this is a serious request to the white house counsel. can i use the department of justice to not just investigate -- because the request initially was prosecute. >> yeah. >> -- my political opponents. that is what dictators do. that is not what the president of the united states does. and, granted, it is not a written law or even a written rule. it didn't need to be and i think some people, many people are realizing we need to write some of these norms into rules and codify them in some way because we can't trust that, you know, everyone, certainly not every president apparently, is going to honor those well-established principles that exist for a reason. to keep those two entities separate. >> ken dilanian brings up the fact that we saw some of this during the nixon administration, but i guess everybody thought it was such an anomaly that we didn't have to codify it. again, harry, let me ask you about matthew whitaker. there are all sorts of things about matthew whitaker that are interesting, not the least of which is that the president