Roger stone. Would you say the special counsels investigation is a witch hunt . Are you overseeing a witch hunt . Congressman, as i have mentioned previously, the special counsels investigation is an Ongoing Investigation and i think it would be inappropriate for me. But you wouldnt oversee a witch hunt, wouldnt you, youd stop a witch hunt, wouldnt you. It would be inappropriate to talk about an Ongoing Investigation. Whitaker insisted despite having interviewed for a job at the white house as lead attorney, his personal views on the investigation never came up with anyone inside the president s orbit. Did they talk to you about your prior opinions about the muell mueller investigation. We discussed my legal process. Youre asking me whether or not i talked with anybody in the president s circle about my views of the special counsels investigation when i was a private season not at the department of justice, no, i did not. The clear evidence of how whitaker understands his role as Donald Trumps acting ag was his attitude toward the democrats on the house judiciary committee. Have you ever been asked to approve any request or action to be taken by the special counsel . Mr. Chairman, i see that your five minutes is up, and so. You said youre not interfering with the special counsels investigation, have you denied him any funds he has requested at all. Congressman, i can tell this is an important issue for you. St it an important issue for the American Public and the whole world. Im sorry, i dont know if your time has been restored or not. Mr. Attorney general, were not joking here. And your humor is not acceptable. I get five minutes for lunch. Committee chairman, jerry nadler says hes not done hearing from whitaker and threatened to subpoena him to get the answers the democrats demand. Our next guest is a member of the house judiciary committee, steve cohen of tennessee. Congressman, first of all, i just have to get your reaction to that testimony you heard today, both to his demeanor and in many cases his refusal to answer yes and no questions. Well, he came in to stonewall us, that was his purpose. He had an audience of one, which was donald trump, and when he was a Football Player and i can certainly see him as a Football Player, he was a tight end, and thats generally a blocker in the iowa program. He was a blocker today too. Hes still in the same role he was when he played for the iowa hawk eyes. He didnt show me anything to say he should be the United States attorney general. I have met many and this man does not measure up to them in any way whatsoever. He was treading water and stone walling. In a lot of peoples eyes, making a mistake of being disrespectful to the chair declaring his time up and repeatedly saying in answer to questions, rather than answering them, i can see this is a very important issue to you. Did you feel he was there just to stone wall and stall for time or did you think he was being openly disrespectful to the panel as a way of performing for donald trump . Its hard to say. It was kind of like, would you say luca brossey was being disrespectful or didnt understand things. He was kind of luca brosseyesque, i dont think he was very swift, and he had the same stock start to the answer. Congressman, i thank you for asking that question and then finally, he said lets get through the thank you stuff. Dont say thank you. It was all a time killer and they coached him, and they coached him, i guess, the question is important to you because he used that to mr. Jordan on the republican side and others as well. I just think he was given certain talking points and he stayed on message. Well, chairman nadler doesnt feel hes done hearing from mr. Whitaker. Given the performance today, do you think theres any point in calling him again . Well, he would be under oath. It would be a deposition, and we could ask questions. I think hes going to start to realize the fact that he could be in jeopardy. He didnt answer the questions forthrightly, its hard for me to believe that donald trump didnt ask him as he did jim comey and others about the investigation and to have loyalty and to be easy on flynn and those type of things. He was upset with sessions. He did he didnt have his own attorney general. He wanted his own guy and this whitaker comes out of nowhere. He wasnt in the line of succession, which ted deutsch made clear. It was an aboerration there, an most of his jobs had not been in the legal sector and in the political world had been abject failure and he had some encounters where he headed up some Charity Group where he got 1. 2 million when he came to washington to do some work and there was suggestion, sheldon a adelson, a major contributor, might have been the person who gave 1. 2 million to him. This guy out of iowa to show up in washington and get paid 1. 2 milli 1. 2 million, that talks about the influence of money in washington and the pernicious nature of it and how hes been a willing subject to it. Congressman steve cohen. Thank you very much. Appreciate your time tonight. Thank you. And for more on the acting ags extraordinary testimony, im joined by nbc contributor, chuck rosenburg, former u. S. Attorney. The testimony today was interesting. But some of the things that some of the areas gone into was, what you just heard from the congressman was his background. Before, as you know, before mr. Whitaker became the acting attorney general, he did write this oped in which he said that the Mueller Probe was going too far. Did you hear anything today from mr. Whitaker that would disabuse you of the notion that his goal in being acting attorney general would interfere with the probe. Let me take a step back and answer the question. I thought his performance, joy, was disgraceful. I have testified