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That question. he declined to answer it. he said it s an ongoing investigation, so it s inappropriate for him to talk about. obviously he s being very cautious here, perhaps inexperience in dealing with congress, perhaps, you know, no sense of where things are going. but that was a somewhat of a surprise. ariana, it seemed like whitaker came ready for a fight. that s no surprise. he knew what he was walking into. what was your biggest take away so far? my biggest take away, he s not he s not ready. he s not able to field these questions in a way that is becoming of the office he currently holds. there are sort of two rocks that he can hide behind as someone who is facing this congressional oversight hearing. one is to say it s an ongoing criminal investigation and, therefore, i can t comment on the topic. and the other is this spectre of executive privilege, which is ....
Recused after the unfortunate incident where she actually talked to bill clinton on the tarmac. right. eric holder recused in the investigation into senator edwards. ashcroft recused a number of times. no, yes, absolutely there would be a recusal. here not only is there the issue of the recusal in the mueller report because of the appearance of impropriety of bias, now we have the improper behavior with whitaker discussing with the president of the united states an investigation for which he is involved and his family is involved and whitaker and the president were talking about it. that enough makes whitaker a fact witness and is a second reason he should be recusing in the southern district of new york case. apparently he is not willing to do that and that tells us a lot about the motives of the acting attorney general. and it also makes it highly unusual. ariana, i want to turn quickly to william barr. senator dianne feinstein had this to say on twitter, she said ....
Committee incoming chair has already said he will subpoena it. now, while we have to remove some things because there s grand jury material in there, once it s cleaned up and the grand jury feral is gone, it will get to the house. i want to go back to this notion of recusal. ariana, the doj ethics review of matthew whitaker found that his recusal would be appropriate but it actually would not be required. why is that? well, so under the guidance, the ethics rules, if there is a clear conflict of interest such as a financial or personal or political stake in an investigation, that s an actual conflict and it requires recusal. but there is another prong to the recusal inquiry, which looks at whether there is an appearance of bias. when there is the reason why it s important potentially to recuse yourself when there is an appearance of bias, which arguably there is here since matthew whitaker appears in his ....
Overseeing mueller s russia investigation and it was all after he has been on the record criticizing the special counsel. this as nbc news reports that mueller s investigation could wrap up as early as mid-february. so joining me now now to discuss a ariana berg and cynthia ox knee, msnbc analyst. ariana let s start with you. you heard what congressman schiff had to say. if the president s legal team exert executive privilege to stop the release of mueller s report? it s a terrific question, very timely right now. under the special counsel regulations all that bob mueller is required to do is to provide a report to the acting attorney general or attorney general, whoever is in charge at the time, and if the reporting is accurate and it is february, it appears that it will likely be matt whitaker who is the one who ....
Competently and capably, but it appears that the main reason why he was nominated for attorney general by president trump is because of this 19-page single spaced memo that he sent out only to rod rosenstein but also to white house lawyers which in effect appeared to be an audition for the job because he clearly stated he has very can a patience views of presidential powers in which most of the time he s not going to believe that president trump is capable of committing obstruction of justice merely by dint of the fact that he is the president of the united states. there is a lot more to discuss here, but so far we thank you for your time. ariana and cynthia, thanks for being with us this afternoon. coming up, president trump naming patrick shanahan as his new acting secretary of defense. we will talk more about shanahan and what all of this means for the u.s. on an international stage. stay tuned. the u.s. on an international stage. stay tuned of lumber and arms of steel ....