briefing. sunlen, thank you. now to mccabe s thoughts about the president s ties to russia today. mccabe says right now as i m speaking to you that the president of the united states is possibly working for russia. do you still believe the president could be a russian asset? i think it s possible. i think that s why we started our investigation. and i m really anxious to see where director mueller concludes that. with me now, greg brower, former u.s. attorney for the district of nevada i. thank you for having me. you worked with several players in the trump/russia investigation, rod rosenstein, andrew mccabe with whom you had daily contact for two years so given your knowledge here, do you see evidence that would back up mccabe s claim about trump being a russian asset? well, quite frankly, brooke,
did tell russian officials in the oval office he d gotten rid of himself and relieved great pressure. mccabe has credibility issues. we have to take all these things into consideration, what people s motives are, et cetera. i think, though, if you look at the statement rod rosenstein and the department of justice put out this morning, it s another kind of nondenial based similar to the one they put out before. he said he did not authorize anyone to wear a wire. the claim was that they talked about it. it was run up the flag pole, not that it was authorized. he also said he was not in a position to invoke the 25th amendment which is also not the claim. the claim is that they talked about and that it was serious. so i think if this were not true, we might see a more stronger denial from rosenstein on this one. stuck around. paul butler, thank you. greg brower, thank you. we are keeping an eye on the senate floor. as we talk about what s going on in the doj, the senate is
is the subject of the mueller investigation. the heart of the mueller investigation is about national security. we already know that russians were working very hard doing illegal acts to get donald trump in the oval office. the question is whether there were people in the trump campaign who were conspiring with those russians, possibly including donald trump. a.b., aaron? i think it s going to be easy for the president to jump all over mccabe and say he s a proven liar. it s part of the deep state but to greg s point, rod rosenstein is still there. he has something left to lose. at this point, andrew mccabe s interview with scott pelley is compelling because he has nothing left to lose. he is still saying that the experts in law enforcement and intelligence felt that the president was potentially obstructing justice in realtime and they had to begin an investigation, and i ll finish with the memory that with just days of the firing of comey, he
and greg, this speaks to the idea that perhaps mccabe has these contemporaneous notes to back this up. i remember when this was all breaking several months ago, the doj came out and said he was being sarcastic. the white house pushed back on this hard. right. and having worked very closely with both andy mccabe and rod rosenstein, i can tell you that they are both smart, credible people who seem to have differing accounts of the same events in this situation. but i will tell you that with respect to mccabe, i can t tell you how many meetings i was in with him and his practice was to take copious notes about virtually everything that was being said in those meetings. that was his normal routine, and i have to imagine that whether it was in these meetings or immediately afterwards, he was also documenting what happened in his notebooks. and so there s certainly more to come here. our team on capitol hill has just gotten reaction on this from senator lindsey graham. i don t know wha
greg brower is standing by in las vegas. greg is a friend of matt whitaker and a former u.s. attorney. greg, what do you hope to hear from mr. whitaker once this hearing reconvenes? well, as i mentioned earlier, craig, i think matt would be well advised to take a step back, take a deep breath and do his best to appear to be as conciliatory and as cooperative with the committee s questions as he possibly can be. i think it is important to note that he did confirm earlier that since he has become the acting attorney general, nothing has changed at doj with respect to how the department is managing or overseeing the mueller investigation. indeed, i think that it s clear there has been no evidence since whitaker s appointment that he has interfered with the mueller investigation in any way. i think the best evidence of that, of course, is that since his appointment, the mueller investigation and other related investigations have produced