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eric, he's been described as a minor player at the doj, by whom? >> "the new york times" in a couple of stories this last week tried to downplay as much as possible bruce or, calling him a mid-level employee at the department of justice, calling him a nearly anonymous person in the 113,000 employees at the justice department. what they didn't mention was that he was one of the associate deputy attorney general. what's interesting about that office is that there are always two associate deputy attorney general's who are career employees and then there are several that are political appointees. the career employees, which ohr was, that is the highest rank a career employee can have in the justice department. so bruce or was not some mid-level employee of the justice department. he had the single highest rank
that you could have as a career employee in the justice department. he was frequently in press releases put out by the justice department. the notion that he's deep in the bureaucracy it has been plucked out of obscurity by resident trump shows that either "the new york times" doesn't know how the justice department is structured, which is unlikel unlikely, or that they are being dishonest with their readers, which would be shameful. >> tucker: because that's factually incorrect as you just laid out. if the highest level of career employee can reach. they corrected the story? >> not that i've seen so far. >> tucker: that's just unbelievable. when you pay close attention to the news coverage of a subject you know a lot about does it drive you a little crazy? >> what's funny is they keep referring to bruce or as little-known and he is
the justice department. he was frequently in press releases put out by the justice department. the notion that he's deep in the bureaucracy and has been pluck from obscurity by president trump is -- shows either "the new york times" doesn't know how the justice department is structured, which is unlikely, or they're being dishonest with thur -- their readers which would be shamefully. >> tucker: it's the high level a career employee can reach. have they correct the story? >> not that i've seen so far. >> tucker: that's unbelievable. when you pay close attention to a subject you know a lot about, does it drive you a little crazy? >> what's funny is they keep referring to bruce ohr as little known. he is little known if you read
and that is okay with me. i like taking on voices like that. i have never respected him. this just came up lately and it is a disgusting thing, frankly. look, i say it. i say it again. that whole situation is a rigged witch hunt. >> the president singled out the only official still in office whose security clearance is under review. justice department lawyer named bruce orr. >> he is a disgrace. i suspect i will be taking it away quickly. i think bruce orr is a disgrace with his wife nelly. for him to be in the justice department and do what he did is a disgrace. >> a career employee of the justice department is no longer involved in the probe.
whose security clearance is under review. justice department lawyer named bruce orr. >> he is a disgrace. i suspect i will be taking it away quickly. i think bruce orr is a disgrace with his wife nelly. for him to be in the justice department and do what he did is a disgrace. >> a career employee of the justice department is no longer involved in the probe. names on the list include james comey, andrew mccabe, sally yates and peter strozk. as rachel maddow points out last night, cutting off their access to classified information could have a direct impact. >> what if the practical effect
i think nobody should suggest here that the deputy director made this decision in order to politically retaliate against strzok. when you look at the landscape here, the criticism coming from the administration, the criticism coming from congress, i do think the deputy director may have decided that the best thing to protect the fbi from future political attacks was to fire strzok. even though that isn't political retaliation in a direct sense, it is using political considerations to decide the professional status and termination of a career employee. >> susan on those important stories this morning, thank you for being with me. another critical pit stop on the road to the midterms for voters in five states today. we take a look at the high stakes races. fact is, every insurance company hopes you drive safely.
and make those decisions specifically dave bowditch. i know him to be a man of the utmost integrity. he doesn't serve at the pleasure of the president. he is a career employee. i think he weighed the facts and how they impacted the operations at the fbi. >> strzok was demoted, taken off of the mueller investigation. 60-day suspension. could it be as simple as the investigation had ended and simply, they fired him. >> it could be. i mentioned knowing the person who made this decision. it would be unfair for me to say trust me, i know this man, he made a tough call. he is a good person. but let's put ourselves in his shoes. on one hands you have allegations of serious misconduct. you talk about the text messages, talk about someone opening themselves up to this scrutiny by this conduct that was taking place. that's on one hand. then the person making the decision has the figure out how that's going to impact the investigation and what kind of message that signals to the
do, it's, you know, it's just part of prosecutorial dna to make sure that righteous cases move forward, then you have to believe that the good cases here will continue to progress whether mueller is in place or not. >> and joyce, just as a practical matter, am i right in thinking that just in terms of the logistics and a president's ability to hire and fire people, it's actually kind of hard for a president to fire career justice department officials, right? when it comes to a presidential appointee, sure, the president's decision holds, but with career folks, it's harder, isn't it? >> it's hard for anybody to fire career folks in government. you know, you have to go through all sorts of progressive disciplinary processes. the president can't just say, let's fire a career employee tomorrow. it doesn't work that way. those people aren't going any place. >> joyce, one last question for you about jeff sessions, the attorney general reported today by bloomberg news to be not
mueller or rod rosenstein, the deputy attorney general who is overseeing robert mueller -- to separate the two. getting rid of rod rosenstein -- it is not disputed that the president can do that? >> absolutely. he is an appointed official. the president can remove him if he wants. >> the question of course comes down to robert mueller, if that's legal, whether it will be caught up in the courts if he wants to do so. and what role congress would have to play if the president tried to remove mueller? >> there would have to be some additional mechanism that the president would go through in order to fire robert mueller. he could not just pick up the phone or more likely -- >> tweet. >> his twitter account and say robert mueller is fired. because mueller is not an appointed official like rod rosenstein. he was named by the department of justice, pursuant to department of justice regulations. and he is effectively a career employee. he can by d.o.j. regulations
more about the underlying conduct before i go with the rest of the crew in completely decrying this. i am concerned by it. i don't like to see somebody's who's worked for the government his entire life stripped of his pension. and there's this magnificent shakespearean quality to all of this, right? because if andrew mccabe is fired, as he is fired and loses his pension as a result it'll be because he leaked something that was harmful to hillary clinton, the guy who the president kept describing as a pro-clinton shell. so there's an ironic magnificence to it. >> i want to go to harry litman on this as a former justice department employee. the inspector general who made this recommendation is a career employee. he's not a trump appointee. he served in the obama administration and bush administration before that. he has served both democrat and republican administrations. so this is not someone who had