someone who is independent of the justice department to get to the bottom of this. i say one more thing. the silence of my republican colleagues on this issue is sort of deafening. this is not an issue of party, this is an issue of country, foreign interference in the elections is a very, very serious thing, and we should get to the bottom of it. where s the howard baker of 2017? we desperately need one. one of your democratic colleagues, sheldon senator whitehouse, said the following why he s a little skeptical of a special counsel. take a listen. if you have something going like that, look at the special counsel rule, you have to bring in somebody new outside the department. they have the choice to make their own decision they want to start from fresh perhaps. his concern is that everything starts over. you re suddenly hitting a reset button and sets the investigation back. look, i love sheldon whitehouse. i have a great deal of respect
for him. he s one of the great lawyers around. you can easily and there have been many instances where a special prosecutor comes in, they re in charge, they re the shield so there s no outside interference or direction, but at the same time, the same investigators who have been working on this continue to work on it, and that s how i imagine it will work. let s remember, special prosecutor has four abilities an internal justice department doesn t. first, he or she makes the decisions day to day on who to subpoena, who to examine, what questions to ask, no outside interference. second, can only be fired for cause. third, has the ability, if there s interference, someone s trying to thwart the investigation from up above, they can make sure that doesn t happen and investigate that. fourth, they have to report to congress. there are a lot of advantages over a special prosecutor. if you look at the department of justice guidelines, there s never a more important time, a more appropriate
i think the two are linked because they re both involved in one of the most serious investigations we ve seen in a very long time. there s eight candidates interviewed yesterday. two have an electoral background, sitting senator, john cornyn, former member of congress, some have bipartisan backgrounds like a fran townsend, served in the clinton and bush administration. anybody jump out as a favorite of yours you could foresee supporting? you know, i ve generally made it a practice, chuck, of not commenting on nominees publicly. let s see who they nominate. as i said, certainly somebody not of a partisan background, certainly somebody of great experience, and certainly somebody of courage. what did you make of the merrick garland suggestion? not going to comment on any of them. i like him as a justice, though, he s very good on that d.c. circuit. i don t know if he d want to leave. you think that was a little too cute at that point? no comment.
be done? as you know, senator ben sass indicated if you do that it is sending a message you don t trust the intel committee to do their work, a vote of no confidence there. shouldn t you let them do their job to see if they can do it without a special prosecutor? well, there are two separate lines of activity here. one is the oversight function of the intelligence committee, they re doing their job. mark warner has done a very good job. i had some differences it would senator burr and in the last week, some people tell me he was very upset with comey s firing, and i hope it continues. they can t prosecute. the special counsel of the justice department has the ability to prosecute people for violations of wall. they go on in tandem. one shouldn t step on the other. i know they re talking to each other now, the fbi was with the intelligence committee to make sure no one s granted immunity. it s two separate issues. we very much need a special prosecutor, chuck, we need
the lester holt interview and decides to blurt out what sounded like a confession to a lot of people to objestruction justice. i think your point, jim, you have no idea when this is going to happen or might happen. it does feel different. it feels like something has to give in this white house. the other part the more somebody gets talked about getting fired the less the president wants to do it. the more we bring it up. matthew, you wrote a great column on friday that may summarize this whole thing best. you hear it all the time. president trump hasn t been tested or faced a real crisis. the events of the last few weeks made me want to turn that formulation around. trump doesn t face crises so much as manufacture them. in a way he is the crisis and his presidency in danger of not being defined not by any legislative or diplomatic achievement but his handling of diplomatic obstacles he creates for himself. you have the most principal dictionariable unpredictable and impulsive p