whitaker are about the conflict that we ve all been so worried about with whitaker. and they re really well drafted questions because they re really trying to get at the heart, was whitaker compromised? was he compromised before he became the attorney general in some way the acting attorney general? did he make any promises to trump about trying to curtail the mueller investigation, and specifically saying were you in any way made to promise that you would try to interfere with the southern district of new york, that you would reassign people of the southern district of new york? these are extreme questions that in any other world would have been shocking to hear asked, but they make a lot of sense in this presidency. and jerry nadler made it clear to the acting attorney general he was putting these questions in writing ahead of time because he expects him to possibly invoke executive privilege. jerry nadler doesn t think executive privilege applies. but he said that i found so int
chairman of the house judiciary committee, jerry nadler, is bringing in acting attorney general matthew whitaker to testify to the judiciary committee about his conversations with president trump. chairman nadler sent a letter to nadler today telling him exactly what the most important questions will be, and every question is a heavily loaded question. for example, on january 18th the special counsel issued a rare statement describing some aspects of the buzzfeed story as inaccurate. did you have any communication with the white house about the buzzfeed report or the decision of the special counsel s office to issue its subsequent statement? if so, with whom? what was discussed? leading off our discussion now tim o brien, and mimi rocah, both msnbc contributors. mimi i want to start at the end there with these amazing questions jerry nadler has already put in writing publicly to matthew whitaker the acting attorney general. what he seem tuesday be getting
in this region was command, my advice was to start tate and as you realize who has a judgment and so forth you can go back they went the other way and it was a bad day for attorney general gonzales and the hearing room when that was brought to his attention. what is your understanding right now of who at the department of justice is authorized to have communications with the white house? it depends what it is. on criminal matters, i would just have the ag and the deputy. what do you think the rule is now in the department? i think that s what it is. okay. so, if the reports are true that, as chief of staff, mr. mr. whitaker was involved in conversations with the white house about bringing criminal investigations against the president s political enemies, that would not be consistent with your understanding of that policy. well, it would depend upon what his understanding is with
one responsible for making the recusal decision. i don t know why he said why he locked himself into following the advice. that s an abdication of his own responsibility. so, what did you think about what acting attorney general whitaker did when he rejected the justice department ethics advice to recuse himself, out of an abundance of caution? i haven t seen the advice he got. and i don t know the specific facts. abundance of caution suggests that it could have gone either way. you have committed to recuse yourself from matters regarding the law firm where you currently work. are you aware of any of your firm s clients who are in any way connected to the special counsel investigation? i m not aware. to tell you the truth i am of
disagree with in the so-called board rules? i would ask you to explain that in a follow-up. okay. also in my letter to you i expressed my concern that mr. whitaker was paid at $1.2 million through what i consider to be a front group that has very little reality to it. that the funding that came to that front group to pay him the million dollars came through another entity that is essentially an identity-laundering operation that has no independent business operation. the result of all of this is that somebody out there arranged to get over a million dollars to mr. whitaker, and we have no idea who that somebody is. as i mentioned to you in our conversation, i don t see how the department can do a proper