Page 16 - Question Basis News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

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 can't ignore a congressional subpoena. that's the big takeaway. >> let's bring in yamiche and nbc news correspondent covering national security and intelligence ken dilanian. mike, we should point out, we're talking about don mcgahn because we've had so many names come through in the last severa...

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 counsel's 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 don't actually think that this ruling is going to affect how congress deals with airing that matter before the public because i...

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 he's in the chair, he can still claim executive privilege. i do have that right? >> that's right. on a case by case or question by question basis. what this ruling holds, it is a significant opinion, but it's not a surprise because the same court decided essentially exactly the exact same issue back in 2007. that case involving harriet meyers at the time did not make it all the way to the end of ...

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 don't 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. there's so much additional evidence that do not involve those perhaps direct conversations that are very, very telling that they could not invoke executi...

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 trump's disregard for the rule of lieu law. i wander why it took so long for the insiders to begin telling us what they know. there's no shortage in one time administration officials who hint darkly at the danger trump poses to our national security. former chief of staff john kelly, rex tillerson, former def...