many times in congress. Sometimes the questions are good and thoughtful, and sometimes incomprehensible, but you have to answer with civility and that was sorely lacking. Your question, so, look, i dont know that hes the right guy for this job. In fact, i know hes the wrong guy for the job. Im heartened by one thing, the department of justice, the fbi, the u. S. Attorneys offices are primarily, if not exclusively staffed by career civil servants, if someone was messing with their stuff, trying to undermine their work, torpedo their cases, you would hear a healing cry from the men and women, and we havent. It seems like cases are proceeding and that gives me hope, and hell be gone soon. Did cryou get the sense of wt he was doing, this tactic of being snarky, and i think you could say disrespectful that this is just coaching, is this the way people are coached . How are coached people generally when you know youre going in front of congress and half the panel is going to be tough on you, what are you told to do . Half is antagonistic, and half is friendly, thats fairly typical of whos testifying and where they are testifying. People handle it in different ways. What he did is disgraceful. You have to treat every member with a degree of civility and kindness and dignity. Heres why. Hes not representing Matt Whitaker. If he were representing Matt Whitaker he didnt do a particularly good job. Hes representing the United States department of justice, speaking on behalf of more than 100,000 men and women working 24 7 around the globe. They say their leader behave like an infant, and that is deeply disheart toening to me. We know theres going to be a confirmation hearing for bill barr and given what you saw today, what would you council him to do differently besides everything . Bill barr doesnt need my advice on that. Bill barr is a grown up. I may not share his views politically, but i do believe hes an institutionalist and i do believe he understands the department of justice, and oh, by the way, bill barr had no trouble denying that the Mueller Probe was a witch hunt. Right. Nor did chris wray, the director of the fbi, nor did attorney general rod rosenstein. That doesnt seem to be a big lift for most adultings. I adults. Thank you for your time tonight. For more, im joined by msnbc contributor, sam seeder, and democratic strategist, tara, indeed, there have been, it panned all around to be honest. Havent heard anything but people panning this performance, tara, by mr. Whitaker. You are a political strategist, you have done political strategy, could you sense in that performance today, any strategic idea or goal or was he just in a mood . Well, joy, thank you so much for the question. No, i understand this is very important to you. No, first of all, he was putting on a show, as you stated. He was putting on a show both for trump but also for himself. Remember, this person used to be on tv, and so i think hes looking for a future back in that space after this is all said and done. One of the things i would say about people who are sort of drawn to trump is theyre not just drawn to trump because they want to be a part of trump and all the chaos and divisiveness, they want to hitch to his wagon, to chart their own course in terms of media and growth. I saw it when i was on the apprentice. People have said to me, why people had issues. I know people who wanted to sue him, and now theyre supporters. Full throated supporters and people will say to me, why would they support him now after all of this, because they want to be just like him and i think that is reflective in his administration, and thats what he wants. He wants people to be mini trumps. Whitakers previous job, for a lot of peoples at least reading of it, a conservative nonprofit with weird roots, undisclosed funders. 1. 2 million in money that went in. If this was a performance, donald trump at this moment cant help him, right, he cant get him, i guess he could get him on fox news. I dont understand what he gets out of this. At the end of the day, that democratic panel, you can see the democratic house, theyre not going to let him undermine the Mueller Probe. Yeah, i mean, i think there were two things i took away from this. One was there was a sense that the scrutiny he got on day one when he was appointed acting attorney general, we dont know what his intentions were. Its very hard to look at that guy and say he was the best candidate for the Attorney Generals Office, but he didnt do, at least in terms of what he said today, and it would been a precarious thing for him to lie about, he did not set up obstacles for the mueller investigation. One thing i took away tr that was from that is the scrutiny seemed to work or left us at the baseline. The other is this is a guy from the conservative movement, im a little bit more cynical about the way these guys behave than other people who we anticipate these type of folk to have respect for the institution. He is going to go out. Theres a lot of money sloshing around out there. This is a guy whos just set himself up to be run any one of a number of conservative socalled think tanks or Movement Groups or independent expenditures theres fox news. Theres a Huge Industry out there that someone like him can walk into right now, if he doesnt, if trump doesnt turn around and give him another job in the administration. He made a good point. He did a performance on television where donald trump could probably see it. If that was the goal, he did it. That was an audition. Yet another audition. Lets talk about the republicans for a moment. It seems no matter how far off the rails, its universal, the panning of the performance, but republicans are still, seem to want to protect even him. Heres an exchange where republicans tried to stop democrats from questioning the qualifications of whitaker for the job. Its my understanding that before you moved to the department of justice that you were the executive director of the foundation for accountability and civic entrust. Mr. Chairman, i have a point of order. The fact is a conservative ethics watchdog, where he made full use of the opportunity to call for an investigation of multiple democrats. The gentleman will state his point of order. My point of order is outsight the scope of an oversight hearing on the department of justice. You know, if you think of the donald Trump Presidency as sort of a Television Show rather than a presidency, right, everyone is performing for a purpose, to the point that sam just made. What is the purpose for republicans at this point . They have just gotten a shah lacking in the house. They can look at the poll numbers and see the places they are losing support are the places they need to retain the white house where senate seats are up. What is the point of jealously guarding mr. Whitaker . What does he mean to them . They have made the political calculation that in any way going against trump is more costly than actually speaking out and showing some degree of integrity, even with the losses that they took in 2018, they think that if they go against trump, the electoral results will be worse. All the people you are talking about are there despite the fact that they were supportive of trump or because they were supportive of trump. The ones who are going to lose have lost. These people are there because theyre supporting donald trump. And so that is the problem ultimately that the republicans have longterm is that they cannot separate themselves from donald trump because ultimately their voters, the vast majority of the Republican Party still very supportive of donald trump. He may look, what happened today may look like a freak show to 50, 60 of the country, but theres 30 to 40 of the country that thinks, yeah, this is our guy. Sam cedar, tara, thank you very much. Up next, one of the most impassioned moen impassioned moments of todays hearing when congresswoman, camila, the congresswoman joins me right after this. , camila, the congresswoman joins me right after this. Side, shaquem, you got it . Come on stay focused. Hard work baby, it gonna pay off. vo the only network to win in all four major awards is the one more people rely on. Choose americas most Reliable Network on the best device iphone. Get iphone xr on us when you buy another. And the kids chose medieval faire. They wanna hit the bullseye. 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Show me decorating shows. This is staying connected with xfinity to make moving. Simple. Easy. Awesome. Stay connected while you move with the best wifi experience and twohour appointment windows. Click, call or visit a store today. One of the many things that acting attorney general Matt Whitaker had to answer for today was his tenure as chief of staff for former attorney general jeff sessions. The trump zero tolerance policy of separating children from their parents started under sessions. P Pramila Jayapal lit into whitaker. Before or after the zero tolerance policy was put into place, and i call it the zero humanity place, did the u. S. Attorneys track when they were tracking a parent or legal guardian who had been separated from their child. Theres only one answer to this. Its gone through the courts. You know, did we track it . Did you track when you were prosecuting a parent or legal guardian who had been separated from tha child . I dont believe we were tracking that. You were not tracking it. That is the correct answer, and when parents are prosecuted and sentenced they are in doj custody, correct . Correct. Their custody is transferred to the u. S. Marshal. So these parents were in your custody, your attorneys are prosecuting them and your department was not tracking parents who were separated from their children. Do you know what kind of damage has been done to children and families across this country, children who will never get to see their parents again, do you understand the magnitude of that . I understand that the policy of zero tolerance has the Justice Department started tracking parents and legal guardians who were separated from their children at the border . The time of the gentle lady has expired. The witness may answer the question. Congresswoman, i appreciate your passion for this issue and i know that you have been very involved in the front lines of this issue. This is about more than my passion. This is about the childrens future, mr. Whitaker. Joining me now is congresswoman, Pramila Jayapal democrat from washington state. Thank you so much for being here tonight. Appreciate it. Thank you, joy. Watching that exchange between yourself and acting attorney general whitaker, theres this incredible contrast between how impassioned you are, and were talking about children who may never see their parents again and the weird indifference, dismissiveness and the way he was looking away. And his answer about i know this is important to you. Did you feel condescended. What was your reaction to his attitude . Absolutely and it started from the minute he walked into the hearing. He was arrogant, dismissive, disrespectful and when it came to this, i think he knew quite not what to do. Earlier i had said did you know about family separation. He said it didnt happen. I said there was a memo and he said no, that didnt happen. And i said, there were four pinocchios to that statement that the Washington Post has afforded to this, and by the time we got to the end, i think, you know, this is such a compelling issue, joy, you and i have talked about it before, republicans and democrats agree that this