committee. especially to the republican side, trace. i think what has gone on here is they have shot at the wrong target. there s been a lot of talk about weiss. weiss is not the culprit. he s the fall guy. what is supposed to happen is the attorney general picks a special counsel. if the justice department has a conflict of interest. you don t expect a sitting u.s. attorney to ask for special counsel authority. in fact, under the special counsel regulations, special counsel is supposed to be brought in from outside the government. so you re asking to be fired if you ask the special counsel designation. what this agent is basically saying to the republicans is it was the justice department that put the kibosh on this investigation. what i hope is that they number 1 recognize that and ask merrick garland the hard questions. weiss is not the guy that they ought to be interested in. secondly, let these witnesses do
as imperious as always, he emerged today if he s going to take any questions to defend his departments actions lea via president trump yuri to speak on my role is to be completely consistent during the special counsel regulations. following the regulations. laura: let s be very clear here. the issue is are you acting in good faith or part of a political operation to get a conviction of trump by any means necessary? 81% of republicans believe this about this is all about politics and protecting one of the more destructive presidents the united states has ever had joe biden. and they are right. consider the situation this way. no one believes that merrick garland would still be ag if he didn t, hadn t green light a special prosecutor in this case. everyone at msnbc and cnn
the indictment process? just so people can understand what that role is. secondly, given the historic and extraordinary nature of the case, explain to people, if you would, why this was the best and most appropriate step that was taken and why there were no other alternatives. i m trying to remember the first question. your role yes. my role has been completely consistent with the regulations that set forth the responsibilities of the attorney general under the special counsel regulations, and i followed those regulations. with respect to the second question, this again is asking for particulars, and i m not going to be able to comment. all the comments on this will have to come in filings in court. thank you. that s all we have time for. thank you.
was the best and most appropriate step that was taken and why there were no other alternatives? i m trying to remember the first question. your role. yes, so my role has been completely consistent with the regulations that set forth the responsibilities to the attorney general under the special counsel regulations, and i followed those regulations. with respect to the second question, this, again, is asking for particulars, and i m not going to be able to comment on all the comments on this will have to come in filings in court. that s all we have time for, thank you. thank you all. that s all we have time for. i want to bring in nbc news senior legal correspondent laura jarrett, by the book, he says. but look, he s also completely aware he s been in the public sphere for a long enough time to understand people have questions, and he s clearly made the calculation that what he needs to do as the attorney
the reports were neither the attorney general, nor the deputy attorney general, where there. instead, the most senior, non political person, the most senior career prosecutor was there. again, what that does is say, this is outside of politics. we are playing this completely straight. this is what would happen to anyone, regardless of their name is trump, or if they are the lieutenant colonel who just got sentenced to three years in jail for doing less than what donald trump is going to be accused of when these are unsealed charges. neal katyal, you wrote the special counsel rule in the justice department, they re operating under in this case. what is your interpretation on what nbc news is reporting? that merrick garland did not approve any of these charges, did not get involved in approving of the charges? yeah, the special counsel regulations, written in 1999,