wrong. i certainly if anyone on my campaign did anything wrong, then they should be called to account. and i, as president want to know if they did anything wrong. and therefore and we ve got this huge agency of career prosecutors and investigators who know and understand their job, who work in a they don t work in a partisan way. they work for the rule of law. right. we ve got a deep bench to take care of this? it is not the most important case. yeah. unless it is because it will bring down your presidency because you did something wrong. and i guess the other point is who worked for the american people. yes. it is a misunderstanding of who the attorney general works for. the attorney general can t actually help the president, right? the attorney general is the lawyer for the people of the united states. when i worked at the justice department and i go to court, i say my name is paul butler and i represent the united states, not
republicans who said they won t confirm anyone else. could that first thing be an obstruction problem? yes, the legal term is obstruction of justice. the president is trying to get sessions to unrecuse himself. first of all, is that a word? unrecuse. second of all, the reason that he wants sessions to take over the russian investigation is because sessions has taken the loyalty pledge, and that s the kind of person who trump thinks should be supervising a criminal investigation of him. so we talk about norms. norms don t work for this president. norms suggest that you shouldn t call for personal prosecution or investigation, which trump has done of many people and sometimes the justice department responds. and so, one concern is that when norms are eroded. there s a slippery slope. so sometimes we see the justice department actually responding to the president s unethical demands. yeah. so there s some people are trying to give donald trump an
be prosecuted for these things. so they go into it as paul said even if they re being videotaped, it doesn t matter. as you know i chaired the civilian complaint review board in new york city where we received complaints of police misconduct. the thing that is really surprising to me is twofold. one of course you have a lot of police officers who actually agree that this conduct is wrong, is bad policing and they are often silenced within the department. they are often made to feel afraid, to actually speak out about it. i think that s something that s very important for us to understand because there really are a lot of people we should be happy about on police forces because they want to do the right thing and they want to behave in the right way. and the second is this fact that there is so much discretion in terms of what force is necessary because it s extremely subjective in the moment. right. and so what police officers often say is our jobs are so dangerous and there are
cross and paul butler. all right, table. there are two ways to look at the sort of series of pardons that donald trump has done. so let s go through them. you have d souza, joe arpaio, his defense is contempt of court, christian saucier. you have scooter libby, of course, who outed valerie plame and jack johnson. so, they re all over the place a little bit. i ll start with you on this, tiffany. there s the thematic reason for it. d souza is famous for trolling. he trolled t parkland survivors saying that because they wanted florida lawmakers to pass a bill banning assault weapons it was the worst news since their parents told them to get summer jobs. he tweeted about rosa parks overrated democrats department, so rosa parks wouldn t sit in the back of the bus.
way forward to senate republican leader mitch mcconnell. the agreement would permanently extend bush tax cuts to those making under $400,000. and households making under $450,000. raise the estate tax at those valued at more than $5 million and extend unemployment benefits for one year for some 2 million people. and automatic spending cuts that go into effect will be postponed for two months and paid for by other spending cuts. the house could take up the deal tomorrow. taxpayers would have felt the impact of the fiscal cliff immediately. if the deal passes, the average american family would avoid a tax increase of more than $3,400. a white house official said this is a compromise, so we don t love it but it s the right thing to do for the economy. paula and john, back to you. both sides, in fact, democrats department think that the president was hardlined enough and didn t negotiate very well. republicans will feel the same way.