and as the president takes on questions that he may have obstructed justice to help flynn, we are now she go an a parent split in strategy between white house legal team. ty cobb is backing away. john dodd there on the left has reportedly said a president cannot obstruct justice. i want to talk to jim acosta to speak about this. what is ty cobb saying? reporter: he is saying fact based defense, not at theoretical legal that the president cannot be held accountable or be found guilty of obstruction of justice. that is a concept that was floated out by john dow to axe on we can put this up on screen. this is a statement from ty cobb
the president s account. that got a lot of attention, tweeting for the president. now, the lawyer says, i m out of the tweeting business, i did not mean to break news. but in the meantime, jon, the president s lawyers are going with a new legal strategy tonight when it comes to obstruction of justice? reporter: the president s lawyer is arguing that the president, because of the nature of his job as the head of the executive branch, cannot, by definition, commit obstruction of justice. david, it s a variation of nixon s line that if the president does it, it s not illegal. jon karl at the white house tonight. jon, thank you. and you heard jon report there that the president s lawyer is now making this new argument that a president cannot obstruct justice. the president s lawyer, john dowd, saying, quote, the president cannot obstruct justice, because he is the chief law enforcement officer, and has every right to express his view of any case. so, let s bring in our chief legal an
illegal. that is familiar. i mean, it sounds like that s what he s saying, right? it s also emphatically wrong. i mean, it s wrong. if you bought that principle, you would buy into the principle that the president is above the law. yeah. and the president is not above the law. now, the president is a special, you know, feature in office within the constitutional structure, and so there are things that, you know, apply and don t apply to the president by virtue of his office, but what it doesn t mean, it doesn t mean that the president cannot obstruct justice. he can obstruct justice just like anybody else. when you he s subject to prosecution just like anybody else. just not while he s president. when you take that conversation in full context, he s really talking about national security. are right. and that s where the president does have his maximum latituderight. and that s where the president does have his maximum latitude where he can, indoeeedo things th
i feel very badly. he s led a very strong life and i feel very badly, john. i will say this hillary clinton lied many times to the fbi. nothing happened to her. flynn lied, and they ve destroyed his life. i think it s a shame. we should note, former fbi director comey testified before congress this summer that hillary clinton did not lie to the fbi, and further mud ig waters, the president tweeted this weekend he had had to fire general flynn because he lied to the vice president and the fbi. that implies the president knew flynn committed a felony when he told then fbi director james comey to go easy on flynn. the white house said this was dictated by this man, john dowd. kristen well kker to clear this. trying to argue about the fact john said he wrote the tweet, arguing that the president cannot obstruct justice. can you explain that?
that the president can t be charged with obstruction while white house attorney ty cobb says we re not making that case, even though we heard it with our own ears here. why is this important to hear these things from lawyers out loud? right. so the argument that dowd sort of had initially put forward that other white house lawyers are walking back is that the president of the united states cannot obstruct justice by virtue of sort of his constitutional position. you know, that s a pretty extreme argument. now, it might be open to question whether or not the president can be indicted for obstructing justice, held criminally accountable but this responding to the allegations, specifically sort of doubt on trump s admission he was aware flynn or may have lied to the fbi, default to a position that s not just he didn t obstruct justice based on the facts but he can t obstruct justice, you know, this white house and these legal team has