Prosecutor. bob mueller, i don t believe, wants to leave this up to the vag vagueries of congress. i think he s been appointed to do this job, and i think he views it as his job to complete. so if he can get the authority, and there is a legal and procedural pathway to indicting a sitting president, if he gets the authority to do that, my prediction is he will indict the president, but only bob mueller and his team know at this point. yeah. so charlie, you ve done quite a bit of reporting on the president s appointment of matt whitaker as acting attorney general, and you dropped this nugget, that in july of 2017 he interviewed with white house counsel don mcgahn to be the administration s chief defender against the trump administration. he hired ty cobb instead, so can the chief say he didn t know whitaker? it wasn t trump interviewing
Jr. are your colleagues saying that, too? president trump has to know that the election was bad news for his future presidency. the writing is on the wall that don jr. is in trouble, to say nothing of paying off porn stars. there is a lot of trouble even closer to the white house that trump has to be looking up and seeing and worrying about, absolutely. last word to you, glenn. how do you see the next couple years playing out? i think the next couple years we ll see investigations, indictments by bob mueller, and i suspect it won t take much longer for there to be a consensus that matt whitaker cannot serve as acting attorney general or attorney general. we could do an hour show about matt whitaker s conflicts or
Written to the justice department ethics officer. they want to get whitaker out. but trump was really angry with sessions for recusing himself and he never let that go. does whitaker have any choice but to do what the president asks? i don t think president trump would have put whitaker in there if he thought there was any chance that whitaker would recuse. i think whitaker knows if he does recuse, he ll be out in one second. whether or not ethics require that, there doesn t seem to be a forcing hand that will keep him from overseeing the mueller probe. all signs are that he was put there for the purpose of asserting supervision over mueller. people who are hoping for that outcome voluntarily out of matt whitaker are probably not going to be happy with the outcome. charlie, vanity fair has reported the president in a really bad mood that he fears indictment of his son, donald
Paris, but i m glad you re here to talk about it. conway said she was impressed with the choices the president picked. after some republicans and democrats called for whitaker to recuse himself because he s been a trump loyalist and a vocal critic of the special counsel investigation. here s what kellyanne conway had to say this morning. has the president asked matt whitaker not to interfere with the mueller investigation? i m not aware of that. i doubt he would do that because it would prolong it. the democratic congress, and i don t think the republican congress would allow that, george. so the president does not want him to recuse himself from the mueller investigation? the president has not talked to me about that. we talked about other things, but he said, i m 100% behind
Necessary, subpoena mr. whitaker. he s totally unqualified and his only qualification seems to be that he wants to be that the president wants him to be the hatchet man to destroy the mueller investigation. other house democrats are warning, don t overdo it. the investigations are sexy, they re interesting, but also our strongest purpose here is to put forward a positive agenda. i m not going to be handing out subpoenas like somebody is handing out candy on halloween. i take this as a lawyer and as an officer of the court, i take subpoenas very seriously. meanwhile the president is heading back to washington. he was in paris to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of world war i. here at home, the whitaker appointment is getting some new attention. nbc white house correspondent jeff bennett is joining me with the latest. jeff, i m sorry you weren t there to have some croissants in
Matt whitaker and he s never asked him to recuse himself. this, alex, we know is the top priority for democrats in the new congress. that s protecting the mueller investigation. it s why the respected chairman of the house, jerry nadler, who we saw at the top of the show, wants whitaker to testify in january. he calls when it teritaker a la poses a threat to the mueller investigation. they want to get their hands on president trump s tax returns. they want to talk to officials spending money here at the hotel in washington. all democrats could do was talk about it, but now house democrats are making clear they have the political capital, the political mandate, even, and they intend to use it by acting as a proper check and balance on the trump administration. alex? okay, geoff bennett, perfect setup for my next guest. thank you for that.
Qualifications. if i could pick one, he talks about disagreeing with the supreme court decision of madison versus woodbury, and it provides whether the judiciary can actually decide if acts of congress are constitutional or unconstitutional, and executive orders, for example, are constitutional or unconstitutional. matt whitaker doesn t think that s a good law. he wants to take it and drop it in front of the executive branch. that s not the way it works. making matt whitaker the attorney general is like making someone who doesn t believe in gravity the head of nasa. it wouldn t work well for anybody. so the governor s act will have to be pored over and over relative to this. gentlemen, thank you very much. the wildfires in california are spreading with fury.
Whitaker for that job, it was don mcgahn, the white house counsel, who thought he might be a good fit for the in-house guy, and trump sdidecided to go with cobb instead. so we don t know if he knew anything about whitaker that early. although saying he didn t know him is ludicrous given how much he would have been in meetings. there s at least a dozen that we can count. i would like to say, i do not think i disagree that mueller will indict president trump or even that he thinks he does have that authority. clearly the justice department says he does not and there is no sign that he or rod rosenstein or matt whitaker would try to challenge that longstanding rule within the justice department. interestingly, charlie, because the democrats have
Strategist lauren zelt. jonathan, you re the only guy so i ll let you go first. on what investigation do you think democrats should go after first? well, the very first thing they need to do in tandem with introducing a legislative program responding to the results of the election on strengthening the affordable care act, drug pricing and infrastructure. on a separate track that involves oversight, which is the other critical function of the house, i think the first thing they need to do is get matt whitaker on capitol hill to answer a whole boatload of questions about why he is not recusing himself from this investigation. because by any legal standard it might not be illegal for him not to recuse himself, but by any traditional legal standard of recusal, he should do so. so that will be the very first thing they ll look at.
Million votes. and andrew gillum now retracting his election night concession. florida senate could be headed to a recount by hand. but also developing right now, five days since democrats won control of the house. they are now strategizing how to use their new powers. house democrats could issue subpoenas, compel tefstimony an would that mean investigations on obstructions of justice? what about president trump s taxes? all eyes on this trump loyalist, the new acting attorney general. representative jerry nadler says they want whitaker to testify. our very first witness after january 3rd, we will summon, if