that was going on at the department of justice, that i obviously that general sessions wasn t recused from. i think the president was comfortable that to continue the momentum at the department of justice, that we had established, in addressing these important priority issues like reducing violent crime, combating the opioid crisis and others, that the president felt i was best positioned to do the duties of attorney general. thank you, mr. chairman. i ll just say to mr. whitaker, my questions in a normal oversight committee would be vastly different than the direction i m going to go because we ve kind of wandered into this other stream over here. so i m going to ask you some questions. the longstanding constitutionally based department of justice policy holds that a sitting president cannot be indicted. and that s based on the last review which happened under the clinton administration. is that still in effect or has
have to say it? if you could do it all along, why do you have to put it in a memo? congressman jordan, first of all, i was because of general sessions recusal from the special counsel s investigation, i was also recused from that investigation. so i was not i m not asking that. i m asking you said you were fully briefed. you re asking me why at the time rod rosenstein i m asking you why two and a half months after the broadest order you can have, why did rod rosenstein say, hey, you can do this all along but now i m putting it in a memo. what really troubles me, mr. whitaker, right after that statement the following allegations were within the scope of the investigation at the time of your appointment and are within the scope of the order. right after that, you know what? you know what happens? everything is redacted. look at this. the whole darn thing. so if you could do it all along and you have to send a memo to him two and a half months later and then you redact ever
addressed. but the real point is it s just wrong. walter schwab has a great article that came out today where he said look at the last president who got rid of someone to impact an investigation of him was forced to resign. trump has now done this twice, with the fbi director, with the attorney general. and then he s installed someone who has said already oh, i don t think he committed any kind of conspiracy or collusion. he s prejudged it without knowing all the facts. if that isn t a reason to get a president to resign, forget about criminal prosecution, i don t know what is. and the fact that the republicans are silent on this and that this is being allowed to happen, whether or not you can come up with some legal, technical legal argument about why it s okay, it s just not the right it s wrong. and there are so many other questions too about whitaker. i think this whole question with him and this company that he was a part of, if we weren t so
or wikileaks collaboration or any proof or evidence that i knew in advance the source or the content of allegedly stolen or allegedly hacked e-mails published by wikileaks. i never discussed john podesta s e-mails in my tweets. the allegation that i somehow knew in advance about the theft of his e-mails is patently untrue. mueller s team is also continuing to get information from former trump deputy campaign manager rick gates. in court today prosecutors said they were not ready to sentence gates because he is continuing to cooperate with ongoing investigations. and the man mueller is now reporting to, acting attorney general matt whitaker, today received a ruling from the justice department s own in-house office of legal counsel saying it looks good to them, his appointment is lawful and valid. a good many others disagree. they feel whitaker has prejudged the russia investigation and
political in my view, of all three of them. and i hate to be cynical on this show because i know you value idealism and altruism here. but i have a small sack full of cynicism applied to all three of those characters. mimi, don t pay any attention. he s so cynical. mimi, the in-house office of legal counsel at the justice department says general whitaker looks good to us. what are we to think about that? look, it s disappointing in the sense that i think it s wrong, but it s not entirely surprising. this is the same office that said that the first travel ban was legal and that didn t work out so well in the courts. aren t they career people, though? well, they are. although the author of it is someone who is kind of a republican i don t want to say operative. that s too strong of a word. but he s on the democratic republican side. and the point is that look, i think there are many stronger arguments that it is unconstitutional, his appointment. there are still very good arg