wolff, attacking the credibility of the sources in the book, things like that. >> wow, it's fascinating to see them decide whose side they will be on since they are always on donald trump eastside. th i mentioned a senior fellow media matters for america that watches this stuff closely. that is "all in" for this evening. good night. have a great weekend. i'll be back tomorrow and sunday at 10:00 a.m. here on "a.m. joy." "the rachel maddow show" starts right this second. i here by will you some of the sleep i'll get over the next two days because you've had none. you've had none at all and you're back to work through the weekend. >> i have a few more pages to read. i won't be sleeping. >> well done. good luck. >> thank you. >> thanks to you at home for joining us. happy friday. attorney general jeff sessions is not invited to camp david this weekend. the only reason that is weird is because the president is hosting

at camp david, the vice president, secretary of state, secretary of defense, secretary of education, head of the cia, head of the office of management, the deputy head of the transportation department, also all of the congressional leadership on the republican side and chief of staff and his top legislation guy and the political director for the white house and top economic advisor and does the personnel for the white house and sarah huckabee sanders and that guy with the crazy wes welker guys, steven miller. everybody you heard of associated with the administration who has not been fired or indicted and a bunch of people you haven't heard of they are all going to spend a frigid weekend together in camp david but not jeff sessions. and this is not like some official event, not like a state of the union thing or they need a designated survivor, so they need to keep somebody, somewhere safe in case something bad happens at camp david. nothing like that. he just isn't invited.

at one level, who cares. maybe you feel bad for jeff sessions. maybe you think he might be cold up there. it is going to be a really cold weekend and he is from alabama. maybe that would be hard for him. i don't know, if this is a big summit because something important is about to happen and if it is adele lib r deliberate jeff sessions is not there, well, i think there might be at least reason to brace yourself for this weekend, in terms of what might be happening here. last night "the new york times" reported in a bombshell piece from michael schmidt, go to persuade jeff sessions to not recuse himself from the russia investigation. this is important for a couple reasons. one is the reported context. according to michael schmidt's reporting, the president explained why wit was important

jeff sessions not recuse himself based on his belief reportedly that the attorney general should protect him from the russia investigation. another reason this is potent l potentially important, under the strict rules that govern in the department of justice are supposed to have contact with one another, the white house counsel don mccann is actually one of the officials who is allowed to have direct contact with the justice department, but the whole reason those rules exist is to prevent the white house, any white house from having untoward influence on law enforcement decisions that are made at the justice department. there is a reason there is strict rules about not very many people being allowed to speak to justice department officials. don mccann is one of the people allowed to speak to the justice department under those very strict rules but if he was sent to the justice department by the president, specifically to interfere with the justice department on a law enforcement

matter, specifically to interfere with jeff session's rekuszr recusal decision, how they administer the rule of law, then that would be a pretty obvious violation of those important rules that govern how the white house and justice department are supposed to communicate with each other to avoid white house pressure. if mcgahn lobbied sessions, if mccann did in fact do what the "new york times" reports he did, there is a reasonable legal ethics case to be made don mccann should resign as white house counsel for having done that. that said, nbc further, this story today when they reported that the president didn't just send the white house counsel don mcgahn to the justice department to go lobby jeff sessions. according to nbc, the president sent multiple senior white house personnel to the justice department to lobby jeff sessions that he shouldn't recuse himself from the russia

investigation. so both of those things, both the fact that the president reportedly said the reason sessions shouldn't recuse is so the president can be protected from that fbi investigation, and the prospect that the white house counsel may have violated the rules about contact with the justice department that are supposed to prothetex protect. both of those may be a problem in terms of potential criminal liability. if he was trying to interfere with the recusal decision because he thought that could shield him, that is a problem. but that all happened this spring and now we have arrived at this weekend with now reams and reams and months of reporting how angry the president is that the lobbying didn't work and jeff sessions didn't recuse himself from the russia investigation. so the president this weekend will be hosting this big republican and cabinet summit

