Updated at 10:28 a.m. ET

Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker's temporary appointment was legal, the Justice Department said in a memo on Wednesday — but it did not address whether he must recuse himself from the Russia investigation.

President Trump has the power to appoint Whitaker as an acting replacement for former Attorney General Jeff Sessions because Whitaker has been a senior enough leader for more than a year, the Office of Legal Counsel concluded.

Whitaker was Sessions' chief of staff.

The holiday dinner conversations are going to be intense in several high-profile Democratic households in the coming weeks, as potential candidates near decisions on whether to run for president in 2020.

Even as their staffs and political advisers have already begun scouting out office space, interviewing potential aides, and plotting out strategy for the 2020 presidential election, most haven't completely made up their minds about entering what's expected to be one of the most crowded primary contests in history.

House Republicans are electing a new set of leaders Wednesday to oversee their transformation from an ideologically diverse majority power to an increasingly conservative minority in the next session of Congress.

Much of the tension in the fight over who will replace retiring House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis., deflated after Republicans lost more than 30 seats in the midterm election last week, flipping control to the Democrats in January. Only two of the current GOP leaders are running for top slots in the minority next year and only one of those jobs is contested.