Now it's time for our daily Bloomberg Law Brief, exploring legal issues in the news, and it's brought to you by American Arbitration Association. Business disputes are inevitable, resolve faster with the American Arbitration Association, the global leader in alternative dispute resolution for over ninety years. More at a d
r dot org. Today Bloomberg, lahst Jun Grasso, and Michael Best discussed the legality of communications between the FBI and the White House about investigations into Russian interference in the twenty six presidential election. They speak with Matt Miller, a partner at Vianovo and former director of the Office of Public Affairs at the Department of Justice under President Obama. Matt, what are the rules in the federal government about FBI
contact with the White House on pending investigations? So there are a couple things that are relevant here. One is that the FBI under longstanding practice that applies not just to the White House, but anyone that they're investigating. They don't, you know, they don't form the subjects of their investigations. Uh, what is true in a news story? What's not true?
So if you're a major bank that's being investigated by the FBI, and the New York Times writes a story and you call them up, they won't tell you, oh no, that that thing you read the story is not true,
because they don't do that. And of course, in this case, the White House may not be a subject of investigate this investigation, but we know that the president's campaign associates are, and the president's campaign is and being potentially the President himself, and their number of people in that White House who worked on the campaign. So there's a there's a problem
there with the FBI communicating with them. And then it's it's compounded by the fact that they're long standing Department of Justice guidelines that say any contact between the Justice Department and the White House are supposed to be funneled through very prescribed channels to make sure there is no communication about an investigation, because then there's the potential for the White House to tamper with that investigation, to try to influence it, to try to pressure the FBI that
do we know from the FBI that the FBI actually did tell the White House things about the investigation or is that coming from the white House. It's all coming from the White House. Um, And and that is a problem here because UM, I don't think this is a partisans thing to say the White House. This White House has a credibility problem. There are a number of, you know, documented instances in which the White House has said things
that turn out later to not be true. So it's been reported that that, um, the direct deputy It's been reported from the White House to reporters that the deputy director said these reports were bs those were the quotes, um they used. We don't know if that's exactly what they said. It could be that there was some minor thing that they would quibble with in that New York Times story, But that doesn't mean, uh, the entire story was wrong or the import of the story was wrong.
And the FBI so far has neither commented on it on the record. Nor if you look at the reporters that are coming as closely, they're not even really getting a lot of background guidance from the Bureau. That's Matt Miller, a partner at Viennovo, speaking with Bloomberg, Laho, s jum Crasso, and Michael Best. You can listen to Bloomberg Law weekdays at one pm a Wall Street time here on Bloomberg Radio,