then you became acting attorney general as of november 7th, 2018? the president tweeted i was going to be the next acting attorney general on november 7th of 2018. how did you learn you got the job? i can t remember if it was, which preceded which but i believe i received a phone call from the president of the united states asking me to be the acting attorney general. a moment ago you said you learned by tweet. did i misunderstand you? yeah, i think you did. a lot of people there not clear after that answer. so what do you think about his lack of clarity and frankly his overall knowledge. what does that show you? first of all, we live in an amazing time if you and i pair on tv you hear by a tweet you ve been appointed to a major position in the trump cabinet. but the other thing that s clear is that whitaker was performing on one level for president trump. he s the perfect trump witness.
when did you first learn that mr. sessions was fired or would be fired? i learned on november 7th if that s your question. it is. okay. okay. so you learned by virtue of that same tweet that we all learned. yeah. i would suggest the only point i d put on that, congressman, is that mr. sessions resigned sent in his resignation letter. understand. did you have any conversations with folks at the white house prior to november 7th, 2018, about attorney general sessions resigning or being fired, however you would characterize that? as say long-standing practice of the department of justice and in the executive branch generally, the president s entitled to confidential communications and while i m not confirming or denying the existence of any conversation i m not going to talk about my private conversations with the president of the united states. we ll follow up on that front i would ask the chairman to take that up in a deposition to the extent that one is noticed. que
i have a date of september 22nd, 2017, that you became chief-of-staff, is that correct? that is incorrect. when is your first working date as chief-of-staff for attorney general sessions. i started at department of justice on october 4th of 2017. then you became acting attorney general as of november 7th, 2018? the president tweeted that i was going to be the next acting attorney general on november 7th of 2018, the order that i have received from the president has the date of november 8th of 2018. okay. do you have a copy of that order? i do have a copy of that order. can you provide it to the committee, please? i d be happy to. i don t have it with me, though. turning to some other enforcement priorities. on december 22nd, 2017, the department of justice sent a formal request to the essential cruc bureau asking for an addition to the census of a question asking about citizenship status. did attorney general sessions
corporation. this is known as the uranium one scandal which has thus far been completely disproven. but all of these conversations raising a myriad of issues about whether proper boundaries have been observed. i want to point everyone to read fact checks and who approved that deal and all of the different voices in that and the facts, not the rhetoric around it. before you go, the acting attorney general finances disclosure forms that are fired by the government finally released. as i understand it, after five different revisions, what do we now know? yeah. the revisions are quite noteworthy since they all take place after he became the acting attorney general on november 7th. so he turned in the initial disclosure form as he s required to do under the regulations last year when he came in. but then only edits them after he takes on this new job, something that ethics watchdog