everyone, welcome. pete, can you walk us through this lawsuit in maryland and where it stands right now. sure. first off, i m completely outclassed by the other guests it here, but here are the facts. you are never outclassed, pete, ever. the answer to your question is yes. if the trump administration loses here, i m sure they ll try to appeal it as much as they can. here s the maryland state argument. they have this lawsuit against jeff sessions and the government over obamacare. now it s time to substitute somebody else. what they asked the judge to say is rod rosenstein should be subed out for jeff sessions because he now is the acting attorney general, not matt whitaker. they say there are two reasons for this. first of all, they say a federal law which trumps all other lays, says when there s a vacancy in the office of attorney general, the deputy attorney general takes over. the president used a different law that allows him to put someone like whitaker in. the state of mar
he should recuse himself because the appearance of a conflict is just too great here. people need to have faith that people running the department of justice with that immense power are being impartial and nonpolitical. after the statements he s made, whether he can or can t be impartial, there s no way anyone s going to believe it, frankly. the comments he made were pretty extreme. i mean, he wasn t just offering sort of legal analysis, here s a case. he said he does not think that president trump conspired with russia, that the trump campaign did not do that. how could he possibly know that without knowing all of the facts that mueller knows? i m not saying, you know we don t know what mueller is going to come out with, but to prejudge it like that and offer that opinion in such an extreme way is just one example of why anything he does is just going to be tainted in the public eye. part of the role of the attorney
and that he s not fair minded. they pint to comments he made as a conservative pundit on cable news where he repeatedly criticized the mueller investigation and even speculated on ways the doj could handicap the probe, a probe that as acting a.g. he now oversees. so the big question we are asking today is if the federal judge rules that matthew whitaker cannot serve as attorney general, will donald trump try to test his presidential powers at the supreme court? joining me now is nbc news justice correspondent pete williams, white house bureau chief for the washington post phil rucker. phil is also an msnbc political analyst. and former assistant u.s. attorney in the southern district of new york and distinguished fellow and criminal justice at pace university s law school, mimi rocha. and professor at harvard law school and co-author of to end a presidency: the power of impeachment impeachment, lawrence tribe.
this more specifically. they also say the constitution says that anybody serving in a cabinet level job has to be confirmed by the senate. now, rod rosenstein was confirm the by the senate. so weare a number of other peop at the justice department the president could have put into this position but didn t. for those two reasons, they say, matt whitaker is not legally qualified to serve as attorney general. so where does it stand right now? when should we expect a ruling from this judge? well, the papers were just filed a short time ago. the state asks for a temporary restraining order. the judge could act simply on that request. the judge could ask the government for a response, which i think is the more likely thing here. this is kind of a case of first impression and a strange way to do it here by coming kind of in the back door on this question of who should be substituted for the name jeff sessions in the caption on this lawsuit. so there s no timing on this. it s really up to
general is to engender people s faith in the justice system. pete, will there be any reaction from the doj officially? no, not yet. the judge may ask them to respond to this, but there may also be an opinion from the justice department s office of legal counsel. there was a similar question that arose a couple years ago. there was an opinion on the books about using this law we were talking about, the federal vacancies reform act. there are sort of who laws that say how to fill a vacancy. that s what we have here. there s the longstanding one at the justice department that says the deputy takes over when the attorney general is gone. then there s this vacancies reform act. which one rules? which one governs? there s a previous olc opinion on this office of legal counsel. there may be another one today justifying the president s use of this appointment here. by the way, just on chris christie, i would think he would have the same recusal problems that jeff sessions did because he wa