Acting Official News Today

President trump has been told maybe this is not the right time that mulvaney knows so much that you dont necessarily want to alienate him. >> thats a point here that i think all is worthwhile to note. from the point of view of the courts and precedent about who can and cannot be subpoenaed by congress, there is quite a distinctiv distinctive between acting and foreign members. mulvaney would render his ability to contest weakened, right? >> thats an excellent point. the white house has pretty mu...

Officials atop the department of homeland security and deputy secretary of homeland security post and in the position of acting administrator overseeing fema. what do we know about those officials? >> so peter gainer is currently the administrator at fema. thats probably a name most of your viewers ever heard of before. he replaced brock long last year. this will be his first hurricane season. by all accounts hes one of those longtime government emergency response managers who has done this befo...

Is going to be under review what took place in na institution and why. although we can presume some of the why is going to be associated with short faus in staffing and costs. >> and whatever as you say, whatever that picture looks like, whether theres going to be accountability, its the job of the attorney general and the president to say the buck stops here. the reassignments may not be a necessary corrective. i think thats in the mix. as of tonight, mr. barr has not taken full responsibility....

Victims. he became a distraction to the president. he became a distraction to the administration, and he had to go. and thats what this came down to. this was never about taking account or taking responsibility for the poor law enforcement decision he made. what that leads to and to piggyback on what was said at the top of the segment, we have another major cabinet led by an acting official -- so you have departments of labor. >> yeah. >> homeland security and the deputy, the defense department,...

Command, the decision making, the response with regards to iran now going to change considering the presidents nominee, mark esper officially taking the helm? >> yeah, thats a really good question, and i think, you know, potentially under the obama administration, a logical assumption, patrick shanahan was a civilian leader. sometimes when youre an acting official, your word and decision making carries left heft, you would think es pper, trumps opinion as commander in chief, he is the ultimate d...

Infringe on the presidents constitutional power to hire and fire. the justice department released a 20 page legal opinion backing trumps appointment of matt whitaker. a key issue goes to senate confirmation and the department of legal counsel provides legal guidance to -- all three branches of government have long recognized the president may designate an acting official to perform the duties of a vacant principal office, including a cabinet office, even when the acting official has not been con...

And we do not know if bin salman would know, and embraced fully by this white house, certainly by jared kushner and the president if we were involved in this one, but he said, brennan said that it would inconceivable that this would have happened without his knowledge and order. >> i think john brennan is right. theres no question the executive authority, the acting official in charge in riyadh, is moment bin salman, the crown prince. and the saudis have a real problem here, they have not offere...

Attorney general. it would of course, he would have to nominate someone for the job, that person would have to go through what you would expect would be a very robust confirmation process. it could be a year. meantime, he could appoint an acting official. it wouldnt have to be someone from within the justice department. it could be a senate confirmed person from somewhere else in the government. that person, it wouldnt just have to fire bob mueller to have an impact. he could thwart muellers inv...