call. in the universe in which we live in the real xwrufrs, there are bad ideas and there are incredibly bad ideas. an incredibly bad idea is to take information from a foreign national. federal law prohibits it. and i m sure frank figliuzzi will tell you, it s also a really bad idea because it is the start, it is the beginning of a foreign influence operation. and so one thing we can be sure of, mr. trump did not read the mueller report. in fact, in the mueller report, they spend a lot of pages and a whole bunch of ink discussing why this is not okay. now, in the end in the mueller report, they say we may not be able to charge the trump tower offer of information under federal criminal law. but nowhere do they say it s okay. it s not okay, lawrence. and here s the president saying he would accept it and i
violate the accept portion of that law. there s no other moment in our historical record of a president saying that he was willing to commit a crime, willing to violate a law. what law would the president have to announce he s willing to violate for the house to start to take action against him? i think that s a better question for your other panelists. the distinguished congressman. . congressman doggett is all ready to go to impeachment. he s not one of the democrats waiting for more. i will say this and this was mentioned on your previous panel. one of the things that the president and his team pointed to when this was first being litigated after 2016 election, was their lack of familiarity with the campaign finance laws
paths. he doesn t give much thought to the truth. and he doesn t give much thought to what he said previously. from a criminal defense lawyer perspective, that s perilous. understand the mueller team thought they had most of what they needed and they were worried about the report taking too long if they had to litigate an issue over a subpoena to the president. but this docile straight as you know the, why you want to sit down with the subject of the investigation and talk to him. you want to hear in his own words what he was thinking. today he told us. i just want to read for the audience one more time what the law actually says about this. it says it shall be unlawful for a foreign national directly or indirectly to make a contribution or doe of money or other thing of value or to make an express or implied promise in connection with a local, state or federal election. the same law makes it against the law for a person to accept such a thing and sam stein, president trump said toni
wrong. i don t know that heal. but somebody ought to advise the president because if others are taking advice from the president on had point, they re also going to find themselves in trouble. joe biden tweeting within the hour saying president trump is once again welcoming foreign enter in our elections. this isn t about politics. it is a threat to our national security, an american president should not seek their aid and abet those who seek to undermine democracy. rick, aiding and abetting. you know what else this was, lawrence? this was a signal to russia because you know who would have opposition research on the democratic candidates and joe bide in particular? russia. what trump was saying is look, i will welcome this information. i will sush born the law, i would undermine the law to defeat my opponent and work with a hostile foreign power trying to undermine our democracy. that s what i m going to do. chuck, donald trump has committed so many of the violations of norms and
entire life, people who never call the fbi tending to criminals. that s who they hang out with and that s their surrency. so it s really not all that surprising. it s incredibly disappointing but it s not all that surprising because it s really more of the same. frank, it is very difficult to imagine anything that we talk about in trump world happening in a previous presidency, but imagine if you will, during your time of service in the fbi, that the president of the united states on a very simple black and white letter of the law matter simply said, publicly emphatically, the fbi director is wrong, what would the fbi director do in any other world other than trump world? well if we had normalcy, we would have the director offer to sit down in the oval office and explain the law and the doubter intelligence mission of the bureau but we don t live in normalcy. we might have the an fbi