one of the problems here is that the white house wanted a fuexxo ragz of the president and the justice department, even to this point where they did offer the narrow statement about the fact that there was no campaign finance law violation here. they never said there was no violation of the law whatsoever. and we now know that rudy giuliani is under some sort of criminal investigation and counterintelligence investigation. so it would be an exceedingly unwise thing for barr to do, particularly given suspicions about him within the rank and file of the justice department to come out and sort of clear the president amidst what appears to be some ongoing investigative interest in that phone call by other parts of the justice department. dana, this may indicate a lot of things happening in the white house. perhaps higher nervousness based how close we are to public hearings, right, and the president now not wanting that. you in part reacted to that potential thematic by writing today the
another president, this should never be allowed to happen again [applause] stuart: kevin corke has the latest from the white house. reporter: john good evening just what is rudy guiliani s relationship to the two men arrested this past week on campaign finance law violation? that appears to be the question at the heart of an apparent investigation into the presidents mayor and his private attorney, former mayor of new york city, and federal investigators now mr. guiliani for his part insists that federal prosecutors don t have any grounds to charge him with foreign lobbying disclosure violations because he was acting on behalf of his client, the president, not a ukraine prosecutor but still prosecutors and the federal government in manhattan are said to be investigating. now according to the times this is all tied to the case of the two associates of guiliani who were arrested this week on campaign finance-related charges. meanwhile here at the white house the president remains stead
latest from the white house. reporter: john good evening just what is rudy guiliani s relationship to the two men arrested this past week on campaign finance law violation? that appears to be the question at the heart of an apparent investigation into the presidents mayor and his private attorney, former mayor of new york city, and federal investigators now mr. guiliani for his part insists that federal prosecutors don t have any grounds to charge him with foreign lobbying disclosure violations because he was acting on behalf of his client, the president, not a ukraine prosecutor but still prosecutors and the federal government in manhattan are said to be investigating. now according to the times this is all tied to the case of the two associates of guiliani who were arrested this week on campaign finance-related charges. meanwhile here at the white house the presidentattorney, tao write this. so now they are offer the ledge en terry crimebuster and one-sit going on usa deep state.
department looked at the criminal complaint and the referral from the inspector general for the intelligence community and did a very narrow review. they essentially looked at whether or not this represented a violation of campaign finance law and, look. that is what the inspector general did refer. but we ve never known the justice department to limit itself to what people are asking them to investigate. they have the full panoply of u.s. law to look at and see whether or not there are any legal violations, any other legal violations. and so that is where the criticism is coming. the issue here is that the inspector general and the complaint, itself, from the whistle-blower, lay out other possible legal violations, legal issues including perhaps a counterintelligence risk for the president. the justice department instead decided to narrowly look at this from a campaign finance law violation and arrived at the conclusion there was no crime, no violation of campaign finance
hicks shouldn t testify recently was this theory about constitutional immunity, which is sort of like a blanket immunity. when any administration has made that argument, courts have said, absolutely not. there s no such thing as a blanket immunity. you can make specific request based on executive privilege but you can t say we re not going to do that. also some of the names on that list, keith davidson, there s no argument they can t testify. i think you ll see they are looking into this campaign finance law violation and the question of the whole the second most famous of president trump s most famous dalliances with playboy playmate karen mcdougal, the whole catch and kill ami issue which has gone unnoticed recently, i think that s going to come back into the forefront here and they are going to get to the bottom of it. caroline is right on the money about the fact the campaign finance piece is going to generator more interesting information for house judiciary