and i think the point that turley made today, and i thought it was a good point, he said you can t impeach a president for obstructing or having contempt for congress if the courts haven t ruled in favor of congress. in other words, to have a contempt charge he says or obstruction charge, you have to have a court ruling saying, okay being turnover the documents to congress, show up if you are a wait, and then if you reject that, then that is a contempt of congress. now, i don t know about that argument, but clearly the pattern of this president saying i m not sending any witnesses up there and he didn t in fact give them one piece of paper, he is clearly operating in contempt of congress. i don t know why the courts are so slow because my memory is pretty clear the courts moved rather quickly in the nixon case. they said turnover those tapes and that is what brought down nixon. in the mcgahn case, they are starting to move but that is a month off or more. so touree s argument urturley
and the executive says we re not going to. like, how close are we to that moment? we haven t gotten to that moment yet, i am happy to say because the courts haven t ordered the president to do something that he hasn t complied with. and the other thing that s important to understand about all of this subpoena investigation talk, congress has its own powers. congress can issue its own subpoenas. it could go back to its practice in the 19th and early 20th century of sending the sergeant in arms to arrest someone and jail them. right? and if that sounds kind of out there to you, it also could use its power of the purse. everything the executive branch does requires funding. the congress approves. and congress could start saying, hey you know what you don t have any money for the white house counsel s office. it s interesting to think of both those things as sort of the next step in escalation. thank you so much for being here. thank you. [ applause ] don t go anywhere. we ve got a
and that could keep it out of the courts at least for now, but there are other cases bubbling up, too, another case about congress trying to get the tax returns from trump. that s in the d.c. courts in washington and that case also looks bound for the supreme court. it does seem likely we re going to hear from the court in at least one of these matters. right now the setup everyone s sort of been using is you ve got three branches of government and article 3 is the referee who comes in and says who s right. a constitutional crisis is when no one can say who s right. or when the court says do this, and the executive says we re not going to. like how close are we to that moment. we haven t gotten to that moment yet because the courts haven t ordered the president to do something he hasn t complied with. and the other thing important to understand about all this subpoena investigation talk, congress has its own powers. congress could issue its own
installation of an ankle monitor actually creates two searches under the 4th amendment. the second and justice ale do have observed this. the continuing monitoring is a search under the 4th amendment and it has to be really scrutinized if you re going to conduct a search like that without probable cause and for ongoing law enforcement investigative purposes. the courts haven t really dealt with the issue of asylum seekers and ankle monitors, but if you apply what the courts have said about pretrial detainees or those charged with a crime or parolees, then there s an even stronger case that this is an n unconstitutional search. to that point, let me share with you this from california according to the washington post here. they re essentially saying california stay with the largest population of immigrants filed a federal lawsuit friday hoping to derail the trump administration hoping to deny green cards to
around that. it just makes sense. and, you know, to counter the motion about background checks that those think you re going have checks at gun shows. now there s a registry of people who own guns. it s that kind of paranoia that need to be chipped away at by effective laws. expanding background checks is a 90% issue in the united states. it s supported by 90%. pointed out to me by scott jensings. so republicans know this. joe lockhart, i want to play you sound of the president. he has been questioned about emoluments. about whether or not he and his family have profited off the office of the presidency. now, the courts haven t ruled conclusively on that one way or another. but he came up with a new defense yesterday, an absurd defense. which is basically yeah but