to raise alarms that mr. trump is using the justice department to go after his perceived enemies. mr. trump fired james comey, the fbi director, under whose watch agents opened the russia inquiry and has long assailed other top enforcement and intelligence officials involved in this investigation. i know you, as a former prosecutor yourself, somebody who takes her role in the judiciary committee very seriously, you think about these things in very stark terms. i do. and very sober terms. i feel worried about the prospect of the justice department being used as a tool of this president or any to accomplish political goals. and this feels like a really bad signal of that. it really does. i always looked at my job as a prosecutor, you convict the guilty. you protect the innocent. you are ministers of justice. you simply can t let politics get involved. you have defendants all the time that may know people, that may have contacts, that are
conversation now senator amy klobuchar from minnesota. she s a member of the senate judiciary committee and she joins us tonight on short notice, as almost all of our guests have as we are reacting to this breaking news. senator, thank you so much for making time. i appreciate t. thanks so much, rachel. and thanks for getting on this right away. sure. i ll rehe iteraiterate for our the breaking news from the new york times . the justice department is said to open a criminal inquiry into its own investigation. this is the investigation that bill barr has been traveling around the world trying to enlist other countries in this theory that russia didn t really attack our election in 2016, and the real criminals are those who investigated it within our own government. senator, what s your top line reaction to this news story, if the times is reporting theirs out? we have an incredibly important investigation going on right now, and the facts are there. the whole country can look a
failure or refusal to appear at the deposition, including at the direction or behest of the president or the white house shall constitute evidence of obstruction of the house s impeachment inquiry. and may be used as an adverse inference against the president. joining me now on the capitol is from the capitol is garrett haake. talk to me about this. as we re moving along in this inquiry, we are hearing names of people who are going to be giving depositions. names that the public would not have heard about. yeah. ali, the timing of these subpoenas is interesting because two of the three of these officials were folks who the committees running the inquiry actually requested to speak to weeks ago and were blown off essentially. both one of the omb officials and the state department official you just named were both requested to be here last week and just did not show. but i think we have seen a change in the momentum of this, if you will. so many of these other officials from the
breaking news. look, there has to be a criminal predicate in order to open this criminal investigation. we haven t heard what that is yet. but i can say large it appears to be an attempt to exonerate russia. let s remind our viewers that it was the unanimous conclusion of our intelligence community, our law enforcement, that russia interfered with the 2016 elections. after a three-year bipartisan inquiry and the senate intelligence committee, they, too, brought out a report that said russia interfered with the 2016 elections. and now, rather than having the department of justice focus on what they should be focusing on, securing our elections for 2020 and beyond, we have instead the resources of the department of justice apparently trying to discredit our intelligence community and law enforcement community.
white house s objections under subpoenas. be they more forcefully applied subpoenas like this with a publicly released letter or what we ve been colloquially been referring to as friendly subpoenas. essentially, providing legal cover for folks who want to show up but are worried about their job. the omb connection here is particularly interesting. this is yet a branch where we ve not heard from any witnesses or had any documents turned over. at the heart of this inquiry is a follow the money investigation here. the aid to ukraine that did not show up in a timely fashion. and the office of management and budget is going to be the place with the receipts. that s going to be the place where you ultimately find out what happened with this money, who was told what about moving it. so democrats have wanted to get these answers. and now, they appear to be taking at least slightly more forceful action to try to compel this testimony here in the next week or so. garrett, you and i talked earl