7 Burst results for "General Rosenstein"
Opening Arguments
"general rosenstein" Discussed on Opening Arguments
"Of the reports conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened. And we're going to break that one down for you after they add break. Okay, we're back. Yeah, the Durham statement allowed Trump to keep lying about Obama spying on Trump and Tapping Trump towers calling it the not making this up. The crime of the century don't think he was referring to the supertramp album. But anyway, it's a deep cut for our three super trip. Let's go. No, no. I got you. And whipping his supporters into a frenzy of anticipation about arrests coming and that's just perpetual motion, right? He's been whipping them up for years. Oh, here's a clip of former DNI John ratcliffe talking to our favorite Fox talk again, Maria bartiromo in November of 2021. All of that was make believe it was bogus and folks within the law enforcement community, particularly were aware of that and yet used it illegally and peddled it for a great period of time. For political, for a political purpose, which is just not only inappropriate, but as you're finding out criminal as well and I expect their I said a long time ago to you, Maria, I expect there'd be many indictments. I haven't backed off of that. And I continue to think that they're going to be many indictments based on the intelligence that I gave to John Durham and that I have seen. Yeah, and what happens to all of your colleagues on the left to attack you throughout the years that you were trying to educate and inform the American people, Adam Schiff, saying that there was collusion in plain sight. Oh, the money honey. That will never not be funny. Okay, but yes, as someone who spent much of 2018 in a frenzy of expectation about Robert Mueller and his band of scary prosecutors, you know, I have a lot of feelings about that. Yeah, yeah. But let's put a pin in that just for a minute. I want to read you this reporting from the times in January of 2023, which you will recognize as being, you know, four or 5 months ago. Because it's so clearly reflects what happened this week, okay? So they said, in August of 2020, mister Trump lashed out in a fox interview asserting that mister Obama and mister Biden, along with top FBI and intelligent officials, had been caught in quote, the single biggest political crime in the history of our country, and the only thing stopping charges would be if mister Barr and mister Durham wanted to be politically correct. Against that backdrop, mister Barr and mister Durham did not shut down their inquiry when the search for intelligence abuses hit a dead end. With the inspector general's inquiry complete, they turned to a new rationale. A hunt for a basis to accuse the Clinton campaign of conspiring to defraud the government by manufacturing the suspicions that the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia along with scrutinizing what the FBI and intelligence officials knew about the Clinton campaign's actions. Mister Durham also developed an indirect method to impute political bias to law enforcement officials. Comparing the Justice Department's aggressive response to suspicions of links between mister Trump and Russia with its more cautious and skeptical reaction to various Clinton related suspicions. Almost done one more paragraph. No, I know this is a long one, but you'll see. He examined investigation into the Clinton foundation's finances in which the FBI is repeated requests for a subpoena were denied. He also scrutinized how the FBI gave misses Clinton a defensive briefing about suspicions that a foreign government might be trying to influence her campaign through donations, but did not inform mister Trump about suspicions that Russia might be conspiring with people associated with his campaign. That was written four months ago by Charlie savage, Adam Goldman and Katie benner. And that plus a bunch of pissy side eye at the DoJ is the entire Durham report, all 316 pages of it. They predicted it. They described the chain of events, months ago, and that's all that there is. That cool. Well, case closed, that's it for OA today. It's been fun. Oh, cool. I think I'm just going to go to yoga then. No, no. I've had a couple of days to digest this report now as we record on Thursday. And I do not feel less pissed off. I'm going to be honest. I'm still mad. I don't know if you guys follow me on Twitter, but I was having a conniption about it the other night. Why don't you do this? That's kind of my thing. So why don't you do this part for the sake of my blood pressure, okay? Of course. I believe the passage that got you the most exercised was the one where Durham got all prissy about the need for the DoJ to not talk smack about unindicted parties. I was nervous. Okay. Still mad. He said, in all public filings and proceedings, federal prosecutors should remain sensitive to the privacy and reputation interests of uncharged third parties. You know, like Hunter Biden, he did not add. In the context of public plea and sentencing proceedings, this means that, in the absence of some significant justification, it is not appropriate to identify either by name or unnecessarily specific description or cause a defendant to identify a third party wrongdoer unless that party has been officially charged with the misconduct at issue. In a similar vein, Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein said, quote, we do not hold press conferences to release derogatory information about the subject of a declined criminal investigation and of real