Trump’s Session’s replacement as Attorney General under growing scrutiny and pressure ….

Matt Whitaker has been acting attorney general for just one full day but he’s already under extreme pressure.

Why it matters: President Trump, who shocked even some of his senior most staff with the hasty timing of his firing of Jeff Sessions, threw Whitaker into an immediate political and legal storm. The White House expected opposition from Democrats but the blowback is widening and now includes a growing body of conservative legal opinion.

• Within hours of his appointment on Wednesday, Congressional Democrats began calling on Whitaker, a Trump loyalist, to recuse himself from overseeing the Mueller investigation because of comments about the Mueller probe that Whitaker made last year before he became Sessions’ chief of staff.
• Whitaker wrote last year that the Mueller investigation was dangerously close to becoming a “witch hunt,” and during a TV appearance reportedly imagined a scenario in which the “attorney general doesn’t fire Bob Mueller, but he just reduces his budget to so low that his investigation grinds to almost a halt.”
• The N.Y. Times fronts a story by Charlie Savage, “At Justice Dept., A Boss Who Held Courts in Disdain”: Whitaker “once espoused the view that the courts ‘are supposed to be the inferior branch’ and criticized the Supreme Court’s power to review legislative and executive acts and declare them unconstitutional.”

A new problem emerged yesterday. Prominent attorneys Neal Katyal and George Conway wrote a New York Times op-ed in which they argue Trump’s appointment of Whitaker is illegal because the Constitution dictates that anyone serving in a “principal role” must be confirmed by the Senate.

• “Conway and Katyal raise valid constitutional concerns,” said John B. Bellinger III, a partner at Arnold & Porter, who previously served as a senior White House lawyer and as the State Department Legal Adviser in the George W. Bush Administration.”
• “The problem is not only that Mr. Whitaker does not already hold a Senate-confirmed position, it’s not even clear that he qualifies as an Executive branch ‘officer’ who may be asked by the President to assume the duties of Acting Attorney General because he was not an ‘officer’ exercising significant authority in his position as Chief of Staff.”
• “In addition to politicizing the Department of Justice, the President is running a serious risk that any formal actions taken by Mr. Whitaker could be subject to legal challenge and declared invalid.” …..

More…

Note…

Donald Trump isn’t one to follow rules, procedures or even legality…

Placing Whitaker in the AG job seems to have countered ALL of the above….

Update…

Huh?

President Trump said Friday he has not spoken to acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker about the Russia investigation, which Whitaker now oversees.

Trump defended Whitaker as a “very well respected man in the law enforcement community” but claimed he does not know him personally.

“I didn’t speak to Matt Whitaker about it. I don’t know Matt Whitaker,” Trump told reporters at the White House before leaving for a trip to Paris….

Ah????

Trump the serial liar strikes again….

Natasha Bertrand Retweeted Kyle Griffin

More…

(Maybe the media should check with the Russian’s to see if Trump called Whitaker since they reportedly listen to Trump’s cell phone calls?)

image… Chip Somodevilla/Getty