during the midterm elections. so now he can say, i didn t fire mueller. i didn t touch mueller. i also didn t touch rod rosenstein. i have no issue with him following the new york times revelation that maybe the 25th amendment being talked about or him wearing a wire. i m just going to replace the person who made it possible that rod rosenstein would have his position and mueller would have oversight by that person. and so by putting matthew whitaker in the position, which by the way is not in line of succession. it would naturally go to the deputy attorney general, rod rosenstein, then to a solicitor general. the chief of staff or the a.g. is not the person who is supposed to be in line. so one has to first wonder by what authority he s going to put him there. but the president s already told us he s temporary. he ll have a more permanent placement put there in the long run. so i m wondering if in many ways this is the president s attempt to gain information about the investigation.
think the president trusts matt whitaker more than he trusts anyone else. and just for the explanation, people will say and we talked about that what happened to rod rosenstein? well, rod rosenstein was only in charge because jeff sessions had recused himself. right. so now the person who is the attorney general or the acting attorney general is actually now back in charge of the russia investigation. can this be seen as anything else, laura, as trying to restrict, constrict, shut down the mueller investigation? i don t think so. i think that this is very clear and transparent, that the president of the united states essentially killed two birds with one stone. he was not happy with jeff sessions. he s been very vocal about that for more than a year. he has been emasculating him politically. he s been vilifying him over twitter and in actual press conferences for quite some time. but he was very cautious not to fire mueller because there would be obvious political consequen
bob mueller, but he just reduces the budget so low that his investigation grinds to almost a halt. so whitaker also argued that rosenstein should limit the scope of mueller s investigation in an august 2017 op-ed for cnn.com. this was the title of it. the title was mueller s investigation of trump is going too far. and it said in part in that op-ed, any investigation into president trump s finances or the finances of his family would require mueller to return to rod rosenstein for additional authority under mueller s appointment as special counsel. if he were to continue to investigate the financial relationships without a broadened scope in his appointment, then this would raise serious concerns that the special counsel s investigation was a mere witch hunt. that s a quote from the op-ed,
i also didn t touch rod rosenstein. i have no issue with him following the new york times revelation that maybe the 25th amendment being talked about or him wearing a wire. i m just going to replace the person who made it possible that rod rosenstein would have his position and mueller would have oversight by that person. and so by putting mathew whitaker in the position, which by the way is not in line of succession. it would naturally go to the deputy attorney general, rod rosenstein, then to a solicitor general. the chief of staff or the a.g. is not the person who is supposed to be in line. so one has to first wonder by what authority he s going to put him there. but the president s already told us he s temporary. he ll have a more permanent placement put there in the long run. so i m wondering if in many ways this is the president s attempt to gain information about the investigation. so once he s downloaded everything and debriefed from robert mueller and then he walks away to h
there s a lot of big, important decisions that are now firmly in matt whitaker s hands, and i think the president trusts matt whitaker more than he trusts anyone else. and just for the explanation, people will say and we talked about that what happened to rod rosenstein? well, rod rosenstein was only in charge because jeff sessions had recused himself. right. so now the person who is the attorney general or the acting attorney general is actually now back in charge of the russia investigation. can this be seen as anything else, laura, as trying to restrict, constrict, shut down the mueller investigation? i don t think so. i think that this is very clear and transparent, that the president of the united states essentially killed two birds with one stone. he was not happy with jeff sessions. he s been very vocal about that for more than a year. he has been emasculating him politically. he s been vilifying him over twitter and in actual press conferences for quite some time. b