conspicuous lly without session in attendance. if this is firing jeff sessions as attorney general that would be important but pretty directly give the president a way to finally end the russia investigation that has so animated him and vexed him from the very beginning of his administration. if jeff sessions were removed, and a new attorney general was installed, that new attorney general wouldn't be recused from overseeing the russia investigation. all right? so that new attorney general could take over responsibility for over seeing the russia investigation from rod rosenstein and in that oversight role overseeing the russia investigation, a new attorney general could defund, dismantle and stymie the work from robert mueller. that is why everybody is on the edge of their seat about who got invited to camp david and who didn't. that was also the glaring exclamation point subtext to the headlines you undoubtedly saw

today about how much scott pruett, the head of the epa would very much like to be the next attorney general. should an opening arise. that is either epa administrator scott pruett thinking that jeff sessions is about to get fired as attorney general and just saying pick me boss, pick me or a more considered effort by administration which knows jeff sessions is about to get fired and floating scott pruett's name as a trial balloon. so i know it's cold. i know it's dark. it's january. you're looking forward to turning off the news and curling up with the latest slow burn pod cast, i know you are. i know you are. that issue about jeff sessions and whether it means something more than it looks, that he's not invited to this big republican and cabinet summit with the president is just worth watching over the next couple days. you know, today, was pretty remarkable, pretty remarkable

day of news itself. partisan unity has broken down on two gigantic policy changes administration announced yesterday on both administration's decision to basically recriminalize pot including states that legalized it and in their decision to open up to offshore drilling, the entire east coast and west coast, florida, carolinas and the rest of it not just dell t democrats but elected republicans today signal their opposition to the big announcements from the trump administration yesterday and said they will fight the trump administration on both of those matters. there is not a lot of issues on which there is partisan disunion anymore but those two appear to be ones that can rile republicans that otherwise like president trump. so that was big news today. and from congress, we actually got a big landmark moment today. after the intelligence community released its assessment a year ago tomorrow that said russia interfered in the presidential

election to try to help trump and hurt clinton, after that came out, multiple congressional committees, even in the republican led congress expressed alarm and started full scale investigations into the russian attack and into the crucial question of whether or not the russians had american confederates who knew what the russians were doing or who height hamight have been involved at the time. that strtarted basically a year ago with the assessment. today after multiple committees in the house and senate spent a year investigating and talking to witnesses and subpoenaing documents looking at these very serious allegations about russia, today for the first time, 364 days since the intelligence committee's assessment, today for the first time, congress made a criminal referral to the justice department deriving from its investigation into the russia matter. republican senator chuck grassly

and lindsey graham have finally found someone they think should face criminal charges in the russian attack on our election. they said today that they would like the justice department to consider bringing charges against the one person who actually called the fbi when he found out that russia was trying to play a role in our election to help donald trump. we count more than 19 different people associated with the russian government that made contact with people associated with the trump campaign or organization while donald trump was running for president. several of these 19 different russians provided explicitly information that they were there, they were making contact to provide russian government help for the presidential election to the trump campaign. but nobody associated with the trump campaign ever reacted to any one of those by calling the fbi. even after the fbi warned the trump organization to be on the lookout. there is only one person we know

that actually called the cops when they saw this crime happen. there is one person that observed evidence of russia maybe trying to interfere in the election to help trump. there is one person that saw the evidence and recognized it as a serious crime and 911, called the fbi. the one person who did that is the person who lindsey graham and chuck grassly today told the justice department to investigate for potentially maybe possibly having committed a crime. they released this cover letter but not a close fassified docum. they are apparently alleging former british intelligence christopher steele might have mixed-up dates when describing when exactly he had off the record conversations with reporters about his intelligence reports, the ones we handed to the fbi. you know, it is not unheard of for congressional investigators to make a criminal referable to the justice department. if in the course of their congressional investigation,

they turn up information that law enforcement doesn't have, it's not unheard of for congress to notify the relevant law enforcement agent, hey, we turned up something that might want to prosecute. that's happened in serious ethics cases for members of congress doing intense investigation of a member of congress accused of ethics violation in the course of the investigation, they turn up serious evidence of potential criminal wrongdoing by that member of congress, wrongdoing that was not otherwise known to or been pursued by the relevant law enforcement agency. the committee would finish the report, the ethics committee report on the behavior but might make a criminal referral to the appropriate law enforcement aagain s agency if they turned up something serious law enforcement was not otherwise into. that's not what happened here. in this case, senator chuck grassly and lindsey graham do not appear to have turned up any new information concerning former ny 6 spy christopher

