retiring republican member and voices those concerns publicly unlike other republicans who are not coming out in public but voting today and yesterday, there is a real sign of these concerns about the president has been taking towards nato, to the tariffs, at least voting a way breaking from the administration even if they re not joining corker and publicly condemning the president and stopping shorter than democrats who today called on the president to apologize for those remarks, particularly against germany calling them embarrassing, disgraceful. no republicans going that far but nevertheless rebuke of sorts by the senate and these two votes over the last couple of days here. pretty extraordinary. manu, on another topic, the senate confirmed a controversial nominee for the criminal division. tell us when s going on. reporter: brian benchowski, nominated to head the justice
wait a minute. you are being chosen to head up the criminal division of the department of justice and you have no experience? you have never prosecuted a case, never? never once been in a federal court room, not one time? that s fact. then there are questions about his resume, specifically his work for a russian bank that thrives under the putin government. here s what senator dianne feinstein had to say. special counsel mueller s investigation has resulted in 23 indictments, 5 guilty pleas and one prison sentence in only one year. confirming benczkowski puts that in jeopardy. here s why. he refuses to recuse himself from the russia investigation, she writes, despite having worked for a russian bank under investigation for ties to trump. he also pushed for comey s firing to a.g. sessions, while serving on the trump transition
concerned with the fact he s never tried a case, never filed a motion in federal court and that he was a top aide to jeff sessions. and some people are wondering whether he can be independent, whether he s going to support the russia investigation. but one person i talked to said, look, he s a man of integrity. he ll do the right thing. he could be a bulwark against donald trump and the justice department. the important thing to know about him, he s a sessions loyalist. he s going to do what sessions wants him to do. for people worried about the future of the mueller investigation, that should actually be a source of comfort. remember, sessions followed the directions of career ethics lawyers at the d.o.j. his recusal is the reason we have mueller to begin with. there s been zero evidence that sessions has interfered or tried to change the way the mueller probe works. if sessions is going to be the person who is leading him, he s not going to do anything to undermine his boss. additi
sessions are probably a little overblown. but like doug says, i am really shocked that the person charged with overseeing all of the prosecutors in the department of justice was not a prosecutor himself. that just does not make any sense to me and is a little disconcerting. senator dick durbin of illinois disagrees i think with the assessment, this isn t potentially problematic. here s what he wrote a short time ago. i cannot believe a republican party just rubber stamped a nominee who has no prosecutorial experience who chose to represent a russian bank with deep ties to vladimir putin and who would not recuse himself from russia-related matters if confirmed. this could be a historic mistake. zeke, the white house likes to put its allies in high places and here they are doing it again. if you look across the entire administration, they ve had a strong challenge filling jobs with qualified individuals.
daniel, if i can, lets put up first of all where he is in the hierarchy as it relates to the russia investigation now being overseen by rod rosenstein. on the screen you can see he is effectively number four if rosenstein were to go right now. butinvestigation, what potential impact could he have? is there sincere concern he could have some window into it, some access to it in some form that would be problematic? you know, i actually think this concern say little overblown. let s remember, rod rosenstein is the deputy attorney general who is overseeing the russia investigation. but that russia investigation is completely separate from the rest of the department of justice because robert mueller was named as a special counsel. that is not a part of the rest of the department of justice. so i think some of these concerns about him infiltrating the russia investigation and being a back channel for jeff