white house counsel pat cipollone was against the plan, as well. he referred to the letter jeff clark wrote as a murder suicide pact that no one should have anything to do with it. i basically made the point to the president jeff clark was not qualified to be the attorney general. he s promising you he ll conduct, he s very complex nationwide investigations in record time and this is coming from a guy that s never conducted a real investigation. mr. clark responded by saying he s been involved in very significant environmental law briefing before various courts and that reminded me that yes, in fact, you re primarily an environmental lawyer, go back to your office and call you when there is an oil spill. donohue said upon clark s appointment, justice department leaders would resign on mass. the president turned to me and said steve, you wouldn t leave, would you? i said mr. president, i ve been with you through four attorneys general including two acting
candidate for this job. white house counsel pat s cipollone was against the plan, as well. he referred to the letter jeff clark wrote as a murder suicide pact that no one should have anything to do with it. i basically made the point to the president jeff clark was not qualified to be the attorney general. he s promising you he ll conduct, he s very complex nationwide investigations in record time and this is coming from a guy that s never conducted a real investigation. mr. clark responded by saying he s been involved in very significance environmental law briefing before various courts and that reminded me that yes, in fact, you re primarily an environmental lawyer, go back to your office and call you when there is an oil spill. donohue said upon clark s appointment, justice department leaders would resign on mass. the president turned to me and said steve, you wouldn t leave, would you? i said mr. president, i ve been with you through four attorneys general including two act
resignations of the leadership of your entire justice department because of your actions. what is that going to say about you? mr. angle, can you describe what your reaction was to that? i think with the president i think with the president turned to me and said, steve, you wouldn t leave, would you, i said i m mr. president, i ve been with you through for attorneys general, to acting attorneys general. but i couldn t be part of this. the other thing that i said was that, look, all anyone s going to think about when they think this no one is going to read this letter. all anyone s going to think is that you went through two attorneys general in two weeks until you found the environmental guy to sign this thing. and so the story is not going to be that the department of justice has found massive corruption that would have changed results of the election. it is going to be, the disaster of jeff clark. and i think at that point, pet supple only said, yet, is a
that was a day later. on the second, he said that the president had asked him to let him know if he would be willing to take it. subsequently, he told me that, on sunday the 3rd, he told me that the time line had moved up, and that the president had offered him a job and he was accepting it. what was your reaction to that? well, you know, on the one hand i wasn t going to accept being fired by my subordinate, so i wanted to talk to the president directly. my recollection, that when the president turned to me to say steve, you wouldn t leave, you would, i said mr. president, i ve been with you through four attorneys general, including two acting attorneys general, but i couldn t be part of this. and then the other thing that i said was that, you know, look, all anyone is going to sort of think about when they see this, no one is going to read this
after that. i don t know the united states attorneys are going to do. we have u.s. attorneys in districts across the country. and my guess would be that many of them would have resigned. and that would then have led to resignations across the department in washington. and i said, mr. president, within 24, 48, 72 hours, you have hundreds and hundreds of resignations of the leadership of your entire justice department because of your actions. what is that going to say about you? mr. engel, can you describe what your reaction was to that? i think with the president i think with the president turned to me and said, steve, you wouldn t leave, would you, i said mr. president, i ve been with you through for attorneys general, to acting attorneys general. but i couldn t be part of this. the other thing that i said was that, look, all anyone s going to think about when they think this