steele. the reason their so-called criminal referral was in part classified is because what these two just sent to the justice department about christopher steele is information they got from the justice department about christopher steele. they didn't turn up anything in their congressional investigation that the justice department didn't already know about. what they did today is gave the justice department back their own information that they had obtained from the justice department about christopher steele saying hey, have you seen this? no seriously, this stuff you gave us, have you seen it? we're sending it back to you. that is not the way these things usually go. for obvious reasons, that is not the way these things usually go. but they did put out a very strongly worded press release about it and got lots and lots of headlines about how they want this guy criminally prosecuted, the dossier guy. you know, it's incredible.

once upon a time, it is incredible. once upon a time, this white house was actually concerned that the republican-led congress and it's congressional investigations into the russia matter might be something the white house had to worry about, that the white house should try to shut down. we know from "new york times" reporting that the president directly contacted senator richard burr on the intelligence committee and blunt and mitch mcconnell, the president directly contacting those members of the senate pressuring them to drop the congressional russia investigations. we sure we needed to bother? i mean, what's received more attention are the president's efforts to stop not the congressional investigations but fbi investigation. the president lobbying jeff sessions. the president telling the dir t director dan coats to press the fbi, to stop the russia investigation. the president telling the fbi director he needed to remove the cloud of the russia investigation over the trump

presidency. he needed to lay off the investigation into mike flynn. he needed to be loyal to the president. the president firing james comey when comey didn't agree to any of that. once robert mueller was appointed, he pressured thom till tillis. so that stuff received a lot more attention, the president trying to shut down the fbi investigation but if the president had once upon a time been worried that the investigations in congress also might pose a real threat to him in terms of exposing what really happened with russia, those worries, it's safe to say have probably been resolved. because one year on, basically what these republican-led committees turned investigations into are full-time battering ram efforts to protect the president from the fbi, to protect the president from the on going criminal investigation, to discredit robert mueller, the special counsel, to discredit

the whole fbi as best they can. when james comey documented the fact that the president pressured him to drop the russia investigation before he was fired, republicans and congress went after the memos that comey wrote up to documents the president's behavior saying those memos might have been classified or should have been classified and when comey talked about them, he leaked classified information or at least leaked government property. when the fbi and justice department brought it to the white house's attention that the trump national security advisor was talking to the russian government and lying about it. republicans and congress joined the white house to try to make the scandal there the fact that the fbi knew about what mike flynn had done. they wiretapped us. there is unmasking. republicans and congress tried to say the real scandal is not what russia did not elections or questions whether or not they had help but uranium won or the

clinton foundation. that's the real russia scandal. investigating and decided that the real scandal, that they really want to look into is that system people inside the fbi or worked on the special counsel's team are people that privately expressed political opinions of wide-ranging interests during the campaign. which is something that fbi agents are absolutely allowed to do. it has been republicans in congress who have aggressively p pursued the story line trump and russia and intervention in the election, the reports themselves are somehow terrible. it's bad they exist. and when christopher steele handed them over to the fbi because he's concerned he stumbled upon evidence, that somehow tainted the fbi, as well. and so a year ago tomorrow when the intelligence community put out the assessment about russia

did, there is a moment this is very bad news about what russia had done and maybe we as a country should get to the bottom of it and understand what is happening. we should find out if there were americans in the attack that need to be brought to justice. one year ago people pretty much agreed on that, even some republicans, enough to start the republican led congressional investigations at least but at the one year mark, it is remarkable to see how far most republicans and congress have swung toward aggressively trying to stop the counter intelligence investigation into what happened. not only are they not using their own investigations to figure this out but their power in congress to try to stop the external investigation that's happening at the special counsel's office. if we are being honest, though, and clear-eyed about this, i think it is also worth recognizing how successful efforts have been to stop this investigation. not just to stop their own

investigations in congress, which they have largely done but to use their power in congress to stop the criminal investigations into these matters happening first at the fbi and special counsel's office. one thing to see republicans in the white house push, it's another thing to see it work, to see the justice department and the fbi roll over and give them what they want. so just take stock of this with this referring christopher steele for criminal charges, you know, whether or not that effort results in there being criminal charges about him, you can pretty much guarantee he will not becoming to the united states of america to give public testimony about what they found. republicans would block the release with hours and hours of sworn closed door testimony about christopher steele's findings from fusion gps who hired him to do the work. they also succeeded in harassing fusion gps potentially to their

