mr. berman recused himself. what mr. whitaker did after this was unclear. there is no evidence he took any direct steps to intervene in the manhattan investigation. he did tell associates that the justice department that prosecutors in new york required quote adult supervision. so as i mentioned, we ll have more tonight but this is potentially trouble for matt whitaker who is no longer acting attorney general but staying at the justice department now that the new attorney general william bar has been sworn in. this is potentially trouble for whitaker if his adult supervision comment means he did try influence that prosecution in new york at the behest of the white house. it s also trouble for whitaker obviously if he did lie about those interactions under oath to congress. it s also potentially trouble for the president if he was going after a federal criminal case, right? if he was trying to hand pick to
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 were testify in favor of him, potentially lying to help him out. he criticizes those who disagree with him, calls them rats and the like. he declares national emergencies without warranting, discredits judges.
call the number on the screen now or visit getsilversneakers.com did the president lash out to you on or about december 8th, 2018 to discuss a case in the southern district of new york where he was identified as individual one? no, congressman. did anyone on the president s behalf either inside the white house or outside contact you to lash out or express dissatisfacti dissatisfaction? did they contact me to lash out? yes, did they reach out to you to express dissatisfaction? no. we watch that testimony a couple weeks ago from matt whitaker. and whether you found it credible at the time, plenty of people on that committee apparently did not. the chairman of that committee followed up that testimony with a letter to whitaker that said in so many words, we believe you
is in in his ongoing investigation, the continued protection and support of that investigation, which is so important to this country and to the work that we expect to see. but isn t that attorney general barr s job now? it will be. attorney general barr will have ultimate authority over those things, but on a day-to-day level, the deputy attorney 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
russians knew this but that they likely had proof of this information. and that created a compromise situation, a situation where the national security adviser essentially could be blackmailed by the russians. finally, we told them that we were giving them all of this information so that they could take action, the action that they deemed appropriate. that was sally yates talking about something that happened at the very, very beginning of the trump administration, literally less than a week after the swearing in of the new president. it s just a few days into the new administration. sally yates, she s attorney general then, she s acting attorney general. she personally goes to the white house, to the new white house counsel to tell the new white house counsel that the brand-new president s brand-new national security adviser is compromised by a hostile foreign power and they needed to act in whatever way they felt was appropriate to act in response to that information.