What can we expect when Attorney General Barr releases the Mueller report?

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What can we expect when Attorney General Barr releases the Mueller report?

A redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller's report will be released on Thursday; reaction and analysis from the 'Special Report' All-Stars.

This is a rush transcript from "Special Report with Bret Baier," April 16, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

HOUSE SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI, D-CALIF.: For the attorney general, though, to say I'll use my own judgment about what I redact, that's not necessarily going to be the final product.

ATTORNEY GENERAL WILLIAM BARR: I identified four areas that I feel should be redacted. The Special Counsel is working with us on identifying information in the reports that fall under those four categories.

KENNETH STARR, FORMER WHITEWATER INDEPENDENT COUNSEL: I predict, Harris, that we're all going to be a little bit frustrated. We will be reading along, and then there is a redaction. Maybe it will be one paragraph, one sentence, but more likely we're going to see significant reactions. It is going to be, frankly, a somewhat tedious process.

(END VIDEO CLIPS)

BRET BAIER, ANCHOR: Remember, the attorney general had the summary of the conclusions of the Mueller report, then he is said to put out the full report with redactions on Thursday. And that is getting already a lot of reaction before we are even to Thursday. The president tweeting out just leaves two phrases, "No collusion -- No Obstruction!" That is what he had to say about it as we lay the groundwork for that release.

Let's bring in the panel: David Brody, chief political analyst for the Christian Broadcasting Network; Susan Ferrechio, chief congressional correspondent for the Washington Examiner, and Jeff Mason, White House correspondent for Reuters. There's been a lot of build up to this. But Ken Starr and others say we might be let down by what the final product is on Thursday morning.

DAVID BRODY, CHRISTIAN BROADCASTING NETWORK: Yes. I think we are going to get to a real juicy part and then, boom, a paragraph or redactions. And I think Ken Starr is exactly right on that.

Having said that, I think this is just a phase one. Phase two comes in the legal arena where we find out whether or not that whole unredacted report will indeed get released, which of course will be a whole big legal fight.

I think Democrats are going to turn into a bunch of Robert Muellers on Thursday. In other words, they will be their own Special Counsel, and they will say, thanks, Robert Mueller for trying to do your job, but we've got it from here, and they're going to look for every nook and cranny of a redacted report that they can get their hands on, and say, we have come to our conclusions. The problem is, Donald Trump will sit there and tweet, like he did today, no collusion, and that is the bottom line of all of it.

BAIER: The investigation, Susan, started with that in mind, was there any conspiracy between someone on the Trump campaign and the Russians? There was no one indicted for that. And the Mueller report comes to that conclusion that there wasn't that interaction.

SUSAN FERRECHIO, WASHINGTON EXAMINER: As far as we know.

BAIER: As far as we know, but that is what it's quoted by William Barr, the attorney general. The obstruction part seems a lot more subjective and seems like where the investigators may have turned their focus more intently.

FERRECHIO: Right, and there's an expectation that there is a tidbit in there about potential obstruction that Trump may have committed through the course of the investigation. But the original premise was collusion, and according to Barr's summary, which Democrats on Capitol Hill do not trust, that there is no collusion. So what Democrats will do now is a phase two. They will look at this thing for any impropriety they can find within the administration, within the campaign, anything about Trump, and use it to help fuel their own investigations, which they launched prior to the release of even the summary when it became evident that collusion was far less likely. So this will be the beginning, basically, for Democrats. It will be fodder for their probes, and I expect that to continue for the rest of his first term.

BAIER: Here's Ken Starr again, and obviously he was his own special independent counsel, on the obstruction issue.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STARR: The counsel to the president testified for 30 hours. This is honestly unheard of, so there was not only not obstruction, as I see it, but given what we know, there was the antithesis of obstruction. It was complete cooperation. Lots of nasty language, but cooperation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: He is referencing there McGahn, the former White House counsel, who did give a ton of testimony to this Special Counsel. And in fact, the White House, with the president's order, Jeff, told everybody to cooperate extensively.

JEFF MASON, REUTERS: Yes, indeed. And his point about that suggested that there is no obstruction is interesting. What we don't know, though, is what they said. So we know that they cooperated with the special counsel, but it's very possibly some unflattering stories, some unflattering anecdotes about the president, about other people around him that will come out in the report if those things are not redacted.

