james mcgovern headed the criminal division in the eastern district of new york. mimi roca was a prosecutor in the southern district of new york. danny savalas is a defense attorney. i want you to put your heads together and tell me why i m wrong when i saw rudy giuliani on television, to my mind, confessing that the president committed obstruction of justice and fired the fbi director because of the fbi director s role in the russia investigation into the president. when rudy giuliani said he fired comey because comey wouldn t say he wasn t a target of the investigation, me, as a civilian, as a nonlawyer, i was like, oh, game over, we can all go home early. this is done. this is toast. this is confessing to what we ve all been assuming that mueller is trying to nail the president for. that s how i see it as a layperson. how did you see it as lawyers?
familiar with the department s views said that mr. rosenstein and top fbi officials have come to suspect that some lawmakers are using their oversight authority to gain intelligence about that investigation so that it could be shared with the white house.g so, the justice department and the fbi have come to suspect that some members of congress themselves are basically themselves working to try to obstruct justice by using their status as members of congress to obtain information so they can then, with that information, tip off the president. about the inner workings of this ongoing investigation into the president. i mean, if this was a private citizen who was somehow stealing information about the inner workings of the mueller investigation and then shoveling it to the white house to tip the president off, we would expect that private citizen to end up
he can lawfully fire the director. but corruption and obstruction statues often depend on an official doing an otherwise lawful act but with a core run motive. he could fire james comey but if the president did that almost all of the white collar crimes, you see bribery, obstruction of justice, they involve and official doing an otherwise unlawful act, but there s some quid pro quo that made it corru corrupt. i m going to ask you why the dollar bills are sweaty in a second. while we all think that robert mueller and his prosecutors are investigating the president for whether or not the president s firing of comey was done to obstruct the investigation, weren t they supposed to be arguing that the president did it for some reason unrelated to russia? why would they concede this point? why would the president s lawyer concede this point, given that
this is a matter of active investigation? it doesn t really make much sense. i mean, frankly. it doesn t make much sense. i know what the, you know, as you say, the general public s perception is, if you fire the guy who is leading the investigation against you and you then have somebody admit on your behalf that s why you did it, that doesn t look good. i mean, for appearances, at the very least. and maybe for criminal liability. i mean, i don t think we can overlook the fact that the director serves at the president s pleasure. and he has the authority to remove him, and as danny points out, you know, sometimes you can do something you have the authority to do, but you shouldn t have done it because you are violating a statute at the same time. that said, what we ve seen unfold over the last year, year and a half, is why guys like jim comey and donald trump don t actually get along. seems like they have inconsistent personalities. i don t see donald trump really looking at jim come
really can t share materials with anyone like that, including congress, in the middle of an ongoing investigation, but it seems among pro-trump republican members of congress, their idea is to demand documents&ñ,from te deputy attorney general rod rosenstein, demand stuff from him way beyond the stuff he yq could conceivably actually give them. so, he has to say no. but by forcing him to say no, they are hoping to create a pretense to fire him for the terrible crime of not handing over information about a live ongoing investigation that could jeopardize that investigation or be used to tip off#a]b targets witnesses if it[áhtáy so, of course the justice department said no when these republican members of congress said they wanted to see the whole source memo of everyone mueller is looking at and everything he s looking at them for. well, we ve now got the demand letter that they sent to try to get that document. it was sent on april 9th. it was sent to the deputy attorney general, t