Page 8 - Question Basis News Today

How do you see it playing out, laura? >> unlike last time when you had thumbing of the nose of people who had been subpoenaed, you have a very different white house a very different attorney general who is adamant about the rule of law coming first. what it means is that subpoenas are supposed to be complied with. the average person cannot ignore it. any time someone wants to challenge the validity of the subpoena, you still have to do it on a question by question basis. you cant just say execut...

Mueller and then create a false document to deny that fact. that is clear obstruction of justice. now it is a question by question basis. that is the subject of the justification. it seems fairly likely that there was one based on the obstruction of robert muellers investigation. >> i want to play you one. >> at the very minimum, we will require votes from all of the senators on each of the witnesses about each set of documents. i dont think my colleagues democrat or republican, are going to wan...

Saying that if he wants to exert executive privilege to avoid testifying, he must do it himself before congress, likely on a question by question basis. house judiciary chair jerry nadler now says that he expects mcgahn to "promptly appear before the committee," and president trump tweeting, "the d.c. wolves and fake news media are reading far too much into people being forced by courts to testify before congress. i am fighting for future presidents and the office of the president. other than th...

Unlimited executive power is just simply unconstitutional. it just has no merit. so that argument now is in full view as opposed to just simply being something driving behind the scenes the way in which people have been defending donald trump. >> the headline from judge jackson yesterday was presidents are not kings. thats the case she was making yesterday. >> it was classic federalist paper. this is a public civics class. i have a question for the lawyer types around the table. say people ultim...

Meanwhile, were weighing in on the firing of richard spencer following a controversial war crimes case. speaking to reporters yesterday, secretary esper explained he was, quote, flabbergasted to learn that spence her tried to make a secret deal with the white house concerning embattled navy s.e.a.l. eddie gallagher. secretary esper said he demanded spencers resignation after learning he approached the white house about an arrangement to let gallagher retire as a navy s.e.a.l. if the president st...

At all. in a sense, the winner in this case was never going to be in doubt and if it goes up on appeal the result will be the same. the net takeaway is there is no absolute immunity for high-ranking executive aides. they have to show up and comply. then they may have executive privilege claims. but you cant ignore a congressional subpoena. thats the big takeaway. >> lets bring in yamiche and nbc news correspondent covering national security and intelligence ken dilanian. mike, we should point ou...

Court of appeals. it was resolved in another way and you had this freestanding court opinion for over a decade that left us wondering where exactly the law is on this issue. >> in the mueller report, ken dilanian, we know that don mcgahn testified for about 30 hours in front of the special counsels office. we know that he testified that president trump asked him to fire robert mueller at one point in 2017. how significant is this ruling to that case? >> well, look, i dont actually think that thi...

Just on the nuts and bolts of this, what it means exactly. what judge jackson effectively said is don mcgahn has to go testify before the house judiciary committee, forget the immunity claim. but once hes in the chair, he can still claim executive privilege. i do have that right? >> thats right. on a case by case or question by question basis. what this ruling holds, it is a significant opinion, but its not a surprise because the same court decided essentially exactly the exact same issue back i...

Why pull them back completely? >> well, because in the case of harriet myer in 2018, she had to come and testify and then you have to invoke executive privilege on a question by question basis. i dont think mulvaney or pompeo or bolton really are able to invoke executive privilege on a whole host of questions that i could think of. executive privilege involves a conversation involving a deliberative decision that you have with the president. theres so much additional evidence that do not involve...

Out in the washington post titled trump insiders are finally speaking up. what took so long? in it gene writes this. i wonder why it took a still anonymous whistle-blower to launch the probe of holding trump accountable approximately why it took a war crimes case to focus the attention on trumps disregard for the rule of lieu law. i wander why it took so long for the insiders to begin telling us what they know. theres no shortage in one time administration officials who hint darkly at the danger...