limit, today they forced fusion's bank to hand over financial records relating to the firm. all financial records relating to the firm that may destroy them as a firm. after paul ryan intervened crusading trump partisan, devin nunes succeeded today in forcing the fbi to hand over quote, fbi investigative documents that are considered law enforcement sensitive and are rarely released or shared outside the burro. the fbi resisted handing over those documents because they are relevant to the on going investigation and law enforcement sensitive but now justice department doesn't feel that strongly about it anymore and caved. they are handing them over in the middle of the investigation. they are also handing over high-ranking fbi officials who will be questioned but nunes and the committee everyone though the same officials said for them to testify about what they know would interfere with the fbi's on going criminal investigation. those officials include one of

the five top leaders briefed by james comey about the president reportedly telling him to shut down the fbi's russia investigation. one of those giers, the uys the republicans are getting to testify. another one of those guys who comey had as a contemporaneous witness, another one of the five is andrew mccabe. who has been under sustained republican attack for most of the last year over the holiday break it was announced he will be retiring from the fbi. he's 49 years old. another one of the five corroborating witnesses for james comey in terms of interactions is james baker. it was recent lly announced he' be reassigned at the burro from the high-ranking position. that's three of the five. plus the way they have gone after comey. republicans in congress are about to obtain hundreds if not thousands of personal, hundreds

if not thousands more personal texts from fbi and doj officials between two fbi and doj officials in -- who were in a relationship having an affair. once the texts are released, they will no doubt release to the press for humiliating effect. they are getting personal texts because the fbi is nhanding the over haven given several to reporters. these are agents handing over texts and the fbi and justice department confirmed that whatever else they are giving up in response to this republican pressure on the russia investigation, the fbi and justice department confirmed they are actively looking into uranium one and clinton foundation and hillary clinton's e-mails again. it's been one year in that year republicans turn from wanting to get to the bottom of what russia did to now doing everything they

can to stop that investigation. but if we're being clear eyed about this it is worth noting that the fbi and justice department are in a very different position. they have gone from resisting that republican pressure and white house pressure to handing over their agents and officials, handing over sensitive documents and agreeing that yeah, maybe shay should be looking into whether somebody ought to lock her up. we shouldn't be surprised by the push back that evolved over the course of this past year. we maybe should be surprised it's working.

one of the first people that took a really aggressive attack at trying to get to the bottom of the watergate scandal is this man whose name is rick patman. what five men broke in, he had been serving in the house of representatives for more than four decades. he was chair of the banking committee and decided the way he would approach the watergate burglary would be to, say it with me, follow the money. why did the burglars have so much money on them when they got caught and even more, why did they have such large amounts of seemingly political money in their bank accounts? well, it turned out that the money had come from president richard nixon's reelection campaign so he was asked to approve subpoenas that. makes sense. but the white house successfully

pressured snuff membenough membt committee they could not get a majority vote for those subpoenas that and the country yawning about the snooze fest watergate break out thing, richard nixon went on to win a second term. patman failed. the watergate investigation came to a promising place but politically got stopped. you know what, the scandal came roaring back in the president's second term and the truth did come out and within two years, nixon's attempt to interfere with right pat mman's investigation, that ended up being included in the articles of impeachment against nixon. that story, the story of his early failed attempt to investigate richard nixon, that's one of the stories told on the slate.com pod cast called slow burn that gives listeners a sense of not just what happened

in the watergate scandal but what it was like to live through the scandal in the moment when nobody knew what would happen next when it wasn't clear that nixon would ever be busted for what he did. when nobody knew how it would end, how did it feel like to follow the scandal in realtime. if you're not listening to slow burn yet, you should be. as we hit the one-year mark since the intelligence community assessment that russia attacked in 2016, i've been wondering if watergate can give us a good perspective what it's like to be in a sprawling investigation when the push back trying to thwart the investigation seems like it might be winning the day. joining us is the host of slow burn. thank you for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> congratulations on the success of this effort and on the ambition, you're doing a great job. >> thank you. >> the idea of the investigation being successfully thwarted by

