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Scovino. he's taking responsibility for the tweet and then the new talking point, the new defense you talked about, hallie. john dowd telling nbc news this morning the president cannot be accused of obstruction because he's the chief law enforcement officer and allowed to discuss these things. >> thank you, kristen welker. i want to bring in former assistant attorney general for presidents nixon, ford, carter as well. and michael allen who was a former adviser to george w. bush. let me pick up the new defense from john dowd that the president cannot obstruct justice because he's the president....

Comments about, quote, the greatest witch hunt in u.s. political history. >> you cannot charge a president with obstruction of justice for exercising his constitutional power to fire comey and his constitutional authority to tell the justice department who to investigate, who not to investigate. that's what thomas jefferson did, lincoln did, roosevelt did. we had presidents that clearly established that. >> the president's personal lawyer, john dowd, also insisted this morning, the president cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under the constitution's arti...

President in? have we had clarity from the white house this morning? >> reporter: we have not had much clarity on this topic. you played the clips of the president earlier as he defended himself and michael flynn and the way he's been treated has been unfair. broadly speaking, we have also heard over the course of this day significant from john dowd, basically laying out the new defense strategy as noted there, dowd telling nbc news that the president cannot obstruct justice, which is raising questions about many individuals on whether he's suggesting the white house and its allies are suggest...

Flynn. just fake news. the president fired comey in may. the top democrat said the panel is investigating possible obstruction of justice by the president. here's what senator dianne feinstein of california said on "meet the press". >> i see it most importantly in what happened with the firing of director comey. it is my belief that that is directly because he did not agree to lift the cloud of the russia investigation. that's obstruction of justice. >> shepard: that was yesterday. a lawyer for president trump said the president cannot obstruct justice because he's the chief law enforcement of...

But i think there's an effort here by john dowd and the white house staff to distance the president from those words. there are a couple complicated factors, however, if john dowd wrote the tweet and drafted it, does he then become a witness in the mueller investigation? and if that happens, does he have to recuse himself from somehow representing the president and his personal attorney? i don't know. i can tell you within trump's orbit there's a lot of c consternation about the whey the white house have handled the tweet issue over the last 48 hours. a real sense that the legal team doesn't q...