and, yeah that s right. but the marriage between sessions and the president not so good either. not well, i don t think there is any doubt that the president is going to clean house of the justice department, like the moment the polls close on election day. sessions is gone. it probably is likely that rosenstein is gone. and this matters, because rosenstein has been the protector of the independents of robert mueller. and if rosenstein is gone and some puppet is put in there who will limit or eliminate the mueller investigation, that has historic consequences. exactly. well, look. we know the line of succession as it relates to justice protocol. noel francisco becomes the person who oversees it. he was an attorney for a firm that represented some donald trump donald trump during the campaign. possible he recuses himself? now we re going way down the chain. then the head of the office of legal counsel would be in charge
and he doesn t trust mccabe. and so therefore, he discounted the story. but, of course, rosenstein didn t see it that way, wolf, prepared to see the door. if he is fired, rosenstein, or if he resigns, what s the likely impact on the whole russia investigation? well, wolf, it s interesting. you know, there is a succession plan in place here. we often forget, justice officials had to dust it off today, prepared that noel francisco, the solicitor general, who argues cases before the supreme court, would take the reins, he would become the acting attorney general. but just for purposes of the mueller investigation, he would still remain as solicitor general. he is someone who is a known quantity within conservative legal circles. he s very close to don mcgahn, white house counsel. he also worked in the george w. bush white house. he also worked at jones day with mcgahn. so he s someone who is very well-known, very well-respected. and if, for whatever reason, we re still not there yet,
of this. here s what we know, and to jeff s point. we know for a fact because he has said it under oath and he has said it publicly many times. rod rosenstein believes there is zero reason to remove robert mueller, unless there is some sort of demonstrated crime or something big that has gone wrong. barring that, he s not getting rid of him. we just don t know that about these other people. now, maybe that s where they fall. but, again, so you re taking a sure thing in rod rosenstein, who has stood up to donald trump, and you re replacing it with something that s a question mark. and when you were dealing with the fact that he is already we know how he feels about jeff sessions. he has already fired james comey. he runs down the justice department and believes there is a deep state. the context there is it s interesting that jay sekulow, one of the president s private attorneys today was on his radio show saying that if rosenstein is gone, there should be a, quote, time-out from
because here, you can choose any car in the aisle, even if it s a better car class than the one you reserved. so no matter what, you re guaranteed to have a perfect drive. [laughter] (vo) go national. go like a pro. see what i did there? continuing our coverage, rod rosenstein appointed bob mueller to oversee the russia probe. president trump meeting with rosenstein on thursday, the same day as judge kavanaugh s hearing. it s trump thinks firing rosenstein would save brett kavanaugh s nomination.
and the president and his legal team have been laying the ground work for this moment for months. the entire strategy has been centered on discrediting the work of the fbi and of robert mueller and his investigation. and it s important to recall that rod rosenstein is very much the gatekeeper of that investigation. he not only oversees it, but many of mueller s major investigative decisions have to be run through rosenstein. and we don t know how noel front cisco would approach the investigation if he would allow it to proceed unimpeded, as rosenstein has done. but he could very well slow-walk these requests and essentially grind the investigation to a halt. but it s also important to always recall that there are seven people who are either associates of trump or former members of his campaign who are cooperating with the special counsel, and that has not changed. noel francisco, the solicitor general, who would take over, presumably, if he s not conflicted, is very conservative. i