skillful political players. >> uh-huh. >> you used the story of patman to tell that effectively because very much lost the history. are there other examples of that? >> well, i mean, of course, the big effort to stymie the federal prosecutor was when nixon fired him. that didn't work out, either. in the end it didn't work out. initially it seemed possible that the office would be closed when nixon fired cox, there was confusion as to whether the investigators who worked for cox would continue the work or not. there were fbi agents who swarmed the federal prosecutors office and sealed it off and looked on tv like this was the end. the evidence would be taken away, who knows what would happen to it. but the public pressure was so intense that nixon had to capitulate and say okay, we'll install a new federal prosecutor and i'll give you the tapes you want and of course, that was the

beginning of the end. >> one of the things i find about a lot of news stories, not just gigantic like watergate, the further you get down the road in time the harder to realize affiliation. patman was a democrat so it matters there was a democratic majority and nixon was republican. you start to lose track of the api affiliation affiliations. in the moment when watergate was the end of the first material for nixon, how strong were the partisan affiliations in erm te of the affiliation? fwl n >> not like a straightforward answer. there were partisans that stood with nixon because he was the political alie b political ally but moderate republicans so for instance, after the saturday night mass cure, there were plenty of republicans said this is uncomfortable. there were a few who said it was. there was one that spoke to the

house of representatives, a congressman from tennessee said don't let this become a legislative lynch mob and took out a noose that he brought with him and held it up. >> wow. >> so there was a little bit on both sides. one thing that's interesting is cox like mueller has not faced any of these attacks on the grounds that he was a democrat or that he was a kennedy guy even though his whole biography was working for kennedy and he was a harvard law professor and the total cartoon of east coast elite guy and nixon's white house didn't go after him. >> they were so attuned to that as a source of political attack. >> you would think. >> the cultural politics was elites and liberals. >> it's shocking. i've been asking people why do you think they didn't? the answer i have gotten is partisanship was different back then. republicans are respected. he had been the solicitor general. who cared if he worked for

kennedy. he has a pristine reputation and that was enough to win him the credibility he needed. >> the other thing that i feel like is very striking to me at this one-year mark since the intelligence community assessment came out is the attacks on the fbi as an institution and efforts by republicans almost large within congress to say the fbi is a bad institution and corrupt and should be purged along partisan lines. how do you compare that in terms of the fbi's role with waterg e watergate? >> there were no such attacks by nixon. in so far is there was anger from the nixon white house towards cox, sure. there was plenty of that even though it didn't blow up publicly very much, if you listen to the nixon tapes, he said all sorts of things about cox privately but no, the fbi, as far as i know did not sustain any kind of attacks like this. >> leon is the host of slates

pod cast about watergate called slow burn. i am obviously a fan and i really appreciate you taking the time to be here. >> thanks for having me. >> will you come back? >> please. >> yes. much more, stay with us. his son-in-law -- secret talks with russians. the director of the fbi -- fired. special counsel robert mueller's criminal investigation has already shown why the president should be impeached. you can send a message to your representatives at needtoimpeach.com and demand they finally take a stand. this president is not above the law.

we reported on a story this week that got a ton of response from our viewers, lots of people contacted us about this story including a heads up about a possible a monkey wrench in the story itself, which i will get to in a second.

one of the first and basically still unexplained legal controversies of the trump administration started back in march when the president fired all the u.s. attorneys with no warning, with no successors lined up, no time to plan for the handoff of work in the prosecutor's office. we don't know what that was about last march but then this week was the next big surprise move on these crucial and powerful federal prosecutor positions. thursday marked 300 days since they initially fired them all with no warning, no explanation but on the eve of that 300-day milestone on wednesday of this week, they suddenly appointed 17 new ones at once. and there are a few intriguing things about the timing and whether they had to make the appointments by yesterday as a specific deadline and made a huge decision about tons of federal prosecutors as a gigantic surprise with no warning and no time to plan. but there are also questions about who they are putting in

