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♪♪ tonight on "the reidout" -- >> what is the specific constitutional crime that you're investigating? >> well, we're having an inquiry so we can do an investigation into all the production of witnesses and -- >> what is the crime you're investigating? >> and documents. high crimes, misdemeanors and briberies. >> what high crimes are you investigating? >> look, once i get time, i will explain what we're looking at and i will make the equivalency. >> no, i'm asking for you -- >> that is congressman joe naguse asking a simple question, one that republicans still can't answer as they breathlessly approve a biden impeachment inquiry. the congressman joins me tonight. there appears to be a growing rift between president biden and israel's benjamin netanyahu. representatives rashida tlaib and cory bush join me tonight. and there's breaking news tonight in one of jack smith's federal cases against donald trump. the court of appeals for the d.c. circuit handed trump another setback. i'll talk to andrew weissmann about how that went down. ♪♪ we begin tonight with settling scores. as we all know by now, retribution is donald trump's goal. today they authorized an impeachment inquiry into president biden. a formal set up they believe will grant them the ability to better enforce their subpoenas in the courts. every single house republican, including scroll neshl republicans in biden districts voted for the inquiry. take note of that, voters. >> on this vote, the yea are 221, the nays are 212. the resolution is adopted. >> it's based on the same dock maymy conspiracy theory pushed by rudy giuliani the first time. and to be very clear, that is why we're here today. republicans have made no secret of the fact that they want to sully president biden and even the score with their twice-impeached, four-times indicted leader ahead of next year's election. it is important to make clear that despite a lot of trying, house republicans have not found anything to impeach president biden for. as they probe the business dealings of his son, hunter. a point democrats made repeatedly during the floor debate today. >> the biden impeachment investigation isn't a who done it. it's what is it? it's like an egg of the mystery novel, what's the crime? >> i think if we give them enough time he's going to prove that hunter biden is joe biden's son. >> we're here today not because of any wrong doing by president biden, but because donald trump wants revenge. >> in fact, republicans have spent years investigating allegations related to hunter biden's business dealings in ukraine. note, this is why they hate ukraine. and whether hunter was kicking back cash to his dad. their efforts date back to 2018 under trump's attorney general resulting in not a single piece of evidence linking joe bide on the his son's business. in september, 2020, senators ron johnson and chuck grassley released an 87-page report on this very same topic. and they found, nothing. their report was little more of rehashing of unproven allegations that echoed a russian disinformation campaign because, of course, in may of this year during a much publicized press conference, republicans on the house oversight committee released their first report on an investigation into president biden and his family. and concluded that they had yet to find evidence of a specific corrupt action president biden took in office in connection with any of the business deals his son entered into. i mean, you ask them to show their math or provide evidence, any evidence at all. they openly acknowledge they don't have any. and that this will probably amount to nothing. >> i have no evidence of it. and i'm going to just follow the facts where they are. and the facts haven't taken me to that point where i can say that the president is guilty of anything. >> can you identify any actual policy decisions that joe biden has made in response to getting paid for those policy changes? >> well, we'll have to -- that will be part of the investigation. >> is impeachment dead on arrival in the senate if it gets here? >> depends on what they come up with. i don't know. most likely. >> of course, lindsey. look, you see they can't be bothered with the truth or facts because that isn't the goal. congressional republicans who are trump's de facto legal team merely want to tarnish his political opponent and make biden and trump all even steven impeachment wise. here is texas congressman troy nells telling a rolling stone reporter why this is so important to republicans. >> representatives, what are you hoping to gain from an impeachment inquiry? >> all i can say is donald j. trump, 2024, baby. >> end scene. reminder special counsel david weiss is not investigating the president. he is investigating his son, hunter. and has indicted him for not paying his taxes on time and buying a gun while he was under the influence. a number of legal experts from both parties have noted that indicting hunter biden for tax evasion when he's already paid his back taxes smacks of unfair treatment. this morning, hunter himself, who was subpoenaed to testify in closed session, publicly called the republican's bluff. on the steps of the capitol, he agreed to testify in public before the judiciary and house ever sight committees. >> i'm here today to make sure that the house committee's illegitimate investigations of my family do not proceed on distortions, manipulated evidence, and lies. and in the depths of my addiction, i was extremely irresponsible with my finances. but to suggest that is grounds for an impeachment inquiry is beyond the absurd. it's shameless. republicans do not want an open process where americans can see their