here is one from chuck grassly. he says that the senior republican says that the administration's ma nooifr raises monumental questions about who knew what and when. maryland is next on the republican line. good afternoon. >> caller: thank you so much for having me on today. i just would like to say i have been following this for a year and a half now and i am quite appalled that the mainstream media has been covering this. and i do believe that if president obama is going to insert himself by declaring this executive privilege, then he, too, is responsible and should be held responsible along with eric holder. it's not right for anyone to be above the law because regular normal american citizens are not above the law. >> c-span has covered a number of the hearings specifically focusing on fast and furious both in the house and senate. plenty of those available. san diego next up. dave is on the democrats line. dave, go ahead. >> it is pretty much known that the people are some of the highest paid people in the worl

joining us now is senator chuck grassly, ranking member on the senate judiciary committee.to if yo invoke executive privilege it had to do something with your office? i saw you make the point that if you knew nothing about it you can't even do it. is that a fact? >> i think it is an abuse of executive privilege. why did it come up at this midnight hour. because for # 18 months that i have been seeking documents and 15 months that the house has been seeking documents there has never been one claim of executive privilege. even 24 hours ago after the meeting withholder, there was never any claim of executive privilege there. so why does it happen? what are they hiding? it raises more questions than answers and it puts the administration in a deeper hole now and probably needlessly involves the president because i have never suspicioned the president on anything in regard to this, until now. i think i have reason to -- suspicion, what did the president know and when did he know it or why did he want to kplam executive privilege for nothing that had been brought up before? >> th

and that's really the point of what senator chuck grassly's statement about this today said earlier onmember much the senate judiciary committee. he is the man who is on the senate side investigating "fast and furious" and he said this. the assertion of executive privilege raises monumental questions. how can the president assert executive privilege if there was no white house involvement? how can the president exert executive privilege over documents he supposedly has never seen? this is very big, something very big being hidden to go to this extreme? and those are the questions i think that are going to be being asked up on capitol hill when you talk about this constitutional battle overusing executive privilege. the attorney general and the doj has gone to great lengths to insulate it seems the white house. saying there was a just a couple of conversation about the president talking about testimony and they have said that there was really no major white house involvement at all. however as william has pointed out, and i should point out william la jeunesse has done a great job cover

much more moderate that some of the earlier statements we heard from other republicans like chuck grassly, for example, when they were accusing the president of amnesty and breaking the constitution. steve king, the republican from iowa saying there's got to be a lawsuit and all this. he was much more tempered. it did take him about five hours to come up with this statement. >> remember, we also heard this week he'd spoken to speaker boehner, no doubt spoken to mitch mcconnell. and they want to have some sort of coordination here at least in the leadership. so i'm sure there are a lot of phone calls that went back and forth particularly. and obviously i think they were taken with marco rubio thing. it's going to be about process, not about the end result. >> yeah. let's not forget that mitt romney now is the leader of the republican party for all practical purposes. candy will have more sunday morning on "state of the union." 9:00 a.m. eastern and noon eastern as well. >>> we have much more on this story. coming up i'm going to talk about the new policy with the woman in charge of actuall

the fact that the family doesn't know what happened is not okay with senator chuck grassly. >> here we are one year later and the family is still waiting for answers and justice. the f.b.i. doesn't have the shooter in custody and the juice department is denying a subpoena for finding out how it would. helped. >> the attorney general said he would work with congress in order not to be in contempt. >> i am offering too sit down by myself with the speaker and chairman and with you and work our way through this in an attempt to avoid a constitutioneral crisis. >> the house will vote on whether to indict holder with contempt one week from today. >> how he goes from that hearing and the weeky -- leak investigation. >> you have to wonder what job he's doing in the attorney general. most of the time we see him in that chair. hopefully he has a big staff to take care of the responsibilities of the job when he's testifying. >> the president of the united states is feeling the heat and maybe attacks that he is running up the deficit is taking the toil tollon the president. one fundraiser he said