these important jobs and why. back in october, we learned that president trump had been personally interviewing candidates for federal prosecutor jobs in jurisdictions where his family and business and campaign have key interests. two of those key districts are places where they suddenly announced new appointees, the southern and eastern districts of new york, home base for the trump organization and jared kushner's family real estate empire. well, this week, home state senator kirsten through a penalty flag on one of those appointments in the southern district of new york, which is home to trump tower and the trump organization and not incidentally basically every bank and financial institution trump has ever done business through. the previous prosecutor in the southern district of new york was pete who had been assured by trump he could keep that job but then he, too, was suddenly fired in march with the rest of them. well, on wednesday, trump installed a new u.s. attorney to

replace him and 16 other people, the guy he put in in the southern district of new york is someone whose a member of the trump transition team and someone whose a law partner of trump's close friend rudy ghoulian knee. kirsten released a statement in opposition to that appointment of rudy ghoiulianigiuliani's la. home state senators traditionally get a say in appointments in their state for judges and prosecutors. if kirsten doesn't want that u.s. attorney in the southern district of manhattan, that would mean that appointment doesn't happen. now in the eastern district of new york, that's the prosecut prosecutor's office that accidently reportedly been say subpoenaing bank records and supports the nominee to run that office but the senator hasn't weighed in on that one. this is potentially an issue for the trump administration with

the crucial, crucial districts that affect interests that are near and dear to the president personally. home state senator is not backing a nominee for u.s. attorney in their state usually is supposed to be a big deal. in addition to those concerns, we also, as i mentioned, got a heads up about another potential monkey wrench in the story or explanation of what they did here. it was spotted by somebody whose in a position to see it when nobody else could and understand it when nobody else would. this is an important thing. i guessed, who saw it, join us next. let your inner light loose

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cleans where brushing may miss. helps remove stains and prevent stain build up. use polident daily. check this out, wednesday, justice department announced the appointment of 17 interim u.s. attorneys. 17 new federal prosecutors in districts all over the country including big powerful important ones. this is the next big surprise move that the trump administration made since they surprise fired just about all of them in march, 46 of them. so out of the blue, no warning, all on one day this week here comes 17 replacements. now the justice department explained that all those appointments all had to happen on wednesday, all at once for a very specific reason. this is from their press release, quote, some of those acting united states attorneys will have served the maximum amount of time permitted under the vacancy reform act. that explains the sudden rush of

17 new prosecutors that deadline arrived. they announced the 17 new people were in under the wire at day 299 on wednesday. quote, the appointments announced by the attorney general today filled these vacancies. we and everybody else in creation noted that 300-day deadline and figured, okay, that's the rush. that's why this happened. maybe not. a veteran justice department official looking at this story everybody reported the same way suggested this is actually worth a closer look. joining us for the enter roue is matthew axelrod, a senior official. thank you very much for the heads up you gave us about this story and thanks for being here to help us understand. >> thank you. >> it makes sense to me, they fired the u.s. attorneys all at once, 300 days ago the federal vacancy reform act says you can put the first deputy in the offices in charge of the office for 300 days but then you need

to appoint somebody new. seems like they hit the deadline so time to rush new nominees in there. what's wrong with that understanding? >> what's wrong with that, rachel, is you got the first part right, which is that under the vacancies reform act when they fired the u.s. attorneys, the existing number two officials in the office assented and became the acting u.s. attorneys in the districts and there is a fixed time period after which the vacancies reform act doesn't work anymore, and their authority ends, but what normally happens is the attorney general use as separate authority to appoint those same people to continue serving just under a separate statutory authority. here, what happened instead is that with some of the people, the attorney general did that, which is the normal course and for some of the people in i think ten of districts, the attorney general did something different, which was to bring in new people to serve under the

second statute to use as interim u.s. attorneys. >> so what's the advantage to the justice department to doing it the way that you just described? >> yeah, and look, i should say there is nothing improper or illegal or unethic. the attorney general has the authority to do it this way. the thing unusual is how it was messaged by the department of justice. i think to answer your question, rachel, the vacancies reform act, the only person under the vacancies reform act that can become the boss and u.s. attorney is the person who is currently serving as the number two in the office. under the separate statutory authority, the attorney general has the ability to bring in people from outside the justice department and that's what happened in at least some of the examples here and in the districts you mentioned in the southern and eastern districts, the attorney general has appointed people who were not presently working at the department of justice to come in and be the united states attorney. >> okay.