The one thing that I think Ken Starr said specifically in the earlier clip that you played which is spot on is that we are all going to be a little frustrated.

BAIER: Yes. You know what's interesting is you look at the 2020 candidates on the Democratic side, and they are not talking about this on the trail. I asked Bernie Sanders about it last night. He said I don't need to talk about it.

BRODY: Right, and I don't even think really at this point is any reason to, because it gets into Nancy Pelosi and politics and D.C., and they want to establish themselves as something totally different than that. And quite frankly, the energy with 2020 Dems is obviously on the far left, and socialism, and a lot of that, what is going on there. And so they are playing to the base at this point.

And I'm not sure if there is an appetite right now on everything from impeachment to Mueller, and this report, I think the Democrats, at least this establishment Democrats in this town know that they have overplayed their hand, and there's no reason to go down that road. I think it is a very delicate balancing act.

BAIER: Last night, I referenced that Bernie Sanders town hall. The tax returns came out literally 25 minutes before we started that town hall. The 2018 tax return showed a tax rate, a marginal effective rate of 26 percent, and a 3.4 percent for charity. I asked the senator about his marginal tax rate.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

BAIER: Your marginal tax rate was 26 percent because President Trump's tax cuts, so why not say I am leading this revolution, I'm not going to take those?

(LAUGHTER)

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS, D-VT.: I pay the taxes that I owe.

MATT BRAYNARD, REPRESENTATIVE STRATEGIST: He is clearly a hypocrite. He could write a check to the U.S. Treasury and pay the pre-Trump tax rates if he thinks that's what they should be now.

(END VIDEO CLIPS)

BAIER: What about those exchanges on taxes, and specifically Bernie Sanders?

MASON: I thought it was a great question, but I don't think anybody, be it Bernie Sanders or anyone else, is going to say, no, I'm not going to take that money, I'm not going to send a check to the IRS. He could take that money and send it to charity, it sounds like.

BAIER: Right, 3.4 percent, exactly.

MASON: But he's not going to send it to a government who policies he does not understand -- or, excuse me, that he doesn't agree with. He is going to say if I become president, people are going to have to pay more taxes for the policies that I support and that I am going to implement if I make it into the White House.

BAIER: One of those, Susan, is Medicare for all, and we spent some time last night talking about that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

SANDERS: Health care is not free.

MARTHA MACCALLUM, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Of course not.

SANDERS: -- suggests that --

MACCALLUM: You just said it was going to be free for everyone.

SANDERS: It's going to be free at the point of when you use it. Does that mean you're not going to pay something? Of course it does. You're going to pay more in taxes.

MAYA MACGUINEAS, COMMITTEE FOR RESPONSIBLE FEDERAL BUDGET: He doesn't have a plan to pay for Medicare for all yes, but he has introduced options, many of which include broad-based tax increases. The numbers aren't detailed enough to know, but my guess is we are still talking about a $10 trillion hole.

(END VIDEO CLIPS)

BAIER: We tried to get around that numerous times, numerous ways, but it was tough to nail down.

FERRECHIO: Right, and that is the major problem with some of these proposals, we just don't know how much it is going to cost other than it's going to cost a lot.

But I think that he did an incredibly masterful job at tapping into what the consumers hate most about our current health care system, which is lack of affordability, high premiums, high deductibles, while steering clear of all the things that would be really difficult to cope with if we were to have Medicare for all -- big cost, big tax increases, long wait lines, lack of availability of doctors, getting your health care declined by the government, all these things which if consumers had more details might be more skeptical and wouldn't have roared with applause, as they did. He was so good at just getting the audience to say, don't you hate that way things are, let's change it. Yay, everyone was cheering. But again, the devil is in the details.

BAIER: We should point out, there were Republicans and independents and conservative Democrats in the crowd. They were a lot quieter than the Bernie Sanders supporters who were clearly out in force.

(LAUGHTER)

BRODY: Right. Elections are won at the margins, and so Bernie Sanders was smart to do a FOX News town hall. You're going to win back some of those blue-collar Democrats who went for Donald Trump. This isn't winning the majority of them, just like, look, in the evangelical world, Buttigieg is talking about his faith. He is not going to win white conservative evangelicals. But if he picks off a percentage or two from Trump, that could be game, set, match for Donald Trump.

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