lying to congress about the trump tower moscow. right? so this was, i mean, trump i don t know if corey lewandowski helped, right, but finally president trump did somehow figure out a way to fire jeff sessions in a way that didn t scare him too much. he finally did figure out a way to get rid of sessions. so he brought in matthew whitaker to be the acting attorney general. and very soon thereafter, there were these reports that trump was on the phone with whitaker, you know, calling him, reaming him out about what was going on with michael cohen. what was going in in that new york courtroom. what was going on with these prosecutors and what cohen was admitting to. whitaker was asked about these reports that he had been pressured by the white house about the cohen prosecution. he was asked about these reports when he testified before the house judiciary committee a couple of weeks ago. after his testimony, that committee s chairman, new york democrat jerry nadler, wrote a letter to wh
general will be the person likely to be first interacting with director mueller. also to the new york times report tonight, the president called up matthew whitaker when he became the so-called acting attorney general and asked if basically he could change prosecutors in new york and restore the guy he appointed who had already been recused from this, and apparently matthew whitaker somehow got it through to the president that you can t do that. your reaction to that? any reader of your book will not be surprised by that and will expect that we will, over time, discover more and more such phone calls donald trump has made around the administration. right. so it s not surprising at all, right, especially when you re familiar with the history that we went through in may of 2017. it s not that different from asking director comey to just let go of the investigation of mike flynn. of course, one of the crucial steps that caused us to believe
joining us now here on set is congressman eric swalwell. he s a member of the intelligence committee in the house and also the judiciary committee in the house. congressman, it s great to have you here. thanks for having me. i wanted to ask you about a few of the didn t stories that broke today, but specifically because of your role in the judiciary committee, your chairman jerry nadler is saying pretty directly to the recently departed attorney general matt whitaker he may have perjured himself before your committee. the times added to the weight of that allegation when whitaker got not call, that s not true. the president had pressured him about that. what do you make of the story and the controversy and the matter of his potential perjury? well, the acting attorney general is not worthy of being taken at his word and his word is contradicted by a lot of credible new york times reporting. so, yes, on the president lashing out, we care about that
there is almost a fatigue, like, oh, that s not new. we ve heard that before. and i think the most important thing coming out of today s events, including your great interview, is we can t think that way. prosecutors in the public don t say when there is a serial murderer, oh, he did it before. you look at each thing individually and you see the pattern that s developed and hear the stories together show trump is engaged effectively in a serial murder of the constitution and rule of law. i mean, he fires anyone who is investigating him that wants to seek the truth, whether it s mccabe or whether it s comey or even jeffrey sessions. he puts in place, you know, constitutional jokes like matthew whitaker. he tries to discredit and destroy investigations, you know, kind of unrecusing people like jeff sessions and now today the u.s. attorney in the southern district of new york in the new york times story. he dangles pardons at people who
quote, as federal prosecutors in manhattan gathered evidence late last year about president trump s role in silencing women with hush payments during the 2016 campaign, mr. trump called matthew g. whitaker, his newly installed attorney general, with a question. he asked whether jeffrey burman, the u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york, who had been chosen for that job by president trump, a former law partner of the president s own lawyer, rudy giuliani. he asked whether jeffrey burman could be put in charge of the widening investigation. the times says, citing several american officials with direct knowledge of the call. quote, mr. whitaker knew he could not put mr. burman in charge because mr. burman had already recused himself from the investigation. quote, what exactly mr. whitaker did after this call from the white house is unclear. there is no evidence that he took any direct steps to intervene in the manhattan investigation. he did, however, tell some associates a