according to sources we spoke to fire mueller, but cnn has with. learned that the president has thanks. following the raid on been talking about it for michael cohen, the president s months. we do know that he made moves to legal team is re-evaluating whether mr. trump should agree fire mueller last june but was to an interview with the special talked out of it. yesterday the new york times counsel. reported there was a second one white house official telling cnn that the president s aborted effort to fire the special counsel in just cooperation should be proportional to the courtesy december. that he receives from special that move fueled by reports that counsel robert mueller. mueller had issued subpoenas to and the administration believes deutsche bank for the that the cohen raid showed a lack of courtesy. president s financial records. cnn has also learned that reports which then proved to be mueller s investigators were meeting with the president s inaccurate. for more, we l
reporter: good morning. our team has learned the questioning on capitol hill just president s consideration of hours from now. firing rod rosenstein has gained welcome back to early start, i m alex marquardt. urgency following the raid of i m christine romans. the office of the president s personal lawyer, michael cohen. 30 minutes past the hour. let s begin with this sources sources familiar with the matter familiar with discussions in the say this is one of several options including going so far white house tell senior citizen as to fire attorney general jeff t looks like president trump is considering firing tell cnn sessions, as well, that trump has been weighing. it looks like president trump is officials say if trump acts, considering firing rod rosenstein is his most likely rosenstein. he s been supervising special target because installing a new counsel robert mueller s russia deputy attorney general could provide the check on mueller investigation since attorney th
that flies in the face of what she is clearly saying, but she s also saying, we ve been advised. in other words, they ve spent time looking into it. that s right. and couple of things i would say. one way they could try to get around it is by putting in a new attorney general and by ordering that attorney general to remove the regulations entirely. ah, so fire jeff sessions, change the rule, then do it without rod rosenstein. basically. but i will tell you, one thing you re keen in noticing this is a sort of double speak that s going on here. what we hear from republicans is there s no reason to protect mueller. we don t need to pass this legislation to protect mueller. he s not in jeopardy and what we re hearing at the white house is well, we ve already looked into it. the president has to power to do it and so on. there s a lot of double speak here. i worry for the sake of the country as somebody who s an american and somebody in law enforcement, david gergen is saying won t co
the advisers back in december that the words they use are no uncertain interpreters, mueller s investigation had to seem to be true, the president backed down. outfront now, former counsel to the u.s. assistant attorney general for national security and former federal prosecutor back with me. literally, this headline break ing in the past 15 minutes. what do you make of this report here because you couple it with the report that he is considering firing rod rosenstein and you now have that the president wanted to fire mueller in december. was just talked out of it by haze lawyers. here s my take, the president has been nothing if not
disciplined or removed from office by the personal action of the attorney general. so the special counsel is bob mueller. attorney general is jeff sessions. now, jeff sessions of course has recused himself from the russia investigation, so the person in charge is rod rosenstein. it is his responsibility to oversee mueller and make those decisions. whether he is hired or fired. that s up to rosenstein now. and as of december of last year, rosenstein has publicly testified that he sees no reason to fire bob mueller. have you seen good cause to fire special counsel mueller? no. p. thank you. if you were ordered today today to fire mr. mueller, what would you do? i would follow the regulation. if there were good cause, i would act. if there were no good cause, i would not. and you ve seen no good cause so far. correct. so, rosenstein didn t see a reason to fire mueller. is that why his job is in jep