investigation and if he were in sessions job he would choke out the budget so it wouldn t exist anymore? it s worse than that even because he is also somebody who was the campaign chair of a person in iowa who is now a witness before the grand jury in this investigation, sam clovis. look, the justice department has a process for this sort of thing. the ethics lawyers at the department advise senior officials when there s a question about whether they should recuse. that is of course exactly what happened with jeff sessions and sessions followed the advice of those lawyers and that s why the president hates him and removed him and replaced him with this guy. the question now is whether mr. whitaker will behave in a similarly appropriate fashion. eli, you covered this white house and this president for
independent investigation like this. so, we might not know, and we might not be able to act in time, to defend that investigation. i ll just remind you, the only reason we re having this conversation is because president trump fired fbi director jim comey, and then went on television and said he did so in order to stop the russia probe. that s what led to the appointment of a special counsel. it was broadly supported in a bipartisan way last year. this is likely going to be the kind of moment when we have to put up or shut up, and it s going to call for actions by senators of both parties. if mr. whitaker has been told or is soon advised by ethics lawyers at the justice department that he cannot ethically oversee this investigation, his public statements criticizing the investigation and, in fact, declare his bias in a way that he can t ethically oversee it, if he defies that advice, or if we come to learn that he received that advice and ignored it, does the judiciary committee or a
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
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house, you signed some type of document that is being called an anti-disparagement document, and now that you re giving commentary people are going to say, well, are you allowed to be negative about the president? what do you have to say? there is no anti-disparagement document that i signed. prior to joining the administration, there was what i think is a pro forma nondisclosure that prevents you from disclosing secret secure information, national secrets or classified information, private conversations with the president. and something that said that if you were to do a tell-all book, that those proceeds would go to the federal government and not to your own benefit. but before i signed a contract with cnn, my personal lawyer spoke to white house ethics lawyers and confirmed there are no restrictions for me coming on air and giving my unvarnished opinion about the administration. so, you know, chris, we ve had this conversation. i look forward to continuing to be a part of your net