in the southern district of new york. the president denies it. did you ask acting attorney general matthew whitaker to change the leadership of the investigation into your former personal attorney, michael cohen? no, not at all. took him a minute to answer, didn t it? so let s face it. it s no coincidence that the president reportedly wanted to try to put jeffrey berman in charge of the southern district of new york, of the investigation of hush money payments during the campaign. berman, the u.s. attorney for the southern district, had recused himself, which was the right thing to do. why? because berman contributed to trump s campaign. he served on the transition team. and he is a former partner of rudy giuliani. all good reasons to recuse himself. but essentially, the president wanted berman to un-recuse
party in washington has not turned against his obvious obstructionism, demeaning of a legitimate investigation, tells us an awful lot about what s happening here, and his rallies. his rallies in which he is calling the press, you know, enemy of the people, in which he is inciting his people to go after those who are conducting these investigations as illegitimate. that we really have a situation in which we re dealing with a demagogue. yeah, and we ve never had a demagogue-in-chief before. i ve got to tell you, though, all good things come to an end, and sometimes it s just term limits. but all of that goodwill, that will come to an end, trust me. i m older than you, i know more. yes. we ll be right back. we ll keep discussing with this group. don t go anywhere. a technology with cinemastream for less buffering, cinemasound for brilliant clarity, and cinemacolor for ultra vivid color. get $200 off select xps13 laptops
i have. every insurance company tells you they can save you money. save up to 10% when you bundle with esurance. including me, esurance spokesperson dennis quaid. he s a pretty good spokesperson. ehhh. so when i say, drivers who switched from geico to esurance saved an average of $412, you probably won t believe me. hey, actor lady whose scene was cut. hi. but you can believe this esurance employee, nancy abraham. seriously, send her an email and ask her yourself. no emails. no emails. when insurance is affordable, it s surprisingly painless. so the president did ask matthew whitaker if he could put a trump supporter in charge of the team and investigation, is that an impeachable offense? president rich shd nixon faced obstruction and impeding the
general anymore. but it became clear that whitaker was not getting done what he hoped he could get done, and we had heard from multiple people around the president that they had believed there was more he could have been doing to try to keep the southern district in line. the southern district of new york is known as the sovereign district of new york, because it is fiercely independent, stoe historically, from the doj. and we re seeing that again now. we have all said this many, many times, that the southern district of new york investigation poses a far greater threat to the president than the mueller probe does. yeah. you believe that too, jeffrey? i m not sure. i think the mueller probe presents a great threat, too. but i think maggie s extraordinary reporting does establish that the president is very concerned about the southern district probe and went to the you know, incredibly inappropriate step of asking
5:00 a.m. on the east coast and we start with president trump facing more obstruction of justice questions in the wake of a wide ranging new york times report. the times says the president pushed to have a federal prosecutor appointed during his administration to oversee the michael cohen investigation. mr. trump by that point had already been implicated in the cohen probe. the times reports late last year he still called then acting attorney general matthew whitaker to ask if the u.s. attorney in manhattan could supervise it. the report is raising obstruction concerns even in places that usually downplay them. the phone call would be evidence of what? corrupt intent. that is, an effort to use the levers of power of the government for a corrupt purpose. would that be obstruction? yes. well, it would be attempted obstruction. it s still unclear what whitaker did in response to the president s call. there s no evidence that he took any action. the justice department says