special counsel s office from mueller s office saying bluntly to the court that the special counsel s office just can t do what it wants. if the acting attorney general tells them no, what you re doing is inappropriate or unwarranted under established justice department practices, then that acting attorney general can stop mueller from doing anything. and of course yesterday president trump just installed a new acting attorney general. the special counsel has a regular reporting obligation to the acting attorney general in order to maintain the acting attorney general s ultimate accountability for the investigation. that s one of the twin purposes of the regulation. ultimate accountability in the attorney general, day to day independence of the special counsel. we are therefore required to submit reports to the acting attorney general in accordance with the department of justice s urgent report guidelines, without going into all their detail ensured that major events, investigations
specifically, this appointee being allowed to take over what the special counsel s office is investigating. and sao so here is one last thing you should know. i mentioned a whole bunch of really important stuff happened on this issue today and in the press. but there is manage else that happened today in court. the purpose of the appointment was to provide assurance to the american people that your investigation would be conducted that was sufficiently independent of the ordinary chain of command so that the united states people could have confidence in it. that is the voice of michael dreeben, who is considered to be one of the top appellate lawyers in the country. he is one of the top prosecutors working under robert mueller in the special counsel s office. mueller s investigation essentially went silent ahead of this week s elections. that s according to justice department rules. but today in court, a three-judge panel in the d.c. court of appeals, they heard arguments in a muell
paulsen, asking him to protect mueller. i think this is why people didn t mind the cold there tonight. no more minnesota nice. now i m minnesota mad. people were out in places like buffalo, new york and austin, texas, madison, wisconsin, and omaha, nebraska. the protests were bigger in some cities and smaller in others. little rock, arkansas, smyrna, georgia, sioux falls, south dakota where it was snowing, santa fe, new mexico. in chicago, somebody held this vaguely threatening but also very well done sign, mueller is coming for you. in pittsboro, north carolina, pittsboro, more than 100 people gathered in front of the courthouse. pittsboro, north carolina. and there are so many more cities where these things happened tonight on zero notice. morristown, new jersey, bar harbor, maine. people were out on the road in super snowy bemidji, minnesota tonight and warm st. petersburg, florida. all 50 states.
doing so for the purpose of obstructing justice. so that s the reason, right, why the james comey firing resulted in special counsel robert mueller being appointed. that firing investigated as potential criminal obstruction of justice by the president. did he fire comey in order to shut down parts of the russia investigation that threatened the president? similarly, if there is evidence that attorney general jeff sessions was fired yesterday in an effort to block the mueller investigation, in an effort to protect the president from that investigation, you can expect that the sessions firing as well will ultimately come under investigation as potential criminal obstruction of justice. if it has not already. and that worry that the president might have fired attorney general jeff sessions for a corrupt purpose as part of a criminal scheme to obstruct justice to get rid of the mueller investigation that threatens him, that got a big boost today from the free press
the court hearing today, though, was not a supreme court hearing. it was at the d.c. appeals court, one level below the supreme court. we will see if this case ever in fact gets to the supremes. but what happened today in this case, right, the day after literally a no collusion, no collusion, anti-hillary clinton tv pundit affiliated with a large criminal fraud scheme was installed by the president personally as acting attorney general with control over the mueller investigation, today one day after that guy was installed in that job, here was mueller s team. here was muller s top appeals court prosecutor explaining today in court just how much of the work of the special counsel actually has to go through it used to be rod rosenstein as of yesterday. it s now this new guy, matt whitaker. and it s really one of the first windows we had into how the mueller team is actually supervisored in the justice department, and how somebody in the justice department who had authority over them mi