stonewalling, what incentive do democrats have to work with this administration? you mean since the administration won t cooperate with them, why should the congress cooperate with them? 0.0 incentive. we re one subway stop from a real constitutional crisis. because and you say we re not going to oanyway. congress does not have it right to have can anything, it purtsz the courts onvery tough puzugz. they eethver to come unand tell the president you have to follow the law and we don t know will trump obey. or the courts have to say by the way, congress, you re null and void. either way you re playing with the very core of the constitution over stuff that s minor and doesn t matter. so that does put everything else in jeopardy. because when you put the core function of the republic in jeopardy, it s hard to cut deals
president is allowed to have private conversations with foreign leaders or congress which says we have oversight responsibility here? it s a really fascinating clash of the separation of powers here and what their duties are because certainly the head of state function for the president is definitely really a core function for the president. so they are on strong ground really saying that hands off it s diplomat to diplomat. however, what s different here is president trump disregards all the normal safe guards. he doesn t have usually his staff in there with him. there is this allegation that he remove the interpreter s notes so there is a complete no witness no safe guards situation. so naturally the oversight people are very worried about that. this is a highly unusual situation. so the question arises how can we do any oversight without
colleagues, we have a 500-page document, which lists all the times we attempted to do oversight under republican control, but they would not do it, so we have a lot of work backed up, but this is a core function of the judiciary committee. we re doing it while we re doing our other work, too. but this is one of our responsibilities and we owe it to the american people to do it. one of the things we heard a lot the last two years was kind of a new invention of executive privilege, where the white house wasn t actually claiming executive privilege, but people would appear before committees and say, well, i don t think i m going to say anything about that because, i think that s what i you know, that s private between me and the president and i m i just think that s, you know, covered by executive privilege, even though the white house itself was not claiming executive privilege. and that just seemed to be accepted by republicans who were running the committees. is that does that
you know, occasionally. right? holy cow. all right. thanks, chris. we ll be here all week. and this is cnn tonight. i m erin burnett, in for the one and only don lemon, who is off today. the house judiciary committee launching a broad investigation into president trump. taking a look at his administration, his campaign, his transition, his businesses, pretty much everything there is about the guy. the committee sending out letters to 81 people and entities. so that includes the white house, justice department, senior campaign officials, trump organization officials, the president s sons. tonight i asked the chairman of the committee what all this is about, what does he want to learn. our goal is to hold the administration accountable for the obstruction of justice, the abuse of power, and the corruption. our goal is to vindicate the rule of law, to protect the rule of law in this country. and that s our core function as a judiciary committee of the congress. and we have to fi
administration, his campaign, his transition, his businesses, pretty much everything there is about the guy. the committee sending out letters to 81 people and entities. so that includes the white house, justice department, senior campaign officials, trump organization officials, the president s sons. tonight i asked the chairman of the committee what all this is about, what does he want to learn. our goal is to hold the administration accountable for the obstruction of justice, the abuse of power, and the corruption. our goal is to vindicate the rule of law, to protect the rule of law in this country. and that s our core function as a judiciary committee of the congress. and we have to find out what s been going on and we have to lay out a case to the american people and reveal it. lay out a case and reveal it. today at the white house while meeting with college football players the president brushed it all off. mr. president, are you going to cooperate with mr. nadler? i coop