something from the partisan committees in congress. so there s an impotence for that. right now, though, with it s sort of all different as of tonight because now we ve we ve got the department of justice, including the attorney general who said he would recuse from this matter, removing the fbi director in the middle of this investigation. and no, we do not know what the practical impact of that is going to be. we ll have to watch it happen. now that they ve de that. for only the second time in american history, we ve got an fbi director being removed in the middle of his term for an explanation that frankly makes no sense in terms of its timing. now, i think, there s no way that this justice department can be seen to be independent of the partisan wins that have buffeted the thing from the very beginning. having a special prosecutor appointed will become almost unbearable. i will expect that republicans who are taking a patriotic view
confidence in the fbi if we then fire him over this thing that we re thinking about firing him over. i know what you mean. that seemed to be the sub text of the rosenstein memo. i want to pick up a point that you made earlier, lawrence. which is the first part of the memo is a bill of particulars going through all the things thathe thought was wrong. the way in which he criticized hillary clinton and said he shouldn t be charged. he thought that was too much. he thought it was completely wrong that the fbi director in his words, put himself above the justice department by taking away from loretta lynch the authority to make the decision on prosecutions or effectively under cutting the decision, of course, to make the letter in late october, send that to congress about reopening the e-mail investigations, all of those things he thought were wrong that didn t follow justice department guidelines. and after that, though, he said i m not alone in my assessment here and then he refers to
day when attorney general jeff session announce his recusal from the campaign related inquiries, donald trump publicly said while touring an aircraft carrier he didn t think it was appropriate, he didn t want sessions to recuse himself which isr itself is grounds for recusal. we have a president who is only pushing forward and using brut force the words on twitter, the words of his office which might be inappropriate or unlawful. we don t know yet. that is the message being sent loud and clear across the federal government. if you are hoping that rod rosen steen is going to suddenly make a conversion it would be in counter-veiling force from the pressure he is getting from the president. nothing in anything he wrote today that he is leaning that way. ken, delany we talked about how this bomb landed at the fbi. but it s also a big shocker to the investigative staff on the house intelligence committee,
have it be carried out as if he is doing it to defend the honor and the legal dignity of hillary clinton from last year, his opponent in the presidential election of lock her up fame. the idea that he would be acting as president because he was so concerned she might have been unfairly me lined by the fbi and that s why he needs to be fired in the middle of his counter intelligence investigation and trump ties with russia. it s astonishing and part of the way that we ll know whether or not it s wise, that they re trying to get away with this, is whether or not people credit what they say as being the reason for what they do. i have always believed that this administration is much easier if you cover them as a silent movie and you ignore what they say and watch what they do. so often what they say is it s a smoke screen. and rachel, this home me is going to be really dissected, i think tomorrow.
it tries to cite bipartisan support for firing comey. there s no such thing they re citing pieces by eric holder who disagreed with the way he handled the e-mail investigation, but he never said fire him. in fact, he said in his that he thought comey was an honorable guy. they re going to be fair in their proceedings going forward. but the people that are being cited in here, some of these democrats that are being cited in this memo, never said that president trump should fire comey. and, even if they had said he should fire comey in november or in january or, you know, all of these other dates on the things are cited, they re from months ago. there s no explanation as to why those firings might be happening now. lawrence, the thing that i am the thing i am really hung up on and none of our guest have been