that was simply babbling. it has no significance, but it raises questions about what he s doing with regard to the mueller investigation. not appropriate. not appropriate. let me explain why it s not appropriate to say that an investigation is wrapping up. investigators deal with lawyers and subjects and if the lawyers and subjects know that the whole thing is going to end in a few weeks or a few months they just run out the clock. they say, well, we ll get back to you. we re thinking about it, reviewing documents. there are lots of ways to delay. if you know it will end that s what you do. jennifer, how do you see his comments yesterday? i agree. i think he probably got caught out and didn t know what to say. so we saw this i think it s interesting that laura says it was apropos of nothing. he wasn t asked the question. he didn t want to answer is question he s asked which is has your view changed about the mueller investigation. he s pivoting to something else. it s int
we ll try to figure it out. in just hours, roger stone will be blocks away from the white house appearing before a federal judge. he s expected to plead not guilty to charges he lied to lawmakers, engaged in witness tampering and obstructed a congressional investigation into coordination between russia and the trump campaign. joining us now we have cnn justice reporter laura jarrett, former federal prosecutor jennifer rogers and jeffrey toobin. laura, it s your reporting that i think drove some of this yesterday with matt whitaker. tell us what happened in the room, how surprised people were when matt whitaker, the acting attorney general said this. let s play it for a moment. right now the investigation is, i think, close to being completed. i hope that we can get the report from director mueller as soon as we as possible. close to being completed got a lot of people s attention,
laura. to say the least. to set the stage a little bit, whitaker never talks about the mueller investigation. this was his first press conference ever in front of reporters since becoming the acting attorney general on november 7, the day jeff sessions was ousted. this is the first we have heard from him. just to set the stage further he wasn t asked to weigh in on the timing of the mueller investigation or anything. he was asked about prior comments, being critical of mueller and whether he had seen anything that made him change his view. with that prompting he then offered this rare exposition on the timing of the investigation, how he looks forward to seeing the report shortly. obviously this prompted a bunch of quizzical looks from the reporters in the room and a host of questions now raised about what it means about the status of the investigation given that all of the loose ends we still have indictments possibly coming. we have seen roger stone
facts, but i think he probably did the right thing recusing himself. are the democrats going to push throughout the day for more specifics? barr pledged if confirmed, he would allow mueller to complete his investigation. barr also promising very clearly and repeatedly not to allow any improper political white house interference with mueller s work. he said he would support releasing mueller s findings to the public as much as he could, he said, within the law and regulations, and he said the president would not get a chance to correct mueller s report before any public release. with me at the table are senior political reporter mia henderson, justice reporter laura jarrett and chief legal analyst jeffrey toobin. number one, we ll see what happens this afternoon. it s like anything, you get this break, everybody resets, they go in a room and pull out a strategy. bill barr helped them this morning without a doubt. any openings?
runways are thousand back up n the airport aims to run a full schedule on this saturday. sources are telling cnn that president trump is lashing out at acting attorney general matthew whitaker. and the reason raises questions about what mr. trump wants the justice department and his attorney general to do for him. our u.s. justice reporter laura jarrett has this story for us. reporter: new details are emerging about the president s anger over how his attorney and long time fixer michael cohen has drawn him into investigations by federal prosecutors. and the person now bearing the brunt of those frustrations? his hand picked acting attorney general matt whitaker. according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions, on at least two occasions in the past few weeks, the president has vented at whitaker, in particular about how prosecutor implicated the president in a hush money scheme to buy the silence of women around the 2016