that is why i'm particularly interested in this because me and everybody else in the country who doesn't foe what we're talking about on these issues, we've been very focused on the southern and eastern districts of new york because of the particular interests of the president and his family and on going investigations et cetera. we don't need to go into it in detail. in the southern disvicttrict in york, the senator is calling foul basically on the appointee and specifically the fact that the president personally met with that appointee before making this nomination. i mean, these 17 people who were just announced, they are still going to need senate confirmation. is doing it this way or the way you're describing or justice department, is it going to help them end run or at a later date or tougher or easier? >> that's a good question and we'll have to wait and see how

it plays out. that's one of the risks of doing it this way is that home state senators might be upset, and it turns out at least in new york one of them appears to be upset because i think it sounds senat gillibrand perceives it as an end run around her traditional authority of input into the selection. none of the people have been nominated yet but i think you can expect that particularly in the southern and eastern districts and the district of new jersey where people left law firm partnerships to take the jobs that they're expecting that they will eventually be the nominee. >> and everybody, again, outside this system when's been watching the jurisdictions in particular i think has reason to watch the process by which this was -- these folks got the jobs but also the way that it was explained by the justice department. and i think you've done at least me a great service helping me to understand the subtleties here and i hope for the viewers, as well. thank you for being here. >> thank you, rachel. >> former senior justice

department official. we'll be right back.

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we know life can be hectic. that's why, at xfinity, we've been working hard to simplify your experiences with us. now, with instant text and email updates, you'll always be up to date. you can easily add premium channels, so you don't miss your favorite show. and with just a single word, find all the answers you're looking for - because getting what you need should be simple, fast, and easy. download the xfinity my account app or go online today. don't we have the blob? we have the blob? have you ever seen the movie "the blob"? we have it? thank you. i was like, i was expecting a

blob! friday night sometimes the blob comes slow. the blob was a 1958 sci-fi horror film. run, don't walk from the blob. the blob has become kind of the way to kind of understand personnel policy at the trump administration. and i don't mean in the sense they're like gelatinous or terrifying. i just mean that they cause people to flee. one of the unusual things about this life we're living through now we have a brand new administration in washington and haven't hit the one-year mark yet but they shed people like a shaking dog sheds rain. i mean,just at an unprecedented pace. administration officials flee, they run don't walk from the administration. they joined not that long ago and we have tried to keep track. it is hard. today, a senior position at the treasury that was filled by shannon mcgahn, wife of white

house counsel don mcgahn, vacant when she left the treasure. today's her last day. vice president mike pence also today lost the domestic policy director and also lost his chief lawyer, lost two senior staffers in a day. white house chief of staff john kelly's senior adviser is also out. the white house says they found some other job for him at a foreign aid agency and out of the white house. and now the head of the nsa an cyber command said he is out, as well. as of this spring. and literally those are just the people we learned about today. i mean, if you are trying to keep track of the departures list from the trump administration, it's an auctioneer's challenge. chief of staff, deputy chief of staff, a communications director for the office of public lee yeah i don't know, press secretary, two communications directors, a rapid response director, two deputy national

security adviser a. director of intelligence programs at the national security council, the national security, a director of planning at the national security council, a chief white house strategist, remember him? a deputy assistant to the president and strategist. an acting u.s. attorney general, a fbi director, dozens of u.s. attorneys and national economic council deputy director, the chief of staff to the vice president, the press secretary to the vice president, the director of office of government ethics and carl. special advise tore the president on regulatory reform. and then today -- you can add counselor, chief of staff and the director of nsa. they're not at a year yet. it's the blob! run, don't walk.

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repeat daily. started off the show tonight by talking about the conspicuous fact that attorney general jeff sessions is not going to camp david along with most of the rest of the cabinet and congressional leadership and the president and the vice president this week. that's interesting both for jeff sessions' feelings and the prospect the president is looking to get rid of him and consequential for the russia investigation. two republican members of congress called for jeff sessions to resign. well, tonight, we have just got a third. chris stewart, congressman from utah, is now the third republican member of congress calling for jeff sessions to resign. and the attorney general not invited to the sleepover at camp david this weekend. now growing calls for resignation of congressmen. watch this space. that does it for us tonight. see you monday. now lime for "the last word