Lawrence Thir News Today

Legally authorized to issue surveillance warrants in these international espionage cases that where the nsa desperately wants to obtain these warrants, these fisa warrants. she was the only one authorized to do it. there will be no one in there now for how many days it takes to get a new attorney general in there. >> theyre telling us, again, this is another weird thing about this administration, theyre telling us dana boente has been sworn in as acting attorney general, telling us he was sworn ...

Attorney general by president obama, but she was a career employee of the justice department serving both republican and democratic presidents. she was fired tonight after she refused to try to defend the presidents executive order on immigration in federal courts. were back with david jolly, a former republican member of congress from florida, and david, you were just making these principled arguments against donald trump. >> sure. >> i can tell you that there is a place waiting in american his...

What did the acting attorney general know? the fact is the test of leadership, this is something that president trump, hes our president, should take seriously, is to rely on the subject matter experts around you. it is clear he didnt do that. you know, the historic nature of this is trump has made cabinet secretaries and other agency officials irrelevant in this process. you saw in the early years of the obama administration particularly in national security area, several agency officials leave...

Events of tonight including your understanding, your reaction to the executive order that the acting attorney general tonight, the first acting attorney general of the night, thought was unlawful and a new acting attorney general has now been put in to try to fight to defend that order in court. your reaction to the order and to what weve seen happen tonight. >> yeah, lawrence, look, you nailed it with the monday night massacre. i think if this is week one of the trump administration, it indicat...

Are and thats not where you want to be if youre at 45% and trying to get above water in your popularity ratings. >> and david jolly, this is what a transition is all about. this is why a careful transition matters. it matters to pick people to nominate for offices who you believe can get confirmed very quickly. >> thats it. >> so you wont have to live with acting directors of. but all of these act -- the acting attorney general, in fact, sally yates, was someone chosen by the trump transition te...

Past, franklin roosevelt, ronald reagan, barack obama, who came to office when we had genuine national crisis. and they had to move very quickly on many fronts. in evach of those cases, they made elaborate and careful preparations for confronting the crisis. in this case, we have a president coming to office during a time of peace and prosperity. there is no crisis. he brought this on himself and on our country in an extraordinarily reckless way that is at odds with american ideals. i think hist...

Staff was told that they were ordered not to talk to congress, that the white house ordered state department staff not to talk to members of congress or their staff. you know -- >> look -- >> we keep wearing out this word, "unprecedented." >> sure, its authoritarianism by any other name. listen, each executive branch official, each president from bush 43 to obama now to trump tries to seize more executive authority. trump has indicated he has no interest in working with congress. understand when...