attorney general? do they have long-term job security? i would rather answer that at a little bit different time. we re looking at a lot of different things, including cabinet. i m very happy with most of my cabinet. we re looking at different people for different positions. you know, it s very common after the mid terms. i didn t want to do anything before the mid terms. reporter: and now we know, jake, that at that press conference, jeff sessions had already given his resignation letter. and if you listened closely to what the president had to say during the press conference, it was clear that he felt like, look, i have control of the russia probe, and what s going on. i can do whatever i want. but i m not going to interfere. well now this is a big step, jake, for him to basically have someone take the role of acting attorney general, matt whitaker, someone who has publicly said that the russia probe should be limited and that it s gone too far. and pamela, reporting what s on
department, whether the ethics people at the justice department tell him that because of some of the writings, i think laura jarrett made mention of some of the things he had previously written here at cnn, whether that requires him to recuse himself and the president has the same recusal problem all over again. one of the things in the next couple of days we re going to be watching for is whether the ethics officials at the justice department tell matt whitaker that because of his previous comments, including last year on don lemon s show he made comments about how an acting attorney general could come in and essentially reduce the budget for the mueller investigation as a way to starve it up of of the resources and i way make it shut down. those are the comments matt whitaker has made previously, he made them here on cnn and now those comments are going to come into play for the ethics officers at the justice department as they review whether he can indeed oversee the mueller investi
presidency is that his job as attorney general is bigger than him. whether you like sessions or not, he held up to that principle and then gets treated like this. it was a protracted saturday night massacre. i will not give the president credit to think perhaps he is now just throwing caution to the wind. he knows the midterms are over and consequences politically are gone. there s hope because mueller anticipated this. so what do you got, mueller? time is up for you to take a protracted approach to this at this point. and a lot of us are wondering what rosenstein himself might do. one of the questions given the fact that matt whitaker at least is expected to take over the investigation, the oversight of the mueller investigation, the big question is whether the justice department ethics
let me just read one sentence from that article that he wrote, matt whitaker, for cnn.com, mueller s investigation of trump is going too far. it s very significant. quote, it is time for rosestein, who is the acting attorney general for purposes of this investigation to order mueller to limit the scope of his investigation to the four corners of the order appointing him special counsel. evan, let me ask you, when jeff sessions sought advice from the ethics attorneys at the department of justice and they told him he needed to recuse himself, that wasn t because of his opinion about the russia investigation, it was because he had talked and met with russian officials while he was a surrogate for the trump campaign. right. that s not legally binding, though, right? that s advice from ethics lawyers. he doesn t have to take it. right. the way the rules are the justice department are, jake, by
these writings from matt whitaker that i just referred to, what he has said on don lemon s show. so ethics officials at the justice department could scrutinize that. but here s the thing. matt whitaker is not bound by whatever the ethics officials suggest. jeff sessions, of course, as we know, took the advice of the ethics officials, recused himself, much to the dismay of the president. but that s not necessarily the case with matt whitaker. he can take over the reins of the russia probe and basically do whatever he want at this point. pamela brown at the white house, thank you so much. this just in. senator mark warner, ranking democrat on the senate select committee on intelligence, just reacted to this news. he said in a statement, quote, no one is above the law, and any effort to interfere with the special counsel s investigation would be a gross abuse of power by the president. while the president may have the authority to replace the attorney general, this must not be the fir