Special Edition: Sessions is Out!
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 8 November 2018
⏱️ 58 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
President Trump fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Wednesday and replaced him on an interim basis with the attorney general’s own chief of staff, a man named Matt Whitaker. Whitaker has made repeated public statements expressing skepticism about the Mueller investigation, which he will now be supervising. Benjamin Wittes got on a recorded conference line with Susan Hennessey, Paul Rosenzweig, Steve Vladeck, Chuck Rosenberg and Bob Bauer to discuss the day’s events: the president’s action, how we should understand Whitaker, and what congressional pushback we can expect, both now and when the new congress comes in.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad free version of the LawFair |
| 0:07.2 | podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:14.7 | That's patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:18.2 | Also check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair no bull, |
| 0:27.2 | and the aftermath. |
| 0:30.0 | I'm Benjamin Wittis and this is the LawFair podcast November 7th 2018. |
| 0:38.1 | It's a special edition. |
| 0:39.8 | One might say an emergency edition. |
| 0:42.6 | The Democrats took the house last night and today Jeff Sessions was fired by President |
| 0:50.0 | Trump and his chief of staff Matt Whitaker was installed as acting attorney general which |
| 0:57.8 | means that Mr. Whitaker has supervisory authority over Bob Mueller's investigation which had |
| 1:05.1 | been being supervised by Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general. |
| 1:10.7 | There's a lot to go over and with me on a conference line is Susan Hennessy, Chuck Rosenberg |
| 1:20.6 | Steve Vladik, Bob Bauer and Paul Rosenswag, none of whom need any introduction to LawFair |
| 1:29.6 | listeners. |
| 1:30.6 | So I won't give much of one except to say that there is an amazing reservoir of experience |
| 1:38.8 | and knowledge here. |
| 1:42.0 | So let's start, Susan get us started. |
| 1:48.2 | What should we make? |
| 1:49.2 | How big a surprise is this? |
| 1:51.8 | How anxious are you about the events that transpired today? |
| 1:58.4 | So I am going to stake out a position pretty far on the ledge and I'm hoping that maybe |
... |
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