quote he went on to say that derogatory information sometimes is disclosed in the course of criminal investigations and prosecutions, but we never release it gratuitously to a room full of reporters ahead of a congressional hearing. I added that last part on. Yeah, and then Durham spent 300 pages accusing Hillary Clinton of participating in a conspiracy to frame Donald Trump while accusing Michael sussman and Igor danchenko of committing multiple crimes. Right. Look, if those names are familiar, it's because they're the only two people during managed to indict and they were both acquitted within hours. Right. The only conviction he got was a one count plea by that line attorney, and that guy was kicked up by Horowitz, right? That wasn't really dorm scout. And if that statement by rod Rosenstein sounds familiar, you probably need to get out more. Fair. That's me, right? But the statement was from a bullshit letter, Rosenstein dummied up to justify firing James Comey. And it was the second version of the letter because the one that Jared Kushner and Stephen Miller cooked up said that Trump was firing Comey because of the Russia investigation. At which point white count White House counsel Don McGahn was like, oh no, we're not sending that. So good old rod cooked up another note that said Comey had to leave because he was too mean about Hillary Clinton's emails in public and that's where that quote comes from. So it's kind of rich that Durham is using that letter here to intro his hit piece on the origins of the Russia investigation, particularly since about 5 seconds after rod and what The White House counsel Don McGahn published that BS excuse letter, Trump himself went on TV and told Lester Holt that he'd fired Comey because of the Russia investigation. Am I taking crazy pills? What the hell? I know, totally fair. So let's talk about exactly what Durham said in this clunker, because you're right. I mean, the extent to which it tracks The New York Times reporting from four months ago is almost uncanny. Durham starts by saying that the FBI was biased against Trump. Read a little bit of this, right? The record reviewed by the office, his investigation, demonstrated a rather clear predisposition on the part of at least certain FBI personnel at the center of crossfire hurricane to open an investigation of Trump and predict where this is going. For example, Peter strzok and Lisa page were directly involved in matters relating to the opening of crossfire hurricane, struck was the agent who both wrote and approved the electronic communication opening the matter from the very start as a full investigation, rather than an assessment or preliminary investigation. At the time, page was serving
Opening Arguments
"general rosenstein" Discussed on Opening Arguments
"So in case that wasn't totally clear, is leaked page instructs personal messages to reporters in an attempt to curry favor with Republicans by ensuring that every front page was flogging the FBI bias storyline even as the hearing was being gaveled in. And she did it in a really underhanded way, such as to make it look like the reporters got those messages from Congress, not from the Justice Department. Yeah. Here's how Lisa page described it in her complaint. She said, disclosure of the text messages before Rosenstein's hearing would serve multiple goals. It would protect Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein from criticism during his testimony. It would show that the department was addressing matters of concern to the president, and it would dominate coverage of the hearing, which otherwise could be unfavorable for the department. And the department could achieve all of this at the relatively low cost in the department's view of the privacy of two FBI employees, miss page, a longtime DoJ and FBI attorney at mister struck, a career FBI agent. Right. But as it turned out, not every single reporter in D.C. was down to get played like that. And so Natasha Bertrand, who was then insider, wrote a story about it, quoting is gerst predecessor Matthew Miller, who called is Chris behavior appalling. He said, this is an ongoing investigation in which these employees have due process rights, and the political leadership at DoJ has thrown them to the wolves so Rosenstein can get credit from House Republicans at his hearing today. Yeah. And again, this one hits home for me. At least like I said at the time that Rosenstein was appointed Deputy Attorney General that he was probably the single most respected Republican in the state of Maryland. I've served with him in multiple capacity. This one hurt. Yeah, I think that that was is doing a lot of work there. But anyway, at this point, the DoJ inspector general was already going through page instructs texts as part of his own inquiry to determine if the investigations they worked on were tainted by bias. In fact, the IG concluded that they were not. But at the time, when Rosenstein was appearing before Congress, and he was asked about it by representative Hakeem Jeffries, because he was like, where the hell did these texts come from? You clearly leaked them. So Rosenstein defended himself by saying that in under oath that IG had signed off on the disclosure to the media. But the next day, or actually two days later, the IG called Rosenstein out on is bullshit and released a statement that said, quote, at no time prior to the release of the text messages did the department consult with the OIG about providing records to the media. And more than just the womp womp noise like this is a civil violet. We're going to