the vp immediately assumes the office of president. and let s bring in our legal analyst and civil rights taurn a r reattorney re attorney areva martin for more on this. rosenstein issued this statement, he said i never pursued or authorized recording the president and any suggestion that i have ever advocated for the removal of the president is absolutely false. this was reported by the new york times and they say that they worked on this story for months. what do you think about that denial. is he hedging or is that an outright denial? clearly not an outright denial. he is parsing his words. what he doesn t say is that he didn t say it. he just says that he didn t pursue it or authorize it. so it remains to be seen if he did make the statements. so where does that leave it