Page 33 - 1898 News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Do you think the appointment of matthew whitaker is legal? >> yes, he is. these type of temporary appointments have been made since george washington. we have over 200 years of these practices. second, the president acted fully in compliance with the federal vacancies reform act, a law that's been used for example by barack obama to make similar appointments. the office of legal counsel at the justice department issued its third opinion this past week of the justice department on this issue, saying this is perfectly constitutional. by the way, they pointed to an 1898 u.s. supreme court decisio...

Here, you have a supreme court case dating back to 1898. that's u.s. v. eaten where the court decided it was constitutional. do you see a violation of the law here? >> let's look at precedent, poppy. matthew whitaker is the first person to head a federal agencies, i believe, in our nation's history, who had not been subjected to the vetting process and confirmed to the senate for another position. there's an underlying statute i think that works also with respect to the succession for the a.g.'s office. here's the message. the president can't have it both ways. when director mueller was appoin...

Less surprised and now people are saying whitake rsr's appointment is unconstitutional. and they say 1898 that the president can fill vacancies for a short period of time. so there's a central question about whether mueller and whita c -- whitaker's appointments are constitutional. i thought that was interesting. >> no, that was interesting. what is marbury verses madison? >> it's the central case in american jurisprudence which says the supreme court has the power to strike down unfounded laws and marbury verses madison may have been wrongly

Confirmed and the department of justice succession regulations usually provide that the person appointed as acting attorney general be a senate confirmed individual. so look, if the president's going to back away from this, he should just go all the way and he should withdraw mr. whitaker from the acting attorney general position. and he should appoint somebody as deputy attorney general or one of the other assistant attorney generals who has already been senate confirmed. but there are both statutory and constitutional arguments violating, that it would be a violation of the appointments clau...

The george conway but erick erickson, even on fox news some of the legal analysts coming out and saying, yeah, this is pretty open and shut. and how could they not have -- how could they have missed this? >> well, i think what's open and shut is that there's no question that matt whitaker must be recused from the investigation. from overseeing the bob mueller's investigation. actually, lawyers and steve laddick has a very good editorial piece about this. i disagree with the analysis that it's unconstitutional. and the reason for that is, first of all, there's an 1898 supreme court opinion dire...