BILL HEMMER (CO-ANCHOR): You say your main point is this, the Mueller report is wildly, gratuitously detailed.
KEN STARR (FORMER INDEPENDENT COUNSEL): There's just too much detail. Take one little segment, the meeting of the Russian ambassador with then Sen. Jeff Sessions during the campaign. The whole issue is, is there collusion? Well, in about a page and a half we learn everything about that meeting. It starts out with there is no suggestion of collusion, whatever. At the end of that discussion, no suggestion of -- and yet we read all of this detail, elaborate footnotes. There's some 17 footnotes. There are over 1,000 footnotes. I mean, why? The point of this report is simply to say why I prosecuted or why I didn't prosecute. This is not a term paper.
HEMMER: OK, so go ahead and answer your own question. Why is there so much detail in there. Why is that necessary?
STARR: It is special counsel overkill. Special counsels and independent counsels go the extra, extra mile to be thorough. It's an occupational hazard. And we tried to eliminate that through the regulations that said we don't want these fulsome, highly detailed reports such as the one that I authored a long time ago. We don't want that anymore. We simply want to restore the justice department traditions, provide a confidential report, Mr. Special Counsel, or Ms. Special Counsel, to the attorney general and then the attorney general will provide an explanation, not the report. So what is being debated --
HEMMER: So you can give a bottom line conclusion and all the other details aren't necessary.
