Leaders vow to use powers on acting AG; Democrats insist Whitaker recuse

Matt Whitaker
Matt Whitaker

WASHINGTON -- Top congressional Democrats demanded Sunday that President Donald Trump's acting attorney general, Matthew Whitaker, recuse himself from overseeing the special counsel investigation, and vowed to use their newfound powers as the incoming House majority to block him from interfering with it.

The incoming chairmen of the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees both vowed to investigate Whitaker, a Trump loyalist who has repeatedly and explicitly criticized the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential race, if he continued to supervise the inquiry. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., the incoming Judiciary Committee chairman, said he would subpoena Whitaker if necessary, and make him the committee's first witness after the new Congress convenes in January.

"The questions we will ask him will be about his expressed hostility to the investigation, and how he can possibly supervise it when he's expressed, when he's come out and said the investigation is invalid," Nadler said on CNN's State of the Union.

The hearing would focus on Whitaker's "expressed hostility" to special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, which Nadler called "a real threat to the integrity of that investigation."

And Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the Democratic leader, warned that if Whitaker did not step aside, Democrats would attach legislation protecting the special counsel to a must-pass spending bill.

"The appointment of Mr. Whitaker should concern every American," Schumer said on State of the Union, adding that if Whitaker continues to oversee the inquiry, "he will create a constitutional crisis by inhibiting Mueller or firing Mueller."

"So," Schumer added, "Congress has to act."

The Mueller protection bill would give any special counsel a 10-day window to seek review of a firing and ensure that the person was fired for good cause.

It's unclear if Republicans would agree to add the bill to the spending legislation. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has said there is no need for it, but other Republicans, like Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake and Maine Sen. Susan Collins, have called for the bill since Whitaker was appointed.

Schumer declined to say whether Democrats would be willing to force a government shutdown if Congress did not pass a measure protecting Mueller, suggesting it wouldn't come to that because of bipartisan support. "There's no reason we shouldn't add this and avoid a constitutional crisis," he said. "If that doesn't happen, we will see what happens down the road."

The bipartisan Mueller legislation was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee in April and was co-sponsored by Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Thom Tillis of North Carolina.

Whitaker has stirred deep concerns among Democrats since Trump, on the heels of the Republicans' loss of the House last week, named him acting attorney general after firing Jeff Sessions, who had long endured Trump's wrath over the Russia inquiry. Among other comments, Whitaker had once declared that there was "no collusion" between the Trump campaign and Russia -- a remark that prompted Democrats to say he had prejudged the inquiry's conclusion.

Despite his known conflicts, Whitaker reportedly has no intention of recusing himself.

Whitaker's appointment went outside the usual Justice Department plan of succession. Ordinarily, Rod Rosenstein, who had protected the Russia inquiry as deputy attorney general, would have ascended to the top job. Unlike Rosenstein, Whitaker, who was Sessions' chief of staff, lacks Senate confirmation. Democrats say the appointment is unconstitutional.

"If he doesn't recuse himself, if he has any involvement whatsoever in this Russia probe, we are going to find out," Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, warned on NBC's Meet the Press, adding, "Mr. Whitaker needs to understand that he will be called to answer, and any role that he plays will be exposed to the public."

Earlier Sunday, Schumer and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader -- and possible future speaker -- sent a letter to Lee Lofthus, the chief ethics officer at the Justice Department, asking whether he had advised Whitaker to withdraw. The department's ethics official had advised Sessions to withdraw from overseeing the investigation shortly after he took office last year, given his role in the Trump campaign.

The letter asked Lofthus to explain his reasoning for any recommendation he made to Whitaker regarding recusal and to provide all ethics guidance provided to the acting attorney general

Also Sunday, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said Trump knows Matthew Whitaker, two days after the president sought to distance himself from his handpicked acting attorney general.

"The president does know Matt Whitaker, has gotten to know him over the course of the last year, since he has been the chief of staff to the attorney general," Conway said on Fox News Sunday.

Trump on Friday repeatedly claimed that he did not personally know Whitaker, telling reporters, "I don't know Whitaker." That contradicted Trump's statement last month in a Fox News interview, during which the president said, "I know Matt Whitaker."

Conway said Sunday that Trump was trying to make the point Friday that in selecting Whitaker for the acting attorney general job, he wasn't appointing "a friend there who he's known his entire life."

Speaking on ABC News' This Week, Conway said the president chose Whitaker because he wanted to "have a continuum" when it comes to people serving in the attorney general role.

In an appearance on CBS News' Face the Nation, Graham also defended Trump's appointment of Whitaker, describing the acting attorney general as "legally qualified and otherwise qualified to oversee this investigation."

"I'm confident that Mr. Mueller will be allowed to do his job without interference," Graham said, adding, "You don't recuse somebody because they have opinions different than the people they're overseeing."

RELUCTANT TO IMPEACH

Democratic lawmakers said Sunday that they would be reluctant to impeach Trump or issue blanket subpoenas to his administration, as some of the party's activists demand.

Nadler said he's not prepared to say the president has obstructed justice in his conduct toward Mueller's inquiry, but "there's a lot of evidence to that effect" that will be investigated now that Democrats have power.

Still, while Nadler told CNN that impeachment proceedings against Trump "will come up down the road, maybe," he said on ABC that he'd be "reluctant" unless allegations of wrongdoing "rise to the gravity which would necessitate putting the country through the trauma of an impeachment process."

Schumer sidestepped a question about whether Democrats should pursue impeachment.

Schiff said on Meet the Press that House Democratic leaders will have to work to make sure investigations don't cloud other legislative priorities, but "we are going to need to ruthlessly prioritize on the Intel Committee which investigative threads we go down."

Trump warned at a news conference Wednesday of a "warlike posture" should the Democratic House open new investigations. Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., who's expected to run the Oversight Committee, said Sunday that he's not going to war with the Trump administration and plans to use subpoena power as a "method of last resort."

"I'm not going to be handing out subpoenas like somebody's handing out candy on Halloween," Cummings said on ABC. "If I have to use them, they will be used in a methodical way and it must be in the public's interest."

Cummings said he'll seek to hold Trump accountable, and among the areas the committee might pursue are questions of whether Trump is violating the Constitution's emoluments clauses to enrich himself, controversy over a new FBI headquarters in Washington and perhaps the president targeting Amazon.com and CNN.

The White House revoked the credentials of CNN correspondent Jim Acosta last week after Acosta confronted Trump at a raucous news conference, and the president has warned that more journalists may lose their credentials.

Schiff, in an interview with the website Axios, said Congress should examine whether Trump attempted to block AT&T's merger with Time Warner as payback to CNN.

"We don't know, for example, whether the effort to hold up the merger of the parent of CNN was a concern over antitrust, or whether this was an effort merely to punish CNN," Schiff said.

And Schiff accused Trump of "secretly meeting" with the postmaster general to prod him into "raising postal rates on Amazon," whose chief executive and founder, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post.

"This appears to be an effort by the president to use the instruments of state power to punish Jeff Bezos and The Washington Post," Schiff said.

Information for this article was contributed by Sheryl Gay Stolberg of The New York Times; by Colby Itkowitz, Frances Stead Sellers and Felicia Sonmez of The Washington Post; by Hope Yen and Mary Clare Jalonick of The Associated Press; and by Miles Weis, Mark Niquette, Ben Brody and Jennifer A. Dlouhy of Bloomberg News.

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AP file photo

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler is shown in this file photo.

A Section on 11/12/2018

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