MSNBC's Rachel Maddow acquired a letter sent from two GOP congressmen to the Justice Department demanding they release a de-classified, un-redacted memo detailing special counsel Robert Mueller's authority to conduct key aspects of his investigation. There's only one thing wrong — those congresspeople "clearly don't know what they're talking about."
The April 9 letter — sent from Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Mark Meadows (R-NC) to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — demands the DOJ allow them "access to the entirety of your memo authorizing the entirety of the [Russia] investigation." The Republicans asked for the "full, unredacted" and declassified version of the memo by the end of the week it was sent.
The congressmen's letter, had not yet been publicized before Maddow read it on-air, went on to suggest Mueller's investigation was undertaken "outside the scope of regulations" in a "counter-intelligence basis rather than a criminal basis."
As Maddow noted, the letter immediately raised red flags because the memo authorizing the Mueller investigation, which she outlined earlier in the segment, is not actually classified but is instead "law enforcement-sensitive."
"Clearly these members of Congress are freelancing here," she said. "It's not at all clear they know what they're talking about."
"In at least one important sense, these members of Congress making this demand of Rod Rosenstein, they clearly don't know what they're talking about," Maddow said before noting that in "Trump land," demands of that nature now happen daily — including on the president's Twitter feed.
Watch below, via MSNBC:
