After former acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker’s closed-door appearance before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday, chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) and lawyers present for the Republican committee members gave diametrically different accounts of what Whitaker admitted to.
According to a Wednesday Politico report, Nadler said that Whitaker would not deny if he’d had any communication with President Donald Trump about the scope of the investigation into Michael Cohen and “personnel decisions” in the Southern District of New York (the New York Times previously reported that Whitaker looked into undoing a recusal, at Trump’s direction, that would get an administration-friendly attorney in charge of the case).
The Republicans’ lawyers said that Whitaker just couldn’t remember.
In a similar example of the sides’ different portrayals of Whitaker’s words, Nadler said that the former acting attorney general was involved in debates about if the investigation into possible campaign finance illegality, which Trump is implicated in, went too far. The Republican lawyers claim Whitaker was just casting doubt on the “legal theories” surrounding the investigation.
Nadler said that Whitaker was involved in conversations centered on firing U.S. district attorneys; the Republican lawyers pooh-poohed them as run-of-the-mill “personnel decisions.”
