basically they had gone too far and put in place a series of regulations that are supposed to prevent this from happening without the justice department going to the media organization and trying to negotiate some sort of accommodation in advance. and it is obvious that that didn t happen in this case. what s supposed to happen under these new regulations is the justice department, before it subpoenas a reporter s information, because this is important, this is different from subpoenaing a reporter s testimony. the reporter doesn t know if you ve gone and gotten their e-mails or gone and gotten their phone records. they have no ability to go to court to try to block it. the justice department under holder put in place new regulations that would allow for some kind of negotiation between the media outlet and the justice department and give the media outlet the opportunity to go to court to try to seek to try to block the justice department from seizing these records. it appeared that
essentially suspend that negotiation or not negotiate with the media outlet. it s hard to see how in this case, just looking from the outside, that would be applicable here. it s something that would be policed by the inspector general. but ultimately these are regulations that are put in place by the attorney general. they can be rescinded by the attorney general. attorney general sessions and departmenty attorney general rosenstein announced early on that they were going to look at these regulations and decide whether they ought to be withdrawn. they haven t officially withdrawn them. so they are still in place. but we know they ve been skeptical of them. and we know they ve talked about cracking down more on leaks in the past. we don t know exactly how they decided to make this decision to subpoena reporters or whether they suspended these or whether they essentially invoked this kind of loophole in the regulation to justify the subpoena. i think that s a very important question.
joining us now is matt miller, former justice department spokesman under eric holder. mr. miller, thank you for joining us on short notice. we called you when we saw this. and i know you ve only had as much time to digest it as i have. thanks very much for being with us. okay. the times notes in the second paragraph of the story thaunder president barack obama there had been aggressive tactics to crack down on leaks including tactics that made some reporters uncomfortable and some news organizations unhappy with the ways reporters were pursued essentially in order to track down leaks. is this a continuation of that or is this a departure? it is a continuation of what happened early in the obama administration. basically exactly what the justice department has done here it did to one of the reporters who wrote this story, adam goldman, and also matt apuzo, then with the a.p., now of course with the new york times. but something important happened after the justice department d
united states supreme court that the law wasn it came to murder or even treason that the law was what the president s party in congress said the law was. right. law professors have this for decades as to whether a sitting president could be indicted. i happen to take the view a sitting president can be indicted. i don t really put the a great deal of strength in some of the arguments made by the other side. what s fascinating is that the example given by giuliani is the example that my side gives, those who believe in limiting executive power raise the issue of the president shooting someone in the oval office. it is not the example the other side wants to talk about. it s like going to a health care inspector and saying you know, der these rules i could poison my patrons. it s not a good argument for you. matt apuzo, let s look at what else we learned today, especially in a lot of your great reporting here, that the
black and white saying, yeah, he helped dictate it it s just a reminder of we go through this process in washington where he do the reporting and we go to the white house, we go to the administration and we engage with them and we have a back and forth and then the next day sometimes the very same people who were telling us yeah, we re fine, i ll confirm that for you, turn back around and say fake news, phony media. this isn t going to be a surprise to any reporter in washington that this is how it s operating right now. and take a look at what kevin mccarthy, the man who would be speaker, had to say when confronted with all of these lies. mr. leader, are you bothered by the fact that the white house lied about the president s involvement here? look, the one thing i have found, this has gone on for more than a year, millions of dollars