especially among careerists in the government, especially among lawyers. why not stand in and take whatever comes? i think it s the time we re living in, brian. i ve spoken to some people who say, of course, that that is a high profile position, but when you look at the pressure that the justice department is under, it s a toxic environment to work in right now and that job in particular is the most toxic. she s someone who is a conservative, but worked for george w. bush and president obama as well, and she does not want to be in this position where she would be forced to be in this political area. she would much rather stay in the legal area where she s able to make progress on things like civil rights and civil litigation. she s a lawyer s lawyer as jeff sessions described. she s not a politician. and that s what she might be forced to be if she was in a position she had to defend the justice department s actions in
the president immediately and with almost no scrutiny releases a memo that he says vindicates him. and that memo if you follow my questioning in the open hearings, i think shows that this memo was put together in conjunction or in coordination with the white house and the republicans on the intel committee. a memo that the justice department said was dangerously reckless and the fbi said had grave concerns about its accuracy. so when our memo comes down the pipe, it s a whole different story. a memo i believe would bolster the integrity of the investigation and the intelligence community, it s a different story. look, the republicans can get away with this, they have the votes. the question is, are they willing to help suppress this investigation? are they willing to help the president of the united states obstruct what we re trying to do?
committee voted against us when we asked that this be reviewed before it was released. it was only done on a cursory basis. the justice department also asked, before it was released, to be able to come address the entire body of congress in an executive session, to discuss their concerns about its accuracy and about its attacks on sources and methods. the republicans refuse to accept that vote as well. let me ask you something else on behalf of taxpayers everywhere. we re paying the tab for the house intel committee. everyone we have on the broadcast says it s beyond toxic and the committee itself is broken, which is a little scary considering it s one of our repositories ideally of our nation s secrets. we entrust that to you members of the committee. why are we continuing something called house intel if it s this broken? because it does extraordinarily important work to keep our country safe.
that resume that you just read, brian, gets approached by private sector jobs often and rachel brand throughout much of her career has decided to stay in public service. she s making this change now amid frustration at the justice department because of vacancies. a number of the divisions she overcease, like the civil rights and civil divisions, do not have heads. and more importantly she felt a fear she could be cast into that spotlight that rod rosenstein finds himself in now where she would have to oversee the mueller probe if he was fired. and we know the president has been openly critical of rod rosenstein and his job has been in question some time. let me take the other side, julia. i know you re the reporter on the story and not the defender of the number three at justice but maybe you have knowledge on this. why not stand in the batter s box? it s a covetted job this slot at the justice department.
they return the favor to you guys and say your memo is hardly pure as the driven snow that it was loaded with sources and methods creating an intentional political football and making redaction necessary. i think the first memo launched this. i think the only thing worse than releasing the first memo is releasing the first memo without the second. and as adam schiff has suggested, we are more than willing to work with the justice department and the fbi to go over those redactions, to move this forward so we don t reveal sources and methods. it s hard to undo the damage they ve done, not just to the integrity of the investigation, but the trust and the relationship between congress and these intel agencies. that s going to take a long time to repair. so we re willing to work with justice. the white house was not. the republicans on the intel