a lot in the past year about firing mueller. and sometimes his aides have ignored him, sometimes they ve slow walked him. in the. who does he fire first? how does he fire him. he has to fire rosenstein. does very to get rid of sessions and put in a reappoi reappointment or someone else in the agency? here s how i think it would work. the president has enormous powers as head of the executive branch. one of his powers would be to repeal the special counsel regulations. once they are repealed, he could either fire mueller or order someone to fire mueller. it s not entirely clear what the path is. how does he repeal it. it s not a statute, it s a regulation. as the head of the executive branch he has authority tort repeal or prom you great regulations. can he do it, i think the answer is yes. go ahead. people say it would be a constitutional crisis if he does
mueller? well, i think it s a disgrace what s going on. we ll see what happens. but i think it s really a sad situation when you look at what happened. many people have said, you should fire him. again, they found nothing. and in finding nothing, that s a big statement. so we ll see what happens. i think it s disgraceful and so does a lot of other people. this is a pure and simple witch hunt. welcome back to hardball. that was president trump openly musing whether he should fire special counsel robert mueller who is investigating him. trump s refusal to rule out the possibility has some inside the white house worried he could take dras if i can action. his press stkz sarah sanders said trump believes he has the power to fire the guy. just minutes ago, the new york times reported that trump sought to fire mueller as recently as december after mueller subpoenaed documents from deutsche bank. one-time trump transition chief
now talking about potentially getting at mueller possibly rosenstein. mike the schmidt you ve got a story running that the president tried to fire mueller in december. there was a story in december about a subpoena that had gone to deutsche bank that said that that was the initial report said it was directed at the president and his business dealings. the president did not like there idea. and this is gets at this issue of the red line, the looking into his finances and seriously considered firing mueller at that point. it didn t get to that point because they were able to figure out the president s lawyers that the story was wrong, there was some discussion with mueller s office. but it just shows how when the president thought that mueller had gone beyond that line, he was willing to do this or certainly willing to seriously consider it. now, you have to understand though, the president has talked
if he did, it wouldn t end the investigation. for more i m joined by pennsylvania republican congressman charlie dent. thank you for this. what is the feeling among members of the house you talk to on the republican side of the aisle about trump sization? he knows what he s done wrong. he may not know how illegal some of the things he did were wrong but he knows much more than lindsey graham or charlie grassley or chuck grassley knows. he knows what he faces from mueller. so i don t really care what anybody else says except what will they do if he fires mueller. well, i ll tell you what, at least the republican colleagues i ve been speaking with think it would be a devastating mistake for the president to fire director mueller under any circumstances. i think most of us recognize this would it be the equivalent of a saturday nice massacre, arch can bald cox moment, politically paralyzing even more so than we already are, debilitating. i don t know how he would be
is chris christie said the president is aware of the consequences. i think the president is really angry about this and expressed that yesterday. i think he does understand it. but i think there s lots of people who are concerned that you know, his reaction to this may overcome what he s been told. it s a big problem. i ve told him that. you can t fire the special counsel. you just can t. you just can t. but some of the president s republican allies on capitol hill warned of political perils of such an action. i have confidence in mueller. the president ought to have confidence in muler. and i think to answer your question, it would be suicide for the president to want to talk about firing mueller. i m not concerned that he ll fire mueller. i don t think he ll fire rosenstein. i can t think of any reason to do it. i m confident that would be the beginning of the end of his presidency. he s not going do that. i think the president is too smart to fire mr. mueller.