installed to be acting attorney general of the united states for a hot minute, matthew whitaker, he was back on capitol hill today where lawmakers invited him to meet with them to clarify some testimony that he gave last month. whitaker told the judiciy committee in an open session that president trump never exerted any pressure on him over the mueller investigation or any other investigation, including the federal prosecution of the president s longtime former lawyer michael cohen. at that february hearing, mr. whitaker flatly denied public reporting that the president had lashed out at him on at least a couple of occasions after cohen pled guilty to multiple felonies when he was prosecuted in the southern district of new york. whitaker s testimony that day in congress denying that he d been the recipient of any such pressure, denying he d had conversations like that with the president, that was soon thrown into doubt when the new york times reported that the president had, in fact,
whether the southern district went too far in pursuing the campaign finance case in which the president was listed as individual number one. oh. so according to jerry nadler, whitaker doesn t deny talking with president trump about cohen s case in the southern district of new york. also, the president was directly involved in conversations about whether to fire one or more u.s. attorneys and he was involved in discussions about whether federal prosecutors in new york went too far in pursuing campaign finance charges against cohen. yes, that s the case where the president himself is personally implicated and called individual one. oh. that would be the biggest scandal for any president since watergate if it wasn t just another scandal in this administration. we pressed for more details tonight with chairman nadler s office. his office told us that he stands by his description of what happened in that meeting. obviously we do not know where this inquiry is heading, nobody does, but the
a hot minute, matthew whitaker, he was back on capitol hill today where lawmakers invited him to meet with them to clarify some testimony that he gave last month. matt whitaker told the judiciary committee in an open session that president trump never exerted any pressure on him over the mueller investigation or any other investigation, including the federal prosecution of the president s longtime former lawyer michael cohen. at that february hearing, mr. whitaker flatly denied public reporting that the president had lashed out at him on at least a couple of occasions after cohen pled guilty to multiple felonies when he was prosecuted in the southern district of new york. whitaker s testimony that day in congress denying that he d been the recipient of any such pressure, denying that he d had conversations like that with the president, that was soon thrown into doubt when the new york times reported that the president had, in fact, called matt whitaker late last year and asked him if
now, now that manafort is facing seven years in federal prison after, among other things, repeatedly lying to prosecutors about his contacts with russian intelligence. and you have heard a lot of discussion in the news and legal circles recently about the prospects of a manafort pardon. trump was asked about it today by reporters a the white house soon after manafort received his sentence. all of that discussion, yes, it is of interest in terms of manafort s personal fate, but it is also about the fate of the whole russia investigation. it is about the prospects for the entire investigation. it s about the whole kit and caboodle. and the crucial question of whether the president can use his powers as president to wire the russia investigation to explode by using his pardon power to protect people who agree to lie about it in order to protect him and in order to prevent the truth from coming out. and that is why new york prosecutors today, not federal
payment scheme to two women right ahead of the presidential election and the cover-up thereafter. since those federal prosecutors described the president s conduct that way in court documents, the question that has loomed over the trump presidency like king kong hanging off the freaking empire state building is whether or not those prosecutors intend to bring felony charges against individual one in regard to those crimes, or indeed the question of whether they might have already wrought felony charges against individual one, aka president trump, in some sort of sealed indictment that we the public have not yet seen. in that campaign finance felony scheme, it is not just the president who was personally implicated as the person directing the scheme. the president s business, the trump organization also appears to be implicated in that felony. in those felonies i should say. among other things, they falsely described those hush money