parallels to what happened with what former fbi director james comey said about the michael flynn investigation, can you let that go, do we know if the attorney general pushed back or how the department of justice is commenting on this? well, the dep of justice we reached out to them today and they are not commenting on the matter. but we can confirm, according to three people familiar with what happened, that the president and the attorney general had a conversation about this. it is important to note that it is just a conversation. trump asked sessions whether it would be possible to take away the charges, to drop the charges against arpaio. he did not issue a directive, to my knowledge. there was no sort of formal process to review dropping the charges. it was just sort of an in inquiry that the president made with his attorney general and he was pretty quickly told that was not a an appropriate thing to do and that the president needed to wait to let the trial run its course an
then he could assure a pardon if he chooses. and that ran the course on july 31st with joe arpaio convicted by a judge. that was the choice as opposed to be ago i jury. his lawyer mark goldman say they did not contact trump during this period nor ask anyone in the administration for a pardon. however, you report along with your colleague that inside of the west wing, that the advocates for this pardon are steven miller and and bannon, stephen bannon. that is right. you know, steven miller, the senior policy adviser in the white house was an aide on trump s campaign. and got to know sheriff joe arpaio pretty well during the course of the campaign because they worked on immigration policy together. steve bannon as well. and it was really miller and bannon over a period of months who were who helped encourage the president to move forward with the pardon who were advocates for it internally.
the show as strong as those words may be, speaker ryan is not really willing to get out there and do this in his name and confront trump on this and, of course, mitch mcconnell, the republican senate majority leader is runs away from any sort of these circumstances. they are letting trump get away with all of this stuff. they are enabling him and until they draw a harder and faster line, he s going to keep pulling stup stunts like this. well, it is within the president s right to pardon someone. matt, i m sure you have two words going through your mind, scooter libby, who did not get this special treatment. have you ever seen a president of any party make that kind of request regarding an ongoing case, the fact that the post is reporting about trump s interest in getting sessions to get the case gone? i can t think of another example of a situation like
birtherism and so he asked if they could drop the case and was advised that would be inappropriate with three people with knowledge of the conversation. after talking with sessions, trump decided to let the case go to trial and if arpy woe was convicted, he would grant clemency. now joe arpaio was convicted on july 31st for ignoring a judges to stop arresting migrants because deputies thought this were imgantss. the center for neighborhood leadership in phoenix, it is good to have you with me and i know there is a lot of new information coming out about the background that led up to the eventual pardon last night. but in your own family history, your family faced scrutiny offer joe arpaio watch. arpaio has been doing criminal work for breaking
this, certainly not one anytime recently. look, i do think there s a one potential explanation here, that the president of the united states, the first president never to have government or military experience, he may not have fully understood the wall of separation that exists between the white house and the justice department. i think the president believes that all cabinet officials wouldn t the white house counsel advise him of that, matt? yeah, he should have, certainly. it s possible that this president picks up the phone and calls whoever he wants when he wants. it s possible that that was his first run through the counsel s office. yes, i agree with attorney general sessions, that was an inappropriate it would have been an inappropriate thing to do and it s a very positive thing that the attorney general had that response. the white house has said, responding to questions about trump s conversation with sessions, white house press secretary sarah huckabee sanders