talk about it. This is one of the bases for page instructs claims. Right. But at the time, the GOP got the storyline and wanted, and so did Trump, who he spent months and months, shit posting about struck and page the most vulgar and humiliating terms. Any generally claimed that the Mueller investigation was biased, wish it wasn't. And he called repeatedly for page instructor to be fired from the FBI. Page, remember that's the lawyer, resigned in May of 2018. And struck was fired the following August. And in fact, Trump does continue to talk talk shit about them now on February 2nd of this year. He bragged to Hugh Hewitt that he personally fired page instruct. He said, quote, don't forget, these guys before I ever got in, they were spying on my campaign long before I got in. This didn't just happen. And if I didn't fire Comey, and if I didn't fire mccabe instruct and page and all of that scum that was in there, you would have had, they were trying to do it overthrow an overthrow. Okay. And they just think of it. They spied on my campaign from the time I came down the escalator, and here I am innocently running to do something great. And I have this garbage that's in there headed up by Comey in the group. They spied on my campaign and I got rid of them all. I got rid of them all. Okay, so clearly taking credit for firing all of them. Yes. Look, the Trump stuff is reprehensible. We know that. I want to add just to make sure because the Hugh Hewitt sanitizing efforts, like he's on MSNBC sometimes, like, I hate this guy. I mean, seriously, I do. Like, just to take one thing picked at random, like hue you it never discloses never, ever when he's being brought on to comment about the Trump administration. That his son James worked for the Trump administration, right? So Hunter Biden's laptop, biggest scandal in the world to these guys. You know, it's Super Bowl conflict of interest because reasons, but Hewitt carried water for Trump without failing the need to mention that Trump was paying money directly to his son. Hate that guy. Yeah. Girls say. Sorry. So the following year, page instruct both sued the Justice Department. Page suit for violation of the privacy act and struck suit for wrongful termination, violation of his due process rights and also under the privacy act. So Matthew Miller, when he said that day on December 13th, wow, this looks like, you know, due process and privacy act violations. You know, good guess, buddy. Yeah. And we are going to get into exactly what the privacy act is. Right after this ad break. Okay, we're back from the break. Right beforehand, I had teased the privacy act, which is 5 USC section 5 5 two a and again, this is one of those situations where Congress will insert a statute in between old 5 USC 5 5 two and USC 5 53. So the a is actually on the number itself. It could be a little bit confusing. Anyway, that statute, the privacy act is about your rights as a government employee for who gets access to the government records about you and why. And so one of the things that it protects for government in place is subsection B, which says that quote no agency shall disclose any record to another person or agency except pursuant to a written request by or with the prior written consent of the person whose record it is. And then look, there are 12 exceptions. They're all pretty narrow, right? So that seems like exactly the kind of thing that the Trump administration 100% definitely violated with respect to page and struck who were never asked, hey, would you like us to disclose your records to Jim Jordan in Congress? Or, I mean, even if they were allowed to disclose them to Jim Jordan, they weren't allowed to disclose them to all of those reporters. I think that. Yeah. Right, right. And I think it's important to acknowledge seriously what this cost page personally, right? Because I'm not going to repeat what Trump said about her, but it was really gross. I mean, here's how she described it the fallout to Molly Jong fast, who was then at The Daily Beast. She said, it is almost impossible to describe. It's like being punched in the gut. My heart drops to my stomach when I realized he's tweeted about me again. The president of United States is calling me names to the entire world. He's demeaning me and my career. It's sickening, but it's also very intimidating because he's still the president of the United States. And when the president accused you of treason by name, despite the fact that I know there's no fathomable way I have committed any crime at all, let alone treason. He's still somebody in a position to actually do something about that. So, you know, it was awful. They destroyed this woman's life on purpose for just modicum of political gain. So she's suing for damages and struck is also seeking damages under the privacy act. But he's suing for wrongful termination and due process violations as well. Because of the circumstances of his dismissal, right? Remember that page page quit, but he was actually fired. So according to stress complaint, the FBI conducted a disciplinary inquiry that was led by a woman named Kansas will. She's an assistant director of the or she was. I assume she's not there anymore. Assistant director of the bureau's office of professional responsibility. The penalty for sending intemperate internal text is not super high. It's like a couple of days suspension or something. In his complaint, struck likes it likens it to the Hatch Act, which he notes the Trump administration violated basically reckless abandon. That is an understatement to say the least.
