very brief\nreport to the President on prosecution and declination decisions and that was\nnever envisioned to be made public. As a matter of fact, the commentary on the\nrules that was published in the Federal Register at the time, is the problem\nwith Ken Starr and the Counsel is that they were required to submit a public\nreport and it tended to make investigations drag on.  I think the word\nthey used in the commentary was it made prosecutors overzealous. Clearly,\nMueller’s people wrote this with the understanding that it was going to become\npublic. It really is very surprising how much we’re seeing here.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

President Trump\u2019s attorney Jay Sekulow tells NBC News why\nhe believes Mueller did not make an obstruction conclusion:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey had the insufficiency of\nthe evidence that they had could not meet the standard necessary to make the\nobstruction charge.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more on Sekulow\u2019s interview, watch\nit here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meet the Press<\/em> moderator and NBC News Political\nDirector Chuck Todd on whether this is a win for the President:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo, I don’t think it\u2019s a clean\nwin, but the waters were muddy before, and I think it certainly isn\u2019t going to,\nI think, change the larger sort of parameters of the political debate about\nRussian interference and all of this\u2026I want to go to the Russian part of this\nbecause when you read, and this is where the Attorney General really overly\nglossed over and if anything, I think, warped the view of the report, and that\nis on the Russian interference aspect of it, essentially Bob Mueller proves\nthat the Trump campaign was cheerleading Russia, was well aware of what they\nwere doing, was hoping it would be as effective as it turned out to be. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

They just couldn\u2019t prove that\nthey helped the Russians do this, that they were part of it, they were sort of\ncheerleading it. And this is why I wish all of us would take a step back at\nevery elected official, which is the fact that the president and all of his\nallies are going no collusion, this is great, and not upset at the morality of\nan American presidential campaign cheering for an interference.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

TODAY Co-Anchor and NBC News Chief Legal Correspondent\nSavannah Guthrie on the Mueller Report:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is such a challenge. On\nbehalf of our viewers, I wish that we had a little more clarity, because I\nmyself sitting here have heard a lot of different answers with regard to one\nbig issue\u2026which is did Robert Mueller not ultimately charge an obstruction crime\nbecause the Department of Justice says he cannot indict a sitting president or\nnot? Barr says his own analysis on that issue had nothing to do with that\nconstitutional question — about whether a president can be indicted — and had\neverything to do with the facts not being sufficient to establish obstruction\nof justice. So that is Barr. But what about Robert Mueller?…\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also\njoining the second NBC News Special Report:<\/p>\n\n\n\n