the call with the president of ukraine and barr refused. i don t know why but one idea might be is because part of that would be barr would have to take live questions from reporters about his role in the whole ukrainian extortion scheme. quote, i would like to have the attorney general call you or your people and significantly, quote, there s a lot of talk about biden s son, that biden stop said the prosecution so whatever you can do with the prosecution that would be great? so did william barr ever follow up on that, did he ever speak about joe biden s son? as far as i know since we got the call notes william barr hasn t answered in realtime a single question from a reporter about what he was doing around that call and mentioned in that call. so why is he mentioned there? joining me now what is happening in the department of justice harry litman, and former deputy assistant attorney general in the clinton department of justice and mimi rocah, now an
is there anyone at the department of justice taken the kind of steps those in the state department were forced into taking, taking contemporaneous notes and raising red flags about inappropriate behavior? those are open questions. we have had a succession of people in the foreign policy apparatus who have testified but no one yet from the justice department. and we do know that william barr has generally viewed his role as attorney general to be that of personally defending and protecting the president politically. remember he spun the mueller report for trump, went out and announced there was no obstruction despite evidence to the contrary. his own doj shut down the criminal analysis of the ukraine call notes and refused to look at any of the other surrounding contextual evidence. they put out a statement to defend the president, but there is one thing attorney general william barr would not do and that is go out in public in front of the tv cameras and defend trump. the washington p
private attorney general, rudy giuliani. i quote from the call notes here, i will have mr. giuliani give you a call and i m also going to have attorney general barr call, and we will get to the bottom of it. and i will tell rudy and attorney general barr to call. now, rudy giuliani is trump s private attorney, but in a kind of dubious metaphysical way. the president is not paying rudy giuliani. giuliani is the president s private attorney because giuliani calls himself that. there is no formal relationship that we know of. giuliani important to note doesn t do any actual legal work for the president as far as we can tell. president trump is engaged in a million different lawsuits and rudy giuliani is not named on one of those briefs. there are people, professional lawyers who are barred in whatever state they re practicing in who go into court week after week and file briefs on behalf of the president. but that s not what giuliani is doing. he is trump s fixer and his bag
will proceed. and another billionaire enters the fold. what a mike bloomberg candidacy means for the democratic field. when all in starts right now. good evening from new york. i m chris hayes. ever since the president has got elected he s been on the quest to make the role of attorney general, the peoples lawyer his personal lawyer. it s tempted to ask where is my roy cohn. he went onto be a conciliary for the new york mob and also a lawyer and mentor to one donald trump. and for donald trump he represented the perfect lawyer. it appears in the president s infamous phone call with ukraine s president he has not one but two roy cohns. on multiple occasions trump tells the ukrainian president to expect a call from those two people. one of them is the current attorney general, the top law enforcement officer in the united states, that s william barr. and one of them is trump s
private attorney rudy giuliani. i quote from the call notes here, i will have mr. giuliani give you a call and i m also going to have attorney general barr call, and we will get to the bottom of it. and i will tell rudy and attorney general barr to call. now, rudy giuliani is trump s private attorney, but in a kind of dubious metaphysical way. the president is not paying rudy giuliani. giuliani is the president s private attorney because giuliani calls himself that. there is no formal relationship that we know of. giuliani important to note doesn t do any actual legal work for the president as far as we can tell. i mean, president trump is currently engaged in, like, a million different lawsuits and rudy giuliani is not named on one of those briefs. there are people, professional lawyers who are barred in whatever state they re practicing in who go into court week after week and file briefs and argue before judges on behalf of the president. but that s not what giuliani is doing. no, n