The Daily Beans
"general rosenstein" Discussed on The Daily Beans
"Mean he was but yeah could look that way. That was not in the miller report. So that's the first bit of new information. We have from began testimony. We all knew that and did a shoot. Did talk about that because it comes up later right that he believes could look like trump or meddling in the mueller probe if he called the department of justice to complain about his ridiculous conflicts of interest. Now the part that is in the miller report though is where the lawyer chief of staff to mcgann donaldson told the president that going through his personal attorney to do it with look like. You're trying to meddle in the investigation and knocking out. Muller would be another fact using acclaim of obstruction of justice and the dem's got mcgann to agree to her statement. So that's pretty nice work but he's just confirming that publicly available portion of the miller report but he saying yes. Those notes are accurate that my chief staff took now then asked what other facts was donaldson referring to. Then there was an objection and the argument back with these were. Her notes of what mcgann told her about the meeting so they are mcgann statements mcgann conceded the point and said he must've said that so now they're asked again One of the dams asked again. I'm sorry i don't know if it was now they're not. They didn't put the name in front of each question. Just at questions were asked but one of the dams asked again. What other facts. He was referring to in donaldson's notes that could constitute obstruction and mcgann's as well. Yeah there was already a ton of news coverage over you know a number of other issues including the removal of the director of the fbi. The michael flynn's situation The report has i mean you can read from Prior to page eighty one and that gives you the list then they reminded mcgann About what. He told trump that his biggest exposure wasn't that he fired komi but his other contacts and the flynn ask mcgann confirms that he said that. And explains what those events were the flint. Ask easy on flynn. and then. and then the dem's asked what what other contacts were you referring to against that he was referring to the other contacts with komi the dinner the phone call the loyalty ass stuff. Komi had taken his contemporaneous notes interesting. We kind of didn't know what he meant by other contacts. So that sort of new but we know we knew Then onto the washington post When they reported trump was under investigation for obstruction and called mcgann twice that weekend and asked him to call rosenstein. And bring up those conflicts. And tell rosenstein. Muller can't serve because of them he then said. In the president's view motion be able to serve a special counsel because of the conflicts mcgann told told the dem's he would not be comfortable making the call to rosenstein and really just wanted to get off the phone. When asked why he wasn't comfortable mcgann opened up a little not comfortable making it the same reasons i stated before. It's not the official council to the president's job to raise with the in the case i guess of the acting attorney general a conflict. That sounds like it's business or personal and that would take me far out of line in my job. And given all the other atmospheric surroundings and conversations about flynn with komi and and the like it just in my judgment is a lawyer. Wasn't the right. Time to call rod rosenstein and i also had a concern. I wasn't really sure how rod would react. My fear was if you push rod too hard on the point he like if i conveyed the tone that i heard on the phone from the president to rod. Rod could do who knows what he could resign himself. Who knows what rod would do. So what i was not going to do is cause any sort of chain-reaction it would cause this to spiral out of control in a way that wasn't in the best interests at least as a lawyer. What i thought was in the best interest of my client. Which was the president. Then she gets good. Who knows what rod would do. You said like what well he could resign. Why would he resign. Because he may have felt hip he'd been given an order he couldn't execute. And you know if you're given order you don't think you can follow you resign. Why would you couldn't follow that order like you'd have to ask him. But i didn't want to put rod in a box. It's rot in a box. And you