Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker once argued that an American president had such broad executive power that they could order any federal investigation be stopped without obstructing justice. In a 2017 interview on “The David Webb Show,” first reported by Mother Jones, Whitaker argued that, amid reports Trump had asked former FBI Director James Comey to drop an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn, there was no case for obstruction of justice regardless of President Donald Trump’s motives because the president is entitled to make such calls with his inherent authority. The interview came shortly after Comey was fired by Trump and while Whitaker, then the head of a conservative nonprofit group, was a regular commentator on right-leaning media. “There is no case for obstruction of justice because the president has all the power of the executive and delegates that to people like the FBI director and the attorney general,” Whitaker argued. “The president could, and has in our nation’s history, said stop investigating this person or please investigate this other person.”He continued: “This hyperventilation of what we see here is not sustainable based on these facts.”

Source: Huffington Post November 08, 2018 23:13 UTC