but there was a sense there was an independence of the justice department and the fbi. there s no reason this president won t fire the a.g. or make a move on mueller. he wants to litigate every aspect of this. if he fires jeff sessions or sessions resigns, and he wants first of all, very difficult to get another a.g. in there, even if you rod rosenstein gets elevated. he doesn t like rosenstein either. right. because he s from baltimore or whatever. so he doesn t like there s too many democrats in baltimore, unlike new york city where president trump is from. so he doesn t want to elevate rosenstein. what does rosenstein do, does he stay or quit? does he ask rosenstein to fire mueller and mueller refuses? and if he wants to fire mueller,
and some people feel very strongly about it, why aren t they out there saying mr. president, stop calling your own attorney general beleaguered? you can make the same case where are the republicans saying we need to repeal and replace obamacare. republicans can disappear but, you know, maybe in the president s mind he figures he can appoint a member of the senate like a ted cruz or somebody to take the attorney general s place during a recess appointment in august, and maybe he can do that. and i don t think he can. but let s say maybe he s thinking i could get this over with one, two, three and i could get rid of mueller and i can get on with my agenda. we ve got to take a break. when we come back, how president trump is using his bully pulpit to influence the health care vote tomorrow. i couldn t sleep and get up in time. then i found aleve pm. aleve pm is the only one to combine a safe sleep aid plus the 12 hour pain relieving strength of aleve. i m back.
whether or not the firing was obstruction. i don t think at all. may be one piece in the puzzle that could lead up and add up to obstruction, but i still stay with the fact that he s allowed to fire who he wants to fire. i don t think it rises to the level of corrupt intent. not at this point. i think there s a lot of other falk stories look at. what in he also fired mueller. there were headlines this week about donald trump allegedly considering maybe even firing mueller or ordering rosenstein to fire mueller. again, one more piece of the puzzle. other things to look at. there s no independent evidence at this point that he has the corrupt intent to actually obstruct justice. paul butler, i know you disagree with that. joy, if donald trump were one of the roundaway boys who seema used to prosecute in the bronx, he would be on his way to jail for obstruction of justice based on his pattern of conduct. let s look at how he treats
not even true. i just wanted to play the exchange for you and for our viewers. here it is. do you believe he has the power to fire mueller? certainly believe he has the power to do so. you said the president believes he has the power to fire robert mueller because usually, most legal experts believe he would have to hire rosenstein to fire mueller and rosenstein could refuse. i know a number of individuals in the legal community and including at the department of j department of justice that he has the power to do so. but i don t have any further announcements on they told me. i ve asked. they said it s rosenstein only has the power to fire special counsel! again, we ve been advised that the president certainly has the power to make that decision. i can t go anything beyond that. look, it s significant on many levels. one, according to the regulations, she s wrong. the special counsel may be disciplined or removed only by the action of the attorney general.
bipartisanly supported in their positions, but the key here is that rod rosenstein is the person who mueller reports to. he s not the person where obviously it will influence in every facet what mueller will investigate and what extent he will do so. so if he were to place rod rosenstein, the next person in line would have to be somebody willing to fire mueller or anyone else who came along as a way to try to placate the president of the united states. but it wouldn t end all of the inquiries there. in large respects, mueller s team is operating in a fashion that you can t put that genie in the bottle. and it s unlikely that mueller or rosenstein is doing a poor enough job to be absolute political cover in the firing of that particular person. but he does serve at the pleasure of the president and probably a way that he can get around the issue of having to address mueller directly. so i think we have to ryan, we have to talk about this. this is a doj succession. sessions recused h