Jerry Nadler wants full disclosure, subpoenas unredacted Mueller report

This is a rush transcript from "Special Report with Bret Baier," April 19, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

REP. ELIJAH CUMMINGS, HOUSE OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: A lot a people keep asking about the question of impeachment. We may very well answer that very soon. But right now let's make sure we understand what Mueller was doing, understand what Barr was doing, and see the report in an unredacted form, and all the underlying documents.

REP. JERROLD NADLER, HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: I believe that one of the things that we need that evidence for is to determine whether do that or not.

REP. ANDY BIGGS, HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: I think they're going to go pedal to the metal and try to impeach this president because that energizes their base.

(END VIDEO CLIPS)

BRET BAIER, ANCHOR: Democrats do have a decision, and that is the talk, impeachment or not impeachment. Elizabeth Warren, presidential candidate, senator from Massachusetts, tweeting out "The severity of this misconduct demands that elected officials in both parties set aside political considerations, do their constitutional duty. That means the House should initiate impeachment proceedings against the president of the United States." The leadership not so certain.

Meantime, the president is tweeting out about this, calling it an illegally started hoax that never should have happened, and, quote, a "big fat waste of time, energy, and money, $30 million to be exact. It is now finally time to turn the tables and bring justice to some very sick and dangerous people who have committed very serious crimes, perhaps even spying or treason. This should never happen again!" He said that before, tweeting out today.

Worth pointing out, CNBC first did the story back in September that because of the efforts against Paul Manafort, they are likely bringing in more money than the $30 million from what they are taking from Paul Manafort after all is said and done. Just pointing that out.

Let's bring in our panel: Byron York, chief political correspondent for the Washington Examiner; Jeff Mason, White House correspondent for Reuters, and Josh Holmes, president and founding partner of Cavalry, and former chief of staff for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Josh, let me start with you. What about this decision in the wake of the Mueller report, and what do you think is going to happen?

JOSH HOLMES, FORMER MCCONNELL CHIEF OF STAFF: The impeachment issue is something that obviously Nancy Pelosi has wanted to avoid here throughout, and I think in some ways the Mueller report, the conclusions of pushing this to the House has played in some ways as something close to a worst- case scenario. I think she was probably hoping for something much more damning out of this report. But in the end what they ended up with is a whole bunch of members who have got a lot of anxiety and are going to be pushing an impeachment agenda. We saw AOC out there, you mentioned Elizabeth Warren, a president candidate. I imagine that will begin to grow. And she has done everything she can do to try to keep a top on that lid, and I think it's about to boil over.

BAIER: And the political consideration is really what it comes down to, Jeff, what they are thinking ahead of the election. I suppose they could come short and they could censure the president and not go forward with the full impeachment.

JEFF MASON, REUTERS: Sure, but, as Josh was saying, the pressure is going to be very high for particularly Democrats in the House of Representatives to do something, be it impeachment, be it censure, but show that they are bringing that oversight that they feel the Republicans did not do before, particularly in the light of this report.

But it does, it puts pressure on them. It also puts pressure on the presidential candidates. The fact that Elizabeth Warren is coming out and calling for impeachment, I'm curious to see what the others will do because I think there's at least a faction of the Democratic president candidates who are wanting to move on, talk about their policies and their ideas and really focus on an election.

BAIER: Byron, a lot of talk about the stories that were done that were right, the stories that were done that were wrong, what's inside the substance of the Mueller report. I'm struck by the Russia part and how much the Obama administration may have dropped the ball. In Mueller, it says it started in 2014, and that it was pretty weak sauce as far as what the Obama demonstration did, even after the election, the sanctions are essentially toothless.

BRYON YORK, THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER: And we have known this for a while. The Obama administration was pretty energetic into looking at what the Trump campaign might have been doing during the campaign, but not as energetic in actually looking at or stopping what the Russians were doing. And remember, we certainly knew by the time of the first WikiLeaks disclosures during the Democratic National Convention, we knew who was behind this. And the Obama administration did not do itself proud in this.

BAIER: William Barr, he's been all over the news, a lot of critical talk mainly around this particular line in the press conference.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ATTORNEY GENERAL WILLIAM BARR: As the Special Counsel's report acknowledges, there is substantial evidence to show the president was frustrated and angered by his sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents, and fueled by illegal leaks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: So the talk across the board is that he's acting as a personal attorney and not the U.S. attorney general. Thoughts on that?

HOLMES: I think he's providing context here. The one thing that's lost in all of this in the report is that you've got a newly elected president who hadn't spent a day in government before, nor much of his senior staff, I might add, and the first thing that happens is you've got an FBI director that walks into the Oval Office and drops a dossier on his desk full of unbelievably unspeakable allegations that turned out to be completely fictional that may very well have been the root of an investigation. So you ask how is somebody supposed to react to that, and I think Bill Barr was putting a finer point on that.

BAIER: And Romney had a different take, looking at it, saying it's a great thing he wasn't charged, but also a horrible culture. And it does read, Jeff, some critics look at it that had it not been for Don McGahn and other officials not listening to the president, he may have stepped right into obstruction of justice.

MASON: That's the irony of the fact that apparently the president and Don McGahn had sort of a rough relationship, particularly at the end of McGahn's term of the White House. But he may have saved the president from an obstruction charge or getting further along in this report than Mueller wanted.

BAIER: Here is what Rudy Giuliani had to say about McGahn.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUDY GIULIANI, PRESIDENT TRUMP'S ATTORNEY: Some of it I think it's demonstrably false. When he wants to fire somebody, ask Jim Comey if he can fire somebody. So if he was really upset that Sessions wasn't fired or he really wanted him fired, he'd have fired him.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: The thing is, Byron, the bombshell. You are looking through 448 pages, you're looking for the thing, can you believe, page 67. There are some interesting reads and embarrassing stuff and people that are very upset about certain things. But I don't know.

YORK: No big, new bombshells. We knew most everything in it. It is extraordinary the degree of White House cooperation in this investigation. The reason we know the scene in the Oval Office when Trump first finds out that Mueller has been appointed and he says this is the worst thing that ever happened to me, I'm f-ed, we know that because of notes taken at the time by White House staffers that were turned over to Mueller without a claim of executive privilege, an example of really extraordinary cooperation. That's why we know about this.

BAIER: And we don't yet know about the origins of the investigation. The I.G. may shed some light on that, other investigations on the early stages.

YORK: Mueller didn't even release what's called the scope memo, the August 2nd memo that Rod Rosenstein wrote to Robert Mueller expanding his assignment, and we still don't know exactly what he was actually investigating. So yes, there is a lot left.

BAIER: But the upside is what? Politically balanced, what is it? It's ugly, but is a politically a win for the president?

MASON: I'd like to add something to that. I'm not sure we don't know what he was investigating. He was investigating potential ties between Russia and President Trump's campaign, and Russia's deliberate attempt to intervene in the 2016 campaign. That gets shoved aside a little bit because, of course, we are all concentrating on obstruction and the president's role, but the role of Russia and its efforts in 2016 was at the heart of this investigation.

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