were also concerned about calling rod because you could be a fact witness. Isn't that right absolutely cool. And this is a fun. Exchange question mcgann said. He told the president that he would see what he could do. And i did say that. Yeah yeah. Did you intend to see what you could do. No then why did you say that to the president. I was trying to get off the phone. Dumb say bottom of age eighty five eighty six and then report it says mcgann was concerned about having any role in asking the acting attorney. General refile special fire special counsel because he had grown up in the reagan era and wanted to be more like judge robert bork and not quote saturday. Night massacre bork. You wanted to be like judge robert bork. And not saturday. Night massacre work as expected. Republicans questioned mcgann about nothing really substantial other than trying to discredit the fbi. Investigation into flynn and muller was never actually fired so obstruction of justice doesn't count which is wrong. You don't have to be successful in obstructing justice to have obstructed. They tried to relitigate muller's findings by suggesting the president is allowed to corruptly fire comey which is also not true and by the way. This is mr caster you'll remember from. He's the charming man from the second impeachment. Trial who's now defending some capital insurrectionists then gates who is under federal investigation for sex trafficking a minor asked mcgann rosenstein ever threatened to resign or if a saturday night massacre style. Thing even happened. Because i guess gates one can't remember or two thinks that in order to obstruct justice you have to be successful. Caster then brought up a third conflict of interest. That the dem's left out an okay. Good on you. That muller had interviewed for fbi director. But he didn't mcgann said. No one was advocating for muller to get the job and he didn't recall. Muller was interviewed. Right after mcgann. Said that castor said you didn't witness any collusion with any russian people. Right you go from muller wasn't interviewing for the fbi position. Did you witness any collusion with you. Didn't witness any collusion with any russian people. Right then caster asked. Mcgann thinks trump made the right decision to fire comey. Mcgann said yes but once again irrelevant. Mcgann described his feelings about the president's directive that he ordered then deputy attorney general rosenstein to fire muller and he said he worried presently. The whole situation could result into being pulled into a congressional hearing. Your is after trump pushed him to have muller ousted a second time during a phone call. Mcgann said he didn't feel great. That was testimony. Go after i got off the phone with the president. How did it feel oof. Frustrated perturbed trapped. Many emotions felt trapped. Because the president had the same conversation with me repeatedly. And i thought i conveyed my views and offered my advice. And we're still having the same conversation. And i figured at some point he'd wanna have that conversation again at that point. I wasn't exactly sure how to navigate that one so i felt like i was trapped. Jerry nadler who pushed for them again testimony for years like i said released a statement describing the testimony as revelatory all told mr begins. Testimony gives us a fresh look at how dangerously close president trump brought us to in mr mcgann's words. The point of no return. We knew that jerry. The hearing got occasionally testy democrats pressed mcgann on events. From four years earlier mcgann appeared to sidestep certain questions such as his reaction to actions taken by the former guy or in some. Instances said he didn't understand the question. And one example mcgann said. He didn't have a crisp recollection about certain conversations with trump and others and deferred to his previous testimony. And that right there my friends. Mcgann's repeated complaint. That that should happen for years ago. And he can't remember goes right to the heart of why the investigation was so important even if he didn't draw any conclusions other than we can't not say trump didn't obstruct justice at hammers home. The need for congressional subpoenas to be complied with properly. And it's a good argument for any court battle in the future that we might see. Maybe now with this new story about him going after shift and swallow wells records.
WBZ Afternoon News
The Mueller Report: Ball now in Attorney General's court
"In Washington all eyes today on the Justice department once again as attorney general bar and deputy attorney general Rosenstein continue to review the special counsel Robert Muller's report on Russian interference in collusion with the Trump administration in the twentieth. Sixteen presidential election, Democrats and Republicans ally calling for the AG to make the report public to the fullest extent possible. We get the latest now from CBS is Wendy Gillette sometime today will likely learn more about what's in special counsel, Robert Muller's report. The attorney general is expected to release a summary. Democrats want the full report, the chairman of the House Judiciary committee, Representative Jerrold Nadler. I hope the department of Justice will not leave things hanging by seeking to keep things secret. He spoke on NBC, California Democratic Representative Adam Schiff says he respects the reports findings the issue of indictment of prosecution of that is Bob Mola's decision. And I have great confidence in him. He was interviewed on CBS face the nation. Republican Representative Jim Jordan on ABC. He said he's going to consult with rod Rosenstein, he's going to consult with the special counsel, Bob Muller, and he's going to release as much as he possibly can consistent with the law. I think the Democrats should be that should be what we all want an attorney general who operates according to the law. CBS news update. I'm Wendy July, Massachusetts, congressman Stephen Lynch saying he'd like to hear firsthand from the special counsel about his conclusions. And the contents of his report I would be shocked if we did not have Bob Muller, sit down the conditions of that whether whether it's public or whether it's private. And which committee she might sit before I think that's all open to debate. I know there are four or five committees in congress that would like to have shit for an interview. And then I think in fairness if there are still some underlying questions, I think probably a public hearing within at attendance as as the primary witness would be
Steve Cochran
Rod Rosenstein will be leaving Justice Department next month
"US deputy attorney general rod Rosenstein is expected to leave his. Position within a matter of weeks. That's according to the US Justice department official. Here's AP correspondent, Mike Hampton the officials. Speaking to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity says Rosenstein is expected to depart by the middle of next month. The White House could name his replacement this week with last week's confirmation of William bars. Attorney general Rosenstein departure was expected he has been on the job for nearly two years overseeing special counsel Robert Muller's investigation after then attorney general Jeff Sessions recused
Bill Cunningham
McCabe: Rosenstein brought up 25th Amendment
"Now. The chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee Republican Lindsey Graham says they will investigate comments made by former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe in an interview with sixty minutes tonight. Mccabe says that he had a conversation with rod Rosenstein couple of years ago during which the deputy attorney general Rosenstein was concerned about President Trump and his capacity to govern it came. After the firing of former FBI director James Colman signed denies discussing the president's removal McCabe is now downplaying his own words. His spokesperson saying he never had extended discussions, but that he quote participated in a discussion that included a comment by Rosenstein regarding the twenty fifth amendment. Trump attacking him on Twitter saying McCabe is quote, a disgrace to the
News and Perspective with Tom Hutyler
Trump concedes wall is "medieval solution" but says it works
"Still insists on getting money for a border wall before the standoff ends before he left the White House. He had this to say you say it said medieval solution wall. That's true medieval because it worked then and it works even better. Now, he spoke as he signed a Bill meant to curb human trafficking this afternoon. He sits down with congressional leaders in the situation room to talk about the shutdown. It's now in day. Nineteen house speaker Nancy Pelosi says the president is holding the American people hostage with his wall demand. The president could end this shutdown and reopen government today, and he should instead he is holding the American people hostage to his ineffective expensive wall and withholding paychecks working Americans Vissel be the president's third sit down with congressional leaders in recent weeks, there's another makeup in the Trump administration. It looks like deputy attorney general. Rod Rosenstein is leaving Rosenstein has come under criticism. But there's no indication he's being forced out. Instead, we're told he informed. The White House of his departure plans around the time President Trump nominated William bar to be the next attorney general Rosenstein, oversaw special counsel, Robert Muller for more than a year. In fact, it was Rosenstein who hired Muller to investigate Russia's election. Interference after the president fire James Komi from the FBI ABC's Aaron Katersky. President Trump threatened on Twitter to cut off federal funding that goes to California for wildfire relief and state officials quote get their act together. This tweet comes two days after California governor Gavin Newsom vowed to fight against the corruption and incompetence of the White House says he called it police and Phoenix of now served a search warrant to get DNA from all male employees at a long term care facility where a woman in a vegetative vegetative state gave birth to a baby. Boy, you're listening to ABC