Stephanie Ruehl called Trump "a typhoon ripping everything from the Steele dossier to saying that Mueller shouldn't have been put in and then he voted in making the Mueller report public. Say what?"
"History would tell us that the president goes off on these massive tweet storms because we follow them. We follow every single tweet. We walk in to how they're lies, this and that, and he does it before a piece of massive, damaging news drops. Is that the case here?" Ruehl asked former DoJ spokesman Matt Miller.
Miller said it's possible the White House already has the report and is reviewing it for executive privilege claims.
"It's possible he knows of indictments coming, but it's also possible he's unhinged because he watched a Fox News story that got him upset. It's very difficult to know. You're right, at times in the past, these tweetstorms have presaged something coming, but it's also possible the president having a cranky day," Miller said.
"So the president is having a cranky day, Rudy Giuliani saying he hasn't been doing TV because everything has been said and they're going through a period of -- what was it? Watchful waiting. Come on, now. There's no such thing as watchful waiting in this White House," Ruehl said.
"There's no such thing as watchful waiting here, but I think it's also very rare for them to have a deliberate strategy," Joyce Vance said.
"They seem to do a lot more reacting off the cuff than they do proactive, strategic planning. And as disenheartening that is to see, I think it's a little bit more troubling on policy grounds. What we are seeing now though is this final crouch as they try to wait out and see what the Mueller report will look like if, as rumored, it's about to drop."
"Let's turn to (Jerry) Nadler. Should he be issuing subpoenas if he doesn't get the responses he wants?" Ruehl asked.
"I think he will be in some responses. He limited it only to documents that these 81 individuals and entities had already provided to other investigations. So what that means is these people don't have the same ability to delay responding because either one, it takes them a long time to compile the documents -- they have already compiled them for other agencies, or two, they're making privileged claims.
"So you have witnesses in different categories. I think people who are outside the government, never worked for the government, don't have a good way to resist turning over documents. People inside the government who are used to work for the government may be able to allow the White House to make executive privilege claims and fight on their behalf in court and Nadler will probably have to send subpoenas for those documents --and I suspect he will. But everyone else should be turning documents over today. If they don't, they're going to have very little ability to resist a subpoena and resist turning over documents in the very near future."
Ruehl asked Vance what Trump meant by claiming he whipped votes on releasing the Mueller report.
"He has an incredible ability to make claims that simply fly in the face of the truth this is a president who in the same breath denigrated the Mueller investigation, said it should have never taken place, never started. But then said that he was responsible for the votes on the Hill to release the report. You really can't have it both ways," Vance said.