tactics. expose their baseless inquiry, or hear what i have to say. what are they afraid of? i'm here. i'm ready. >> an offer they have declined even though house oversight committee jarman james comer expressly stated last month that witnesses could choose to either appear in a deposition or a public hearing. in an ironic twist of fate, jim jordan, who openly ignored the house january 6th request that he appear for a deposition, is threatening hunter biden with contempt for simply doing what he did. >> we're disappointed that he didn't show up. i mean, he was just across the way at the capitol. you think he could have come here and sat for questions. but, look, congress asks you to come, supposed to come and testify. >> the hypocrisy. joining me is now congressman joe naguss from colorado. you saw in that exchange. analyst and chief strategist for the bush/cheney 2004 presidential campaign. representative, let me start with you. did you ever get an answer to your question about what is the crime that the colleagues on the other side of the aisle are preparing to impeach joe biden for? >> no, i never did get an answer. i don't think we're ever going to get an answer, joy. there is no answer. the reality is republicans are pursuing this on behalf of donald trump, as you articulated so well. an act of political retribution that donald trump has compelled house republicans, ordered house republicans to pursue. and the sycophants they are, they decided to do so. and it's deeply disappointing, but perhaps the most confounding and frustrating part of all of this is that they openly concede that there's no evidence of wrong doing. they have yet to articulate any cogent crime that they are investigating, any connection to the constitutional standard for impeachment. it is, in my view, a deeply flawed distortion of the impeachment process and reflective of the misplaced priorities that house republicans are pursuing right now in the house of prentatives. >> let me read a little bit of the statement out of the white hoe from president biden on this impeachment vote. there's a lot of work to be done, but after wasting weeks trying to find a new sak of the house and expel their own members. republicans are leaving for a month without doing anything to face these issues. instead of doing athing to help make american's lives better, they're focus on attacking me with lives instead of doing their job and urgent work that needs to be done, they're choosing to waste time on this baseless political stunt that republicans in congress admit is not supported by facts. representative neguse, to come back to you for a moment, what has the house of representatives accomplished in this past session so far this year? >> i hate to answer the question the same way, joy, but the answer is the same. nothing. republicans have been in control of the house for the better part of the last year. and they have nothing to show for it. i couldn't agree more with the president. i share his frustrations. i suspect the vast majority of the american people feel the same way. the last 11.5 months and what has -- the house republican conference achieved? they tried to shut the government down twice. they came very close to a catastrophic default on our national debt. they vacated their own speaker. the only thing of note, of substance they accomplished is expelling george santos and of course it took democratic votes to achieve that outcome. look, this is extremism on full display. it is symptomatic of, as i said, the extremism that has metastasized in the republican party. and unfortunately it seems as though this is going to continue. they are doing deep damage, in my view, to our republic as a result. >> matthew dowd, let me play for you mike johnson. this is mike johnson in 2019 versus mike johnson now, the current speaker, about how he feels about single-party impeachments. >> the founding fathers, the founders of this country warned against single party impeachments. they said that it would be bitterly divisive, perhaps irreparably divisive for the country. >> majority of the house of representatives go on record, that sends a message. >> the founders of this country warned against a single party impeachment. you know why. you guys know why, because they feared it would bitterly and perhaps irreparably divides our nation. >> we're playing by the same rules the democrats set. democrats thought this process was fair for president trump, they should think it's fair for president biden. >> i mean, they're kind of telling on themselves, matthew, because the reality is the thing that those two years have in common is that being impeached made trump sad and made him embarrassed so they have to fix that now by embarrassing joe biden with the same tag, the same asterisk. they're literally impeaching -- trying to impeach joe biden because trump is sad and they want the two of them to be on an even scale. am i reading that wrong? >> no. i mean, think about this in a couple of different ways, first, if they were actually interested in good government, and they actually believed that the impeachment of donald trump was wrong, then why wouldn't they fix the process if that's what they believed? fixing the process isn't doing the same thing in their mind. it's basically saying we're not going to do that because we believed it wrong. that would be the natural good government thing to do. the other thing i'll say about this is, you can also play, but also the hypocrisy they have constantly attack the fbi, the national security council, the justice department and the deep state because they say they're involving themselves in american's lives without evidence of a crime and they're investigating people