attorney general via tweet. i think what ultimately the president s going to start doing is putting pressure on road rosenstein. reporter: whitaker has long backed president trump s tough take on the mueller probe. in an opinion piece for cnn.com in august 2017, whitaker wrote that it was time for rosenstein, who oversees the special counsel, to order mueller to limit the scope of his investigation to the four corners of the order appointing him special counsel and i warned that by investigating the president s personal and business finances, mueller has come up to a red line that he is dangerously close to crossing. and he said if mueller didn t limit his probe, it would raise serious concerns that the special counsel s investigation was a mere witch hunt. whitaker also appeared on cnn in july 2017, suggesting any replacement attorney general would likely slow down the special counsel by pinching the purse strings. and that attorney general doesn t fire bob mueller, but he just
mueller investigation. he was the campaign chairman for sam clovis 2014 bid for state treasurer in iowa. clovis has been interviewed by mueller s team, testified before the grand jury. and according to the washington post, clovis was also lifted as an unnamed campaign supervisor in the indictment of former trump campaign aide george papadopoulos. so as we all know, the president has railed against mueller s investigation from the very beginning, calling it a hoax, a witch hunt 160 times since last spring. trump has even floated the idea of actually firing the special counsel. over a year ago, i asked whitaker whether the president would actually go through with that, and here s what he said. i don t. it will be a spectacular we will spend a lot of time talking about this if and when he does. but i think this president puts these things out there into the
president, then this would raise serious concerns that the special counsel s investigation were a mere witch hunt. the fact that he used the word witch hunt, which is president has used over and over with the probe, compare that with this. this really struck me this morning reading it with our jake tapper. i don t see any current reason or good reason that bob mueller shouldn t stay in that special counsel role. there is no honest person that sits in the world of politics and the world of law that can find anything wrong with bob mueller. so jeffrey tubin, to you first, which do we believe? the first not the second. i mean, why was he appointed? there is only one reason. i mean, you know, with all respect to mr. whittaker, he is a person not with the stature, nor with the experience to be attorney general of the united states. he was briefly u.s. attorney in des moines, whiposition, but it
before he was sessions chief of staff where he talked about how he agreed with the president, that there would be a limit, perhaps a bridge too far that mueller shouldn t cross if he tried to go after the president s personal financial information. he says this, quote, the president is absolutely correct. mueller has come up to a red line in the russia 2016 election meddling investigation, that he is dangerously close to rossing. he goes on to say, quote, if he were to continue to investigate the financial relationships, he would raise serious concerns that the special counsel s investigation was a mere witch hunt, echoing there, of course, the president s catch phrase that we hear all the time about a witch hunt. again, something that we would hear from a surrogate. but now of course he s the top justice department official as the acting attorney general supervising the mueller probe. i want to play for you a little bit of sound to give you color with our cnn don lemon.
okay? witch hunt. where have we heard that before? also last summer, whitaker tweeted his approval of an npr article suggesting that the public might never learn mueller s findings because the attorney general could simply decline to release his report, and he wrote this. he said, article is correct. it will be very difficult to ever see evidence discovered by mueller grand jury investigation. okay? whitaker also weighing in on allegations of mueller conflicts of interest. here s what he said to anderson. bob mueller does have ethical duties as an admitted lawyer to practice law, and so did jim comey. so there are other rules in addition to the doj rules and regulations. and if bob mueller had these conflicts which were described in the beginning of this segment, that could raise some situations that i hope he s analyzed before he accepted this