Did he just confirm hes under investigation for obstruction of justice . Plus, dazed and accused . The president attacks his Deputy Attorney general. Will Rod Rosenstein be the next to step aside . And the cure for cat scratch fever. While im obsessed with rocker ted nugents new political pitch. This is mtp daily and it starts right now. Good friday evening. Im chuck todd here in washington and welcome to mtp daily. The special counsels investigation is, indeed, expanding. And in response, the president has basically declared war on his own Justice Department. Or it looked that way this morning. Right now everyone in washington was waiting to see if Deputy Attorney general Rod Rosenstein either recuses himself, resigns, or gets fired. This comes after the president seemingly targeted rosenstein personally today for the fallout after it was rosenstein, of course, who officially appointed bob mueller as a special counsel in reaction to the comey ouster. The president today tweeted, i am being investigated for firing the fbi director by the man who told me to fire the fbi director. Witch hunt. First off, the president appeared to be publicly confirming that hes under an investigation, possibly a criminal one, for obstruction of justice. But, a source close to the president s outside counsel then told us that when the president says i am being investigated for firing the fbi director, he doesnt really mean hes being investigated for firing the fbi director. This source, who has asked to remain anonymous, says the president was not confirming an investigation. Instead, he was simply referencing the Washington Post story, which the president s legal team has bashed for relying on anonymous sources. In other words, his legal team was basically leaking to say, dont believe the president s words. Second, for mr. Trump to pin the comey firing on rosenstein is arguably a bit absurd. Rosenstein told congress that President Trump had already decided to fire comey when he asked for rosensteins input. And you dont have topic that rosensteins word for it. You met with the Deputy Attorney general, Rod Rosenstein. Right. Did you ask for a recommendation . What i did is i was going to fire comey. My decision. Regardless of recommendations, i was going to fire comey. Knowing there was no good time to do it. Third, the entire episode raises the very serious question about whether or not the president is laying the groundwork to fire rosenstein or get him to recuse himself from the russia probe or perhaps he feels the need to resign. Rosenstein is the only one with the direct authority to fire the special counsel. But we know, based on his testimony, that he doesnt want to do that. He also oversees the special counsels budget. If rosenstein, by the way, feels the need to step aside, and he may have to, because he was in the room with the president when he was pondering the firing of comey, then the authority of overseeing the special counsel would fall to associate attorney general, rachel brand, who served in the Justice Department under president bush. Shes also served on an Advisory Board under president obama. But, folks, what the heck is going on inside the white house right now . Honestly, when we woke up this morning, we didnt know if the lead story today would be, say, about the white houses new cuba policy, their stance on the socalled dreamers, the feelgood unity of the congressional baseball game. Its as if the president is telling us, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know what you should talk about, russia, keep your eye on the ball, since he spent his morning tweeting about this. About half of the president s tweets since yesterday has focused on the investigation. He slammed the probe, congress, t Hillary Clinton, and hes now seemingly blaming his own department of justice for what hes calling a witch hunt. Yes, its extraordinarily confusing. Im joined now by nbc justice correspondent, pete williams. Pete, lets start with a simple question here. Whats the status of Rod Rosenstein . Well, i cant imagine that hes going to resign. I would be very surprised if he was fired. But youre right, at some point he has to consider whether hes going to recuse himself and he has said so publicly for the last couple of weeks. He has said, if the time comes, i will certainly consider that. And the problem, of course, as you noted, is that he has a definite role in the firing of james comey. He wrote that memo at the president s request. The president initially said he relied on. He was in the meeting with the president the day before comey was fired. If it comes to that, hes certainly prepared to do it. Hes talked about doing it. The other thing i would say about the president s tweet there is that its factually wrong to say that hes being investigated by Rod Rosenstein. Rod rosenstein isnt investigating anything to do with the president , because thats the special counsels job. It was also odd the tweet was odder this morning, because Rod Rosenstein put out one of the most cryptic statements weve seen from any governor official in some time. He put out this release last night. Americans should exercise caution before accepting as true any stories attributed to anonymous officials, particularly when they do not identify the country, let alone the branch or agency of government, with which the laelglaelg ed sources are affiliated. What was he responding to . Well, a couple of things. What im told by people at the Justice Department is number one, this was his decision to do this. One official told me today, this is 100 rod. In other words, nobody put him up to this. He had we know, hes been bugged by a couple of things that he says are wrong from the day he came into office. There was a story that he threatened to resign over the way his handling of his role in the comey firing was reported by the white house. He says thats not true. There was a story that he had met with comey and turned comey down on Additional Resources for the russia investigation. He says thats not true. And by the way, so does comey say thats not true. And then you add the other stories, the two Washington Post stories today about the obstruction investigation, looking at Jared Kushners finances, and rosenstein just kind of thought, enough is enough. And i think the message was intended to, a, express his own frustration, and b, to be a message to the Justice Department and the fbi, stop leaking but whats this message . It didnt say anything. It didnt talk about it didnt talk about that these leaks are illegal, and in some cases, theyre not illegal, at all. Correct. If theres no grand jury investigation, for example. But i think it was intended to heres the issue. It was intended to be a message to doj and fbi employees, stop doing this. Maybe he was thinking, you know, this just annoys the white house. I dont know about that part. But the other problem is, i dont think he knows whether these where these leaks are coming from, because he doesnt know what the special counsel is doing. By his own testimony this week before congress, hes talked to mueller once and thats before he was appointed. He doesnt know the scope of muellers investigation. And ive confirmed today he hasnt spoken to mueller since his investigation on tuesday. So he doesnt know. Does the special counsel have an obligation to let the president know if, indeed, he is under investigation for obstruction of justice . No, anymore than a u. S. Attorney would have an obligation to tell anyone theyre under investigation. I also think, maybe, its a little too grand a ward to use, investigation, at this point. Because that sort of implies that they already know that somebody did something bad and theyre trying to build a case against them. I suspect on this obstruction thing, they want to know what happened. They want to talk to the people that the president has talked to about this. They want to get the facts. Call that an investigation if you want to. But just realize that its not the way we normally think of them as. And of course, we all know, ultimately, it cant lead to a criminal prosecution anyway. Thats what i mean. When is there ever a legal requirement to let somebody know their status if theyre in being potentially or is it just, wait until the papers are served, if papers get served . Theres no legal requirement. Now, the u. S. Attorneys manual says, if youre going to nail somebody, you should give them the opportunity to try to talk you out of it. And say why this is a bad idea. And it happens all the time. And you can send them a target letter and say, you know, youre the target of the grand jury, were about to make your life miserable. Tell us why we shouldnt do it. But why would the government do that . Because, remember, the why the Justice Department thinks of itself is not as trying to win a game, but trying to get justice. And so, their goal is not to bring cases that dont have any merit. If you think theyre wrong, try to talk them out of it. It very seldom works. Sometimes it does, but theres no obligation to do that. By the way, you brought up a grand jury. Theres no evidence that the grand jury has been handled here. Absolutely not. No evidence that theyre and by the way, i dont think they ever would impanel a grand jury, if they need to issue subpoenas, as the fbi already has, they would use existing grand juries. Pete williams, boy, your beat gets more interesting by the day. Its a living. Yes, it is. Thank you, sir. Im joined now by senator amy klobuchar, democrat from minnesota, also a member of the Judiciary Committee. Which, by the way, very quietly went under the radar, they just opened their own investigation into the president s firing of director james comey. Senator klobuchar, thanks for coming on. Thank you, chuck. Its great to be on. I want to get more on this decision. Senator grassley did this. Hes come under some criticism by republicans to do this. Whats going on behind the scene here is . Is it was it the letter from Dianne Feinstein that got grassley to do this . What happened . Can you take us behind the scenes . Yeah. One of the things that is clear is that the Judiciary Committee has the primary jurisdiction here when it comes to oversight of the Justice Department and the fbi. And yet, despite repeated requests from individual members of the committee, we still havent had attorney general sessions come before the committee and in an unprecedented move, he appeared before intelligence. That wasnt that has happened before with attorney generals, but what happened here was he went there first. And so i think we are glad or i am glad, i should say, the Intelligence Community is doing their thorough job and they called attorney general sessions there. But attorney general sessions must come before judiciary. One, for oversight purposes to explain the comey firing, but, two, theres a lot of other things going on there. Youve got to refugee order. Youve got the change in some of the immigration policy. The criminal justice policy. The voting commission. We simply cant have a Justice Department and an attorney general that doesnt come before the senate Judiciary Committee. Now, theres been some indication, at least, that on the republican side of your committee, theyd like to have this probe expanded to get into the role Loretta Lynch may or may not have played in the email investigation, into Hillary Clinton. Are you comfortable that the scope of this investigation should include director comeys interactions, both with the attorney general of this administration and the attorney general of the last administration . You know, i think what were looking for right now is a hearing and having come before his memos. And in a public hearing, people are free to ask whatever questions they can. We dont limit the questions of members in judiciary. I, myself, will focus on what happened with the firing and with attorney general sessions, not only the policy issues i mentioned, but also, what were his discussions with the russian ambassador, right after the president and putin had met and president obama had said he wasnt going to get rid of the sanctions and here you have a few days later, Jeff Sessions suddenly meeting with the russian ambassador. And those questions actually is that the timeline . Right, wait, Jeff Sessions yes. We know mike flynn, but youve got a receive session je meeting as well . My colleague, al franken, had asked then senator sessions about whether or not he had met with the russians, he said he hadnt, then the meeting came out. Remember the meeting he had with the russians the september meeting in his office. Right. Thats right. And it was only a few days after Vladimir Putin and barack obama had met at the international gotcha. Its that one. I was conflating, yep. Yep, i gotcha. There are so many meetings, chuck. But the point is, no ones actually asked in detail about the substance of that meeting and i am very curious about that. And there are many reasons he should come before the Judiciary Committee. When you heard, though, former director comey talk about his interactions with the attorney general, Loretta Lynch, back then and he seemed to be troubled by different things, did that bother you at all . Oh, well, i think that my colleagues will be asking about that. Loretta lynchs spokesperson issued a statement, saying that she simply wanted to make clear when she said it should be re r referred or they all agreed it should be referred to as a matter, she said that was because she didnt want to make it look like they were going to make a decision on this, right before a campaign. The point is, that did bother jim comey. I know him from law school. Hes by the book. And im sure my colleagues will ask questions about that and they have a right to. Do you think Rod Rosenstein has to recuse himself . No, i do not. I think Rod Rosenstein is a cautious prosecutor, someone whos been doing this through many administrations and hes going to make that decision if that happens. I dont know all the facts involved. What i do know is what he told us we could tell you and the public right after that briefing we had in a classified setting. I specifically asked him and he said we could publicly explain what he told us and that is that he had been told that the president was going to fire comey before he wrote that memo. So that memo was not the reason for the firing. And despite the fact that we were led to think that and you believe that is enough the firing is what the president said. And you believe that that i dont know that, chuck. That that alone but if that is the way if thats that means he can still supervise the special counsel, even if hes called in as a witness . Yeah. I could never say that for certain, because i dont know all the facts. But what i do know is the most disturbing tweet id ever seen, and there have been a lot of them, was the four between 7 00 and 9 00 a. M. From the president. But the one at the very end where he said that the man who was who told him to fire comey was the same man who was investigating him. Number one, we know for certain that he decided to fire comey before that memo was written. And number two, it is not Rod Rosenstein that is making those decisions. This investigation is being conducted independently by bob mueller, whos the independent prosecutor. And when we get into all of these details, we sometimes forget, this is about a foreign power trying to influence america. If Rod Rosenstein does recuse himself, rachel branwood would be the next person up to supervise the special counsel. You voted to confirm rosenstein, but voted against the confirmation of brand. Why . I was concerned about her the hearing that we had, she answered very few questions. She actually she and rosenstein appeareding to and rosenstein answered most of the questions. I directly asked her some questions. I had a pleasant meeting with her in my office but i was concerned about her in this job and she now has a job and i respect that. And i think youve got to take the words of lindsynindsaey gra. And the words of Lindsey Graham this week is if the president were to fire rosenstein or mueller, it would be a disaster. Mueller has not even started to do his job. And i would hope that rachel brand, who does have legal experience here, would understand that and even if for some reason this went into her hands, would do the right thing for the Justice Department. All right. Senator amy klobuchar, im going to leave it there, democrat from minnesota, thanks for coming on. Appreciate it. Thanks, chuck. Okay. Coming up, resign, recuse, fired. What is next for the acting attorney well, the acting the Deputy Attorney general who oversees this investigation . Well have more in a minute. Well be right back. But there. It comes when your Insurance Company says theyll only pay threequarters of what it takes to replace it. What are you supposed to do . Drive threequarters of a car . Now if you had Liberty Mutual new car replacement™, youd get your whole car back. I guess they dont want you driving around on three wheels. Smart. With Liberty Mutual new car replacement™, well replace the full value of your car. Liberty stands with you™. Liberty mutual insurance. Our bodies grow babies. We run marathons. Companies. Solve proble