and they're doing this. and we must put a stop to this deep state and what these law enforcement agencies are doing. what are they doing in the course of this? the analogy i thought of that this reminds me of is that if we were all driving down the highway in a car and somebody -- a cop pulled us over and we said, well, why are you pulling me over? no reason. but i'm going to pull you over. then we said, what evidence do you have that i did anything wrong. none. and then you sit there and look across the highway and there's a 51-car pileup and there's people dying and you're like, why don't you do something about that since you don't know anything that i've done wrong. and they're, no, we'll pay attention to this. and that's what's going on in the world right now. there's a 51-car pileup. there's a democracy under attack in ukraine. there's a democracy under attack in israel. there is the immigration system that is broken. there's a ton of issues that need to be dealt with, but they want to pull people over for having done nothing with no evidence of a crime. it's utterly -- shows they have no interest in governance. >> they're doing it for the election, right? to your analogy, it would be like that same scenario but then when you ask the cop, i'm pulling you over because i pulled that guy over and we want you to be equal. you know, because he -- that guy got pulled over, so you're getting pulled over despite the pileup over there. >> it would be -- i pulled that guy for going 110 miles an hour and i'm pulling you over -- that other guy was going 110 miles an hour. i mean, the hypocrisy of this is so deep. and the fact that donald trump is facing 91 indictments and joe biden has been -- there's not an evidence of scintilla of evidence he's done anything wrong, but they're still willing to say donald trump is the greatest thing on earth and we want to support him for president. >> yeah. and you know, representative neguse, the issue here is that donald trump was impeached because he tried to bribe and strong arm a foreign government to get fake data that he could use against joe biden to win an election. then he got impeached again because he tried to foment a coup. i don't know how they think that's the same thing as joe biden lending his son money to pay his car note. but that's literally what they've got so far, right? they've got joe biden loves his son and helped him pay his car note. and so they're saying, well, these two things are the same. coup and trying to bribe ukraine to try to win an election and paying the kid's car note because the guy's car note because he had problems and had drug problems. and then one more thing i want to throw to you representative neguse, jim jordan is now stomping around saying that they might hold hunter biden in contempt if he doesn't show up for subpoena. he wrote a letter to the january 6th committee saying i don't have to do the subpoena. this is unprecedented and inappropriate demand this request for outside the bound of any legitimate inquiry, blah blah blah. he threw that subpoena on the ground and spat on it. how can he then try to enforce subpoenas? >> yeah, well, two things i would say. first, joy, i agree with you with respect to the complete false equivalency the republicans tried to draw between this baseless impeachment inquiry and the last msnbc that the house conducted, which was a bipartisan impeachment. i was one of the prosecutors in that impeachment. donald trump was impeached on a bipartisan basis for inciting a violent mob to disrupt the electoral college proceedings and subvert the peaceful transfer of power. one of the most serious constitutional crimes that one could conceive of. and as you said, he's been singularly focussed on exacting retribution and ordered house republicans to pursue this revenge. that's what this is all about. now, with respect to chairman jordan, obviously they would like to conduct this inquiry completely in private, behind closed doors. their resolution reflects that. they deleted the phrase open and transparent from the language of the resolution intentionally, in my view, because they realized that they don't have any evidence and that to the extent these hearings are public, they obviously will not be to their benefit. i agree with you in terms of his efforts to impede the january 6th investigation. it's fairly rich for him now to be making the scene that he has in the last 24 hours, regarding the president's son and his potential testimony. the american people see this for what it is which is political theater. they like to see us get back to governing and addressing some of the challenges that matthew spoke so eloquently about. >> very quickly, matthew dowd. what's going on with the two senators from your home state of texas will not respond to ms. cox being denied an abortion and had to leave the state to get one. they have no thought even though they were federal official. we're just federal so we don't have to talk about it. >> i have an expression that's not meant for television, but they're chicken you know what. and in the course of this process. they've always been this way. it's unbelievable the trauma and the tragic nature of what happened to that young woman in the course of this. and this is what happens with exception -- with these things that are exceptions that are put in place with extreme unintended consequences. >> yep. indeed. congressman joe neguse and matthew dowd, thank you both very much. up next on "the reidout," in the land of legal argument where trump's attorneys brewed. it's true. whimsical whispers like cindy lu-hoo they complained about a grinch with a legal point of view. 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