but here he is saying this wasn t a job application, i wasn t really pursuing this, i was just issuing this report to the justice department. if that is true, then don t put yourself forward as a candidate. but if you re going to, you darn well better listen to the ethics lawyers. and in my experience, and i ve sought advice of ethics lawyers on different things, you follow their advice for the very reason that because it pertains to you, you re not an objective party. you have an interest in the answer to the ethics question. that s why you go to someone independent and you say, tell me from an independent perspective, should i recuse myself? i cannot see a good faith basis to refuse to do so. and given what he is saying, that the reason he was interested in this job when it was brought to him was that he thought a credible resolution of this would be in the national interest. it won t be credible if he ignores the advice of the ethics
to know the specifics. i would have to know the specific facts. okay. and you wrote on page 1 that if a president knowingly destroys or alters evidence, that would be obstruction. yes. okay. so what if a president drafted a misleading statement to conceal the purpose of a meeting? would that be obstruction? again, i would have to know the i would have to know the specifics. all right. you would seek the advice of career ethics officials in the department of justice for any recusal, and i appreciate that. and you said in the past that you commended attorney general sessions for following the advice of those ethics lawyers. but you didn t commit today to following that advice, is that right? no, i didn t i didn t commend him for following the advice. as the agency head, he makes his he s the one responsible for making the recusal decision. i don t know why he said
grounds to release. there are, however, other problemsnition to executive privilege. that s the special counsel law itself. it s got two sections that deal with how the report, if a report comes, gets released. and i will tell you that in reading it carefully, the attorney general has enormous power here to block disclosure to the congress. if he wants to. so i think what you re going to see is a battle between the legislative branch, the executive branch, and maybe even the supreme court getting involved in whether it gets released. one more legal question, paul. we learned what was explosive news in a week of explosive news. that the president s acting attorney general was advised by doj ethics lawyers, career lawyers to recuse himself from overseeing the russia probe because of past and repeated comments criticizing that very probe. he refused that legal advice. yes. how unusual is that, and how can you consult the ethics lawyers? you re supposed to listen to
to the top person at the department of justice. the fact that it was a close call doesn t make it any better. the ethics lawyers are saying, this is a close call but we recommend that you recuse yourself. we re not talking about a garden variety case here. we re talking about the highest profile case in the department of justice, one that more than any other will help form americans opinions that they can trust that the justice department is following the rule of law. you said last week that, quote, every argument that the justice department has made for putting michael cohen in jail applies to donald trump, unquote. what exactly are you saying with that? are you suggesting that the prosecutors in the southern district of new york should indict a sitting president? couple of things. first, if they have proof that individual one directed and coordinated this scheme. they have asserted as much. they have asserted as much. if they would prove it, then what it so say that michael
knowing that what he had said and want vice president later represented to the country about his communications with the russian ambassador was in fact false. the acting attorney general, matt whitaker, he has decided that he won t recuse himself from overseeing the mueller investigation. are you comfortable with the process that led him to make that decision? not at all. particularly now has more is coming out about what the ethics lawyers of justice said, if it s true that the ethics lawyers recommended that he recuse himself and he s nonetheless refusing, it means the top justice official in the country is ignoring the advice of the ethics lawyers. that is a pretty intolerable situation, particularly when it involves an issue that was the very reason why he got the job, and that is he had been auditioning with comments about how he could silently and out of the public view cripple the mueller investigation